Building a Meditation Habit – Your Key to a Spiritual Awakening

Developing a meditation habit, your key to a spiritual awakening—might just deal with the last part a little first. Awakening, what does that imply? It also implies, if we’re not awakened, we’re fundamentally asleep. And it’s like, what does that mean? I mean, what could that possibly mean? What, we’re walking around and living our lives and doing things, but we’re somehow asleep? And the answer to that is actually, yes.

The use of the word spiritual before awakening is actually really significant. So I’ll just define some of the terms. Lots of people have different ideas as to what is spiritual. Sometimes people think going out in nature is spiritual, but I would raise the thought at least, if this is all material energy, how can my connecting with material energy be spiritual? That probably gives you a little idea that I don’t do the fluffy stuff.

So, the foundation of all spiritual realization and all spiritual experience is when we become awakened to who we truly are. In this world, I could hand most people a little piece of paper and a pen or a pencil: “Can you just quickly jot down, tell me who you are?” So, they usually go, the name, male, female, or whatever you want to do in that department. Age, your height, maybe your complexion or your ethnicity, you know, what’s your racial extraction? And you go through this whole list of all these labels of people describing themself. And the thing that we’re absolutely unaware of is, none of that is us.

And we see that in that great event we must all face called death. The experience of, especially somebody that you’re close to that has faced this event called death, there is a stunning realization for a lot of people, although it may be not super clear, that that body that’s left behind, if I get the list that tells me who you are, and I look at the list:

My name’s Dave—Yeah, it’s Dave.

I’m a real Aussie—Yeah, he’s a real Aussie.

I’m 74 years old—Yeah, he’s 74.

I’m 180 centimetres—Let’s get the tape out. Yeah, still 180 centimetres.

The weight… we can check everything on the list. But if I ask the question, “Is Dave at home?” the answer is, “No.” This is an empty carcass. Dave is actually gone somewhere, and this is what’s been left behind. And it’s kind of like a really stunning—to really think that we invest all of our time, all of our energy on this foundation that this thing here is me (and let’s include the mind in that one), and I will find purpose, I will find fulfillment, I will find happiness trying to satisfy all of the urges, the wants, the needs of the body and mind. And of course, that’s not true.

When you become—when your total focus is simply on that which is temporary, you are not really connecting with your true, eternal, spiritual identity. You are an eternal, spiritual being temporarily occupying this physical body—and most people will go through their entire life without any thought or making any effort to really discover their actual spiritual identity. And from the point of view of the transcendentalist, this is like, wow, this is so incredibly sad. And it has consequences.

One of the consequences is, everybody’s experiencing emptiness, to different degrees. And I’m not talking about when people are kind of busy and they got a lot going on, and they’re doing the scrolling, looking and looking and looking and looking. What are you looking for? Why do you keep scrolling? What are you actually looking for? You’re looking to fill up some emptiness that you’re experiencing.

Probably the older guys will remember the Bruce Springsteen, “Everybody’s got a hungry heart.” Yeah, it’s actually pretty tragic lyrics. The guy walks out on his wife and family and hits the road because he’s feeling so empty in that situation. And then he’s searching, and he tries to build another relationship, and that one goes to crap. And then he’s just like talking about nobody wants to be alone. Everybody’s got a hungry heart.

Everybody is looking for love. We have this desire, intense desire to both love and to be loved. And that desire arises from the spiritual being. It doesn’t arise from the mind. It doesn’t arise from the body.

I have a desire for happiness. Why? Why do you want to be happy? What’s wrong with being on a bummer? We innately feel, I don’t want that. I’m not comfortable with that. There’s something driving me to look for happiness. And that’s because the eternal nature of the spiritual being within is to exist in a state of great blissfulness and happiness. But because I’m not feeling that now, so I feel agitated, I’ve got to look here, look there, look there, look there, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. It’s like—and it doesn’t end. And the more things you try, the more things you have to look for, it’s sort of like it’s not working.

