Meditative Monday

Hari Om

Sit in aasana and practice a few minutes of pranayama. Still the mind. Pick up a book you have selected as your guide for today - any book can work for this exercise, although one containing philosophy or poetry might be the strongest option.

Open at a random page. Look at it broadly at first. See the page as a whole and words indistinct, simply see the shapes they make upon the page. It is likely to look ragged. Abstract. Observe this for a while and note your own descriptions of what you see. Do not read, as such.

Now refocus on the words on the page, but again only as a whole. Scan up and down the page for a moment or two. Take note that as you scan, despite trying to be even about it, there are some words - maybe only two or three, or perhaps as many as a dozen - which the eye keeps 'sticking' to.

Narrow down your focus to these words now. Take up a pencil and circle the words. Then turn to a blank page in a notebook and write only these words down. In any order, on any part of the page.

The words, as random as they may appear just now, will hold meaning for you. Do not try to make a sentence or even to link them in any way. There may be one, but often there is not. At least not in any obvious sense. As you progress through the year now, keep this page of words in front of you in meditation and select one at a time to work with. Take your time. There is no rush. Sit with one word at a time and let it linger in the forefront of your mind as you clear yourself of all other thoughts. Let the word become the only life, let it become life. Receive all that it gives you. As much as you can empty yourself of your own thoughts, the word under scrutiny will fill with other thoughts. Pay attention to these. Write them down if you wish to expand on the process.

This is a way to your inner guru. Deep listening. Paying attention. Growing. It has no end, but it must be begun.