Mental Chatter.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Dear Deepak,
I recently heard that we should not use a mantra during meditation as it is part of "mental chatter". That the best form of meditation is simply watching the breath. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks and love.
Response:
Any thoughts, or mental activity is mental chatter compared to pure awareness. That includes the activity of watching the breath or thinking a mantra. But the whole point of a meditation practice is allow the mind to go from the state of activity to a state of silence, and meditation techniques work by allowing the mind to settle down instead of remaining on an active level. Thousands of years of experience has shown that mantra meditation is just as effective as breath awareness meditation.
Love,
Deepak
I find that meditating with external sounds helps quite my mind. In particular, binaural beats with OM chanting is very effective for me. I lose my sense of self and am able to be. I am a musician so music has an ability to put me in a flow state, though I need to be careful in selecting the type of music that I will viibe with. Gregorian chant music has a calming effect as well and I often use it to accompany my meditation sessions. ( I don't speak latin so the words have no meaning to me).
Dr. Chopra, Wouldn't you agree that a mantra is a different type of meditation combining mental focus with vibrational energy? Just as the mental awareness of AUM as the sound of God consciousness or the universe repeated creates a vibrational frequency in the physical realm to align us with our true selves? Namaste teacher ;-)
to heartphone`s questions. From my experience with presence and stillness, you are asking which path is best to climb a mountain. Which music is best for bringing you to presence. There is no answer other than what you feel in each moment. If you feel called to mantra`s or to watch your breath, if you feel called to use a singing bowl or to just sit with nature. All of these are doorways. It`s not so much which doorway is right as it is that you feel called to a doorway and walk through it. To thy own self be true. The purpose of doorways are to silent the mind to help shift awareness to itself inwardly away from any chatter. Eventually, one finds that chatter can and will remain within the silence of being. Then as one unfolds, no amount of chatter appears to pull you from presence, the awareness of all unfoldings.