MY PERSONAL MANTRA: Its Application and Results

In the process of my current reading of Hindu religious philosophy and about the subject of personal mantras, I suddenly became aware of my own.  It was quite simple, yet personally powerful.

I began immediately to use the mantra.  As thoughts or feelings would arise I would speak my mantra, either within my mind or outwardly through my voice.  As I lay down for a nap, a usual string of thoughts about people in my life or events I was experiencing would flow into mind.  In response, I spoke my mantra.  It was like a light then surrounded those persons or events and a kind of release occurred.

This morning I first began my meditation with relaxed breathing.  Next, I found my attention directed to a fantasy process that was very familiar to me since it had been the basis of many meditations in years past.  In the fantasy I was walking down a path into a valley.  My senses became inwardly alert as I approached a huge boulder and I reached out to touch the rock gently.  I spoke my mantra and the rock came alive. 

I continued down into the valley, finding each of my senses quickened by some place in the journey.  Finally, I arrived at a favorite meditation spot, a grass covered piece of Mother Earth beside a bubbling stream.  I spoke my mantra and felt more alive than I have for a long time.  It was as though the stream, passing by, but remaining ever the same, was actually flowing through me.

As often happened in this meditation I would notice in the distance a person coming toward me as he or she walked along the stream.  I spoke my mantra silently toward the man as he approached.  Then, I saw that it was my son, David.  Again I silently spoke my mantra.  Our relationship has been broken for a number of years, finally resulting in complete separation.  In the speaking of my mantra, it became crystal clear to me what I needed to do.  My working out of the karma of this relationship was revealed.  In a very real sense it had nothing to do with what my son might or might not do. 

Almost as quickly as the realization came to me, there suddenly appeared with David, his wife, Christina.  My relationship with her was at even greater odds than with David.  I spoke my mantra silently several times.  Then a soft but powerful light enveloped them both as the vision slowly receded.

I was again alone in my meditation, but I was not the same.  A path had been revealed to me.  If I follow this path, as I allow my mantra to go with me and before me, the result will be resolution.  Simply “seeing” a possibility where I was unable to see one before, gives hope.

In Hindu philosophy all is Brahman, absolute God.  Brahman is primal Self and is personal self—All in All. The continuum from Creator to the created is the stream of life that flows through each of us moving us inevitably through all cycles of life.  Everything that occurs in that process—people, events, knowledge—is Brahman.  A mantra is designed to help the student become clear and balanced and “attain the state devoid of differentiation between knower, knowable and knowledge.  This culmination of meditation is samadhi.”  -- “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” Sri Swami Satchidananda          

Regardless of my years, I am a novice, perhaps far from samadhi. A light has begun to break through a crack in the wall of self that has held me in the box of my own determination. I speak my mantra to that crack in the wall and my Real Self sees the sides of the box fall flat revealing the fullness of All That Is—Brahman.