One of the—you know, I bring up the subject of death, and it’s like everybody freaks out on that one. That’s sort of like the ultimate freak out, even though that’s the only thing you can count on in life. Nothing else is for sure. That one is for sure. You’re coming to a hard stop at some point. And when we see death, it really disturbs us. And it’s kind of like, why? Why does it really disturb us? It disturbs us for the same reason: by nature, you as an eternal spiritual being, you are eternal. But because you’ve lost the plot and you’re just looking at the body and somebody else’s body and your own or whatever and thinking that is the person, when you see a dead one, it’s just like, it’s a real major freak out and makes us feel incredibly uncomfortable because it’s running counter to our actual nature: that is, that we are eternal, spiritual beings.

So, by now you’ve probably gone like, oh, this guy’s really serious. Yeah, I’m really serious. I’m serious about finding happiness, experiencing peace, awakening the most profound experience of spiritual love. This is what we all want. This is what, not just want, this is what we need. And this is actually what we’re looking for without even knowing it. This is what we are looking for.

So, when we talk about spiritual awakening, this is the foundation of spiritual awakening, that when I become awakened to the reality that even though I may not super experience it, but at least the idea that, yeah, I can relate to that. I know that instinctively. I am an eternal, spiritual being having a temporary, material experience, locked in this body. I’m embodied. And I’ve lost the plot. I’m not even aware of my deeper self, who I truly am. I’ve just become so absorbed in this external garment and all the flashing lights and the razzle dazzle, stimulating all the different senses all the time. This is the foundation of what’s called a spiritual awakening or self-realization. And this is just like the beginning. This is foundational.

So, developing a meditation habit, your key to a spiritual awakening. Well, let’s talk about meditation for a couple of minutes. (I need to keep an eye on the time. I talk a lot, and I just keep going, and everybody starts leaving or falling asleep. I’ll try and control myself.) What is meditation?

Many people think—and it’s the most common idea, even amongst a lot of practitioners, monks, yogis, a lot of them, actually think that it’s some form of mental exercise, trying to quieten the mind, bring the mind into a focus. I was just speaking a little earlier to a new friend and I was mentioning, that actually those things are considered pre-meditation. They were things that were done to try and quieten down the mind and all the clutter and craziness so I can now embark upon the actual process of meditation.

Meditation actually means to immerse yourself in that which is purely spiritual or transcendental. When one is immersed in that which is transcendental, in transcendence, it has the effect of beginning to change and transform us and the way that we look at ourself, the way we will look at others, the way we will look at the world.

So, I sort of usually give an example. It’s kind of like going to a tropical place where the ocean is nice and balmy and warm, and you walk out into the water. You’re waist deep. You’re just walking, and maybe your fingers are rippling through the water. It’s the evening. It’s just like sunset, and then you just let go, and you just flop back into this warm, balmy ocean. That is what we want people to do, to try and meditate. It is to just let go and become immersed in that which is spiritual or transcendental.

So, the process that we utilize is actually the most effective and the most powerful process in this time and age, and it uses spiritual, or transcendental, sound. Transcendental sound is unique.

Material sound, it’s just syllables. Like you listen to somebody who speaks a language that you don’t know, and it’s kind of like you’re trying to find something familiar, and you’re just hearing all of these sounds. It’s just noise and syllables. But people learn to, in the particular country or culture, you learn to associate specific things with those syllables. But it’s kind of like the word “mango.” The word mango, man-go, two syllables or two and a half, maybe some people would say. And it’s kind of like, okay, we know what a mango is, and the mango and the sound are two completely different things, so I can take that sound, those syllables, and I can say mango, mango, mango, mango, and it does nothing for me except drive me nuts. It’s like, it’s kind of weird. I don’t get to taste a mango. I don’t get to experience. Maybe in my mind, I could have some remembrance of what it was like, and what it smelled like and what it tasted like, but there is a big difference between the actual object, the mango, and the syllables or the sound that refers to it.

Spiritual sound is not like that. Spiritual sound contains a unique potency. It has an ability that when we become absorbed in it, to actually change us, to purify the heart and the mind, and awaken us to a deeper perception and understanding of my spiritual identity, where I fit in relation to everything, and the connection to my source. This is all things that we’re unaware of. We’re just stumbling around, locked into this suit that we’re wearing as being us, looking to fulfill these deep spiritual needs.

This sound, spiritual sound vibration, which descends from a spiritual platform, it is actually handed down to us by a long lineage of self-realized yoga sound spiritual teachers. And because it is coming this way, it retains its great potency. It’s—earlier, Kalindi, when she was doing the Gauranga breathing, referred to mantra. So, this spiritual sound is also referred to as mantra. But a lot of people say, “Oh yeah, I like mantras. I’m into mantras.” Yeah, it’s true. There’s kind of like unlimited numbers of mantras, but not all of them produce the same result.

Sometimes people would use mantras or certain types of chanting to acquire wealth, to get some favourable thing in their life, their desire for some sort of material thing to add to their life in their pursuit to find happiness and fill up the emptiness. And if you look at the Vedas, it has literally millions of mantras. But the type of mantra that is used to try to get some material benefit, temporary, material benefit, because anything to do with that which is material, its characteristic is it is temporary, constantly changing. There will be a beginning and an end.

The unique type of spiritual sound, or mantra, that we engage with, that has been shared with us, given to us by my teachers, it is a unique category, a category where you don’t need any experience, any expertise, any qualification. You can in fact be pre-eminently unqualified. Most other, like Vedic mantras, although a lot of people use them, they require really special training to be able to recite them perfectly, the right intonation, the right meter, the perfect pronunciation, otherwise, they don’t deliver the material benefit that someone is seeking. This category of mantra, these spiritual sounds that we use, even if somebody has difficulty pronouncing them, they don’t lose their potency. They don’t lose their effect.

I often use the example, on a foggy morning when you wake up and everything’s locked in with fog and you look out the window and you can’t see the tree in the yard, you can’t see where your car is parked. Everything is just like white. And then the sun comes up, and even though you can’t see the sun, its rays, the powerful rays of the sun, begin to burn off the fog. The fog begins to thin. It begins to dissipate, and so when you look again, you can see, oh, there’s the car. Whoops, now I can see the house across the street. And soon you can see the hills in the distance, or the ocean, whatever’s there, or skyscrapers, depends where you live. And the potency of the sun and the rays of the sun have the effect of burning off the fog and making it so you can see everything very clearly. That is actually a really good analogy for what the use of—developing a practice around using spiritual sound as meditation will do.

You don’t have to know how it’s happening or why it’s happening. It will just have the effect. It will make it so that you gradually develop more and more clarity.

These spiritual sounds are like spiritual nutrition.

We talked about happiness earlier, where you can just non-stop engage in consuming, whether it’s food, whether it’s listening to sounds, whether it’s sex, whether it’s—just anything. You can just be like constantly consuming and exciting your body and mind—this experience or that experience or whatever. And then as soon as it’s over, you’re back to square one. When you go home and you’re in bed, it’s just you and you’re all alone and all that stuff, whether it was an amazing holiday or some new relationship or whatever, you experience, I need something more. I want, I desire, something more. There is still this emptiness. And it’s because our life is so out of balance. We are 100% engaged in simply looking for different ways to bring experience to my body and my mind in the hope it will fulfill me, it will make me happy.

That is considered ignorant, not in knowledge. And of course, you have this little, in the Dharmic traditions, this little formula, ignorance equals pain and suffering. If you are feeling pain in your life, if you are feeling some suffering in your life, it means somewhere, somehow, you are embracing some untruth, something that is untrue, wanting it, of course, to be true. And what happens is we end up in this situation—

There is actually an ancient example of somebody who has a bird in the cage, and the cage is gilded and it’s gem studded, and the person is just like so proud of the cage. They’re always polishing it, looking, wow, it’s amazing. They’re so locked into the cage, they forgot about the bird inside, and the bird inside is wasting away, malnourished.

That’s kind of like what we do. We are totally focused on that which is temporary and that which is material. And we don’t actually have a daily or a weekly engagement where we are feeding the bird within, where we are taking in spiritual nutrition.

For many people, when they experience the chanting for the first time, or even as they come more and more, there is this experience that almost everybody has of a feeling of some calming of the heart. We don’t even understand how much stress, how much anxiety we’re carrying around. We are confronted with this reality. It’s just like—it’s quite mind-blowing.

The first time I heard this from one of my spiritual teachers, and then I read about it in some of these very ancient texts, they were saying, we hunger for things, we hanker for things, we want something, we desire something, whether it’s a relationship, an experience, a—whatever. We think that this particular thing, it will do it. It’s going to make me feel more fulfilled, more happy. And then along with that, even though I’m always thinking about it and trying to organize it, and how am I going to do this, I’m feeling some anxiety that I won’t be able to get what I want. And this is like really true with relationships.

People—don’t get me started on relationships. It’s like! [Palms his forehead] My God, the dishonesty in relationships is mind-boggling. When you want to meet somebody, you hide all your bad things, the things that you know that suck. You don’t want to show them to anybody. Then the other person’s doing the same thing. And we’re kind of like really putting on that we’re actually more wonderful than we really are.

And then later, when people actually get together—sometimes I’m asked to do some marriage counselling, and this thing I hear sometimes, “If I knew you were like that, I would never have married you,” or never moved in with you or whatever. And it’s just like, what? Are you serious? That’s the dumbest thing ever. That’s your job to know. That’s your job to know what you’re buying, what you’re buying into.

But we’re so secretive and we hide, and we put on this big front and want everybody to sort of like, you know, like us. And I have a desire for some connection, perhaps, relationship. And then I’m always just like stressed out. What if they discover this? Or what if they don’t like me? Because I kind of like really like them now.

And so that’s true with everything. Everything that we desire and want to chase, we’re fearful that we will not get it. So, in the pursuit, there’s an anxiety that we’re not even tuned into, we’re not even aware. When you actually get the thing that you are after, you actually are always carrying this fear that somehow you’ll lose it. You’ve got to make sure it’s insured. I mean, there’s nothing more stunning than to drive up the road and around the corner, and you see, wow, there’s smoke. And then you come into your street, and the fire engine’s right in front of your house, and it’s burning down.

Or like when they have the big floods and stuff, these weather events they’ve been having, and your home gets washed away. So, it’s kind of like everybody, we don’t realize it. At the time that it happens, it hits us, but actually we’ve been carrying that all the time. I want this. I’m afraid I’m not going to get it.

Then when you finally lose it, you have another kind of anxiety. Oh, my gods, if only I had done this, if only it had been like that, if only it was like that. And it’s—I’m just eaten up by another type of anxiousness. So before you got it, once you acquired it, and then when you lose it, you’re still experiencing anxiety. It’s the nature of things.

The process of a spiritual awakening is a process of discovering your true spiritual identity and engaging with that which is spiritual. And it begins to change the way that you look at the world, the way that you look at other people, the way that you look at yourself. That’s the foundational part. That really begins to change and to alter.

This process of utilizing spiritual sound, or mantra—this word mantra, it’s actually made of two parts, manah, which refers to the mind, and tra. Actually people sometimes interpret it as, to take away, which is okay. It’s actually a bit heavier than that. It means to deliver one from their mind.

We don’t appreciate how much we are controlled by the mind. And we don’t understand that we are not the mind. When the mind is going through states of hyper freakout, heightened emotions, it pulls us in so many different directions. The desires that we have, everything, we’re pulled in so many different ways.

In one of these ancient texts, the Bhagavad-gita, it says that the mind can be one’s greatest friend or one’s greatest enemy. That’s stunning, that my own mind can become a greater enemy to me than anyone or anything else. All you have to do is [indicates see] somebody in a profound experience of depression. And we become intensely aware that if we are utterly absorbed in the mind and being pulled by the mind, then this is not in our best interest, and it can lead to bad outcomes.

Spiritual or self-realization means when I begin to discover and experience that this physical body is not actually me. It’s not like I become neglectful. It’s like I’m in awe. This is the most amazing thing. This is an extraordinary gift, and it can be used for my good, or it can be used for my destruction, practically speaking. And what’s going to be driving it is the mind.

And the understanding of the great yogis is, I am neither the body nor am I the mind. I am the eternal spiritual being residing within. The word for this in Sanskrit is atma. Atma, it means, literally translated, means the self. The body is not the self, neither is the mind.

But when I’ve lost the plot (going back to the awakening and being asleep), being asleep means I am just living in this untruth that the body is me and the mind is me, and wherever it’s going, I’m just following it everywhere. It’s dragging me here, dragging me there.

Our job is actually to determine the content of our mind. What am I going to think about? How am I going to process this? How should I deal with this situation? I am meant to be in the driver’s seat, not that I’m in the passenger seat, and my mind is the one driving, dragging me everywhere.

The process of meditation will really begin to make changes in our life, to make it so that we actually start seeing things with clarity. When I understand that I am an eternal, spiritual being, then I begin to understand that the purpose I have in life is both self-realization and God-realization. That is my purpose. That is what will fulfill me. That is where I will find perfection. And that needs to be a pursuit that I take seriously.

You know what? You don’t need to know any of this stuff, although it’s wonderfully helpful. If you simply walked in here, and you heard some of this spiritual sound meditation, and you go, wow, that kind of feels nice, I kind of, that resonates with me. I inherently feel there’s something very nice here. And I just engage regularly in the experience, even without hearing any of these things I’m talking about, you will come to that understanding. You will come to that realization. It will automatically happen as the heart and the mind becomes increasingly purified.

And since we understand—I mean, okay, you don’t want to go down the spiritual route, but you’re just looking for a little peacefulness and calmness and just be able to manage life better. No problem. You don’t have to go down that pathway if you don’t want. This process of utilizing spiritual sound will make your life better. It will make you more calm. It will improve your relationships. You will be less emotional, less reactive, overly responsive. Those kinds of changes will happen. And if all you’re looking for is some calmness and some peace, absolutely no issue, no problem.

But if you’re looking to have a real spiritual awakening, it is important that you develop a practice. In Sanskrit, this is called sadhana. Sadhana means, it literally translates as the means to attain something. That’s what it means: the means to attain something. And so when I engage in this process, this activity of meditation, it’s actually advised to come to develop a daily practice. Doesn’t matter how long. And in the beginning, it’s always better to do less than to try than do too much, and then you kind of give up because it’s like, oh, this is too much of a hassle. 10 minutes? 15 minutes? Come on. You can do that.

Some people have a hard time on their own. We have resources online, guided meditations and things that you can connect with. Just talk to my hosts here. They’ll fill you in. And if you want to develop a practice and you want to hear more about it, it’s definitely something that is of enormous value.

So, this spiritual sound is used in different ways. We also use what’s called mala, and these beads are used for a personal meditative practice. And when you do it, the beads make it, of course, you can keep count of how much meditation, how many mantras you’re chanting every day. The thing is to make a commitment, even if it’s going to be one mantra every day, to be able to have a specific time when you sit down, the phone is off, people know not to bother you, and you do a little bit of breathing and relax, and then you just engage in this process.

Or you may get a track and put the track on, and you engage in what’s called kirtan, what we’ve been doing. It’s actually technically called sankirtan. Sangha means in association with others, and kirtan can literally translate as like a glorification of that which is transcendental, that which is purely transcendental, but it references like to engage in the process of singing aloud.

Using beads in what’s called japa one usually doesn’t chant really loud, just loud enough that you can barely hear it; and what you’re doing is engaging your tongue, you’re engaging your hearing, and you’re engaging your sense of touch. That’s three of the five senses. And it will automatically have the effect of bringing the mind into some focus without even trying. It will automatically do it.

If you would like to try and experiment, any experiment should be 21 days. They say that’s what it takes to form a habit. Less than that, you’re not necessarily going to experience what you could be experiencing. But just to put it to the test, a good time to do things, if you can, is first thing in the morning, before everything starts, before all the [indicates busy brain], your mind starts thinking about all the issues you’ve got to deal with and whatever; first thing in the morning to get up, maybe brush your teeth and then just sit somewhere in a quiet spot and engage even 10 minutes, 15 minutes to engage in this process. And do it every day for 21 days, and then try to look back and consider,“Is this actually benefiting me?” Without a doubt, you will have the experience it is.

In New Zealand, I go down to—I live in Auckland, but I go down to one city further south every couple of weeks and do a class down there. I was speaking with one lady, and she had a history of struggles with mental health issues and stuff. She was—she just had struggles in her life. And she came across this and she liked it, and she started getting involved and engaging in the process. Then at the time that she started, she moved from her old address to another part of the city.

And like a year goes by, and one of the guys in the area that was a friend of hers called her up and said, “We’re having a street party. Everybody in the neighbourhood’s going to be there. Would you like to come over?” And she said, “Yes, sure.” So she went over. And then she wasn’t there that long, I guess, and then the guy that called her and invited her over, he’s going like, “What’s going on in your life? Is there a new man?” Because she was all kind of like, she looked way more settled. “And how—what is it? What’s going on?”  And she was a little bit shy to talk to him, but it kind of stunned her because her feeling was that perhaps there hasn’t been that much change.

That’s because when we are on the journey from the inside, we don’t see the incremental change. But the change is going to be there, and it is going to be happening. And it will dawn on you one day that, oh my God, things have really changed. And sometimes it takes something like that, somebody that knew you and goes, “Well, what happened to you? You know, you look great. And you’re all relaxed and peaceful and–what’s going on?” So, we need patience and some commitment or determination.

I absolutely promise you that if you engage in this process, your life will be transformed. Whether you do it somewhat meditation-lite, just want to be a bit peaceful and a little bit more happy and a little less stressed, or whether you want to actually seek a spiritual awakening, this will transform your life. And the regularity is important to make it so that you experience this clarity.

Okay?

I got to check the time. Did I go over time? I can’t remember what time I started.

Does anybody have a question now that you’d like me to address? And if not, don’t worry. What I’m going to do is I’ll lead you in a kirtan. After the kirtan, some people have got things they need to attend to, no issue. No bad vibes if you leave. Yeah, everybody’s free to do whatever. It’s all good. But after we have a kirtan, then we can open up for some Q and A if people want to hear about something or they would like me to try and address something. Sound okay?

So, before we start, I will ask you to just remember the little example that I used, the example of tropical ocean, wading into the tropical ocean and just letting go. That—if you’re more comfortable, do close your eyes. Just listen to this spiritual sound. Allow it to enter your ears and enter your heart. Just let go and bathe in this spiritual sound, and one will have a nice experience of its benefits.

(Do we have a capo? [Organiser: On the table] On the table. Oh, there we go. Old age.)

So, I’m going to use the Mahamantra, or the Hare Krishna mantra, again. I have a particular affinity for it.

Sometimes people ask, what’s the meaning? And our answer is it’s not really important. You don’t need to know the meaning in order to experience. It’s kind of like a sunrise or a sunset, when you go to engage with a beautiful sunrise or a sunset, it’s not like you’re going like, okay, how is the light refracting? And why is it doing that? And how come it’s splitting into these colours? And how come it’s—you know, you don’t examine it in terms of the physics of what’s going on. You just simply take it in. But we can address some of the meanings in a little bit.