Introduction
Happy Full Moon March 1-2!
While the Sun shines in Pisces is an opportune time to go inside, find, and cultivate our neutral mind, which I like to call our inner peace channel. In this blog we re-print the Kundalini Yoga blog Guidelines to Inner Peace that was first published in February 2013. These guidelines offer basic instructions that I still use in my own personal practice and in teaching Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. If you haven’t seen or used them in your own practice and teaching, enjoy a most useful and comprehensive guide to inner peace.
Read more about the Virgo Full Moon in my previous blog – Waking Up to Love
How can we have an experience of inner peace? In meditation, we cultivate our inner space to be receptive to the Peace that lives within us, around us, and everywhere. With Kundalini Yoga we prepare our physical and subtle bodies to vibrate at the frequency of Peace.
Over the years, I have become aware that I must pay attention in very specific ways to gain conscious benefits from my Kundalini Yoga and Meditation practice. I have developed the following guidelines from my personal Sadhana and used them in teaching Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. From my own experience and from the feedback from my students, I consider what I offer you below as some of the most valuable directives to guide your evolving meditation experience. Each point is an experience to cultivate and to continually deepen. Keep this list handy. ‘There is always more.’
To build your personal relationship with Peace, use these guidelines to direct your awareness during your Kundalini Yoga and Meditation practice. A kriya is given below, but you can use the following guidelines to focus your attention and feeling sensitivity between exercises and after any Kundalini Yoga kriya and mantra or pranayama meditation.
Guidelines to Inner Peace
Our inner awareness of Peace begins in our neutral mind. The awareness guidelines below direct you to your neutral mind and to an experience of one of its primary qualities – peace. To access your neutