Guided Meditation: Internal Worship
Meditation is internal worship. That is placing God in our mind and worshipping God there. Internal worship is very rewarding, though challenging. To master internal worship or meditation, we must be able to hold our mind on God for the duration of the worship without being distracted by other thoughts. Once mastered we will tangibly feel God’s Pure Love flooding into our being.
God’s love is always flowing through us. By concentrating our mind on God through internal worship, we learn to be sensitive to God’s energy within us and therefore, are able to enjoy this divine energy and harmonize our life by its flow.
What is it like to experience God’s love? Inspiring and uplifting. It is being in love with life itself. You feel totally protected and cared for. You feel confident and at peace. All your worries are wiped away from your mind. You feel the forces of the universe supporting you. There is an exhilarating feeling as if you are floating in the clouds and you feel a child-like spontaneous happiness. It is an amazing and magical experience.
The following steps of this guided meditation are based on Pusalar’s story. Anybody can learn this meditation. When parents or teachers teach children this meditation, the parent or the teacher should instruct the children on what to do mentally as they sit in meditation. This meditation can be done in the temple or in the home shrine after ceremonial prayers. If you are doing this meditation in a children’s class, then it would be good to start with devotional hymns or songs to get everyone into a sublime mood.
1. The first step is to sit up with the back erect. It is best for children and younger people to learn to sit on the floor cross legged. There are couple of Hatha Yoga poses that are ideal for meditation, namely padmasana and siddhasana. A yoga master can teach these poses. Elder people who cannot sit on the floor may sit on a chair. Whatever pose you choose, the key is to keep the back or the spine erect. No slouching.
2. Next choose a form of God and a simple mantra to chant for the worship of God. Below is only short list of possible forms of God and assosciated mantras. Any form of God is acceptable. If you do not know the mantra for the form of God of your choice, you can ask a temple priest or a guru.
Lord Ganesha: Om Sri Ganeshaaya Namaha
Lord Murugan: Om Saravanabhavaaya Namaha
God Shiva: Om Namasivaya
Goddess Amman: Om Sri Gowriiyai Namaha
Goddess Lakshmi: Om Sri Lakshmiiyai Namaha.
God Vishnu: Om Namo Narayanaaya Namaha.
If you are guiding a class or your family, it is best for everyone to concentrate on the same form of God and use the same mantra.
3. Then begin the meditation by chanting the mantra slowly and softly for a few minutes. The eyes must be closed. Get a rhythm going with the chanting then gradually chant softer and softer until you are only chanting silently in your mind.
4. As you continue to chant silently try to feel the area in your chest where your heart is. If you are teaching children you will need to show them where this is by pointing at your chest before the meditation begins. It takes practice to feel your heart. You can imagine as if your eyes are looking downward into your body and seeing the heart. With consistent practice you will be able to feel your heartbeat. Spend about half a minute on this step, do not linger too long on it.
5. Then visualize God seated or standing within the heart. Around God is a bright white halo. Continue silently chanting the mantra.
6. Next imagine that you are infront of God within your heart. Each time as you chant the mantra, imagine that a flower appears in your hand. Then place the flower at God’s feet. God feels the flower you place at His feet and smiles at you.
This meditation simulates worship of God in a temple that we visualize within our heart.
We enter this temple within our heart in our meditation and worship Him (or Her) there to our hearts content.
We can worship God as we please in our heart. We can offer flowers, do an entire puja, complete with doing an abishegam, even parades. It is entirely up to us.
7. Continue step 6 until you naturally feel that you want to stop your silent chanting and offering of flowers to God. You will feel that you want to be completely silent and enjoy God’s presence within your heart. Instruct those you are guiding to continue step 6 until they attain this feeling.
Step 7 is the magical part of the meditation that you are aiming for. Once you reach this stage of your meditation God takes over and showers love from within you as your heart chakra, the anahatha chakra is stimulated. If you do not reach this stage of the meditation, especially if you are a beginner in its practice, don’t worry and don’t give up the meditation. It takes regular and consistent practice to master concentration of the mind and you must cultivate the desire to want to feel God’s presence within you. Your concentration ability will become better the more you practice. Once you achieve the exhilarating experience of God’s love for the first time, you will find this experience coming to you easier every time you do this meditation.
The mystical aspect of this meditation is that it stimulates the fourth chakra, the anahatha chakra which is also known as the heart chakra. The anahatha chakra is pictured above in green colour which is its natural predominant spiritual colour. The chakras are spiritual force centers that are situated along our spinal column and within our head. These chakras are the spiritual source of all biological, mental and spiritual functions. They govern everything from the endocrine system, intellectual prowess, will power to spiritual enlightenment.
8. The final step. If you are guiding this meditation for your family or a group, you can end it anywhere between ten and fifteen minutes. You end it by instructing everyone in the group to chant the mantra Om with you three times and then to open their eyes.
Learn to chant the Aum Mantra with the video tutorial above. This tutorial is part of a video tutorial on meditation. To view the all the videos in this tutorial Click Here.
After the meditation you may ask if anybody felt anything special or different, especially if you are doing this guided meditation with your family. You will find that children pick up meditation faster than adults. This is because concentration comes naturally to them as their minds are less burdened by worries or heavy responsibilities. So it is better to get them young when it comes to teaching meditation. Once they are able to meditate they will have this ability for the rest of their life. It will be a great asset in their life. Meditation is the result of the mastery of concentration of the mind. The ability to concentrate the mind at will is the key to success in any kind of endeavour.
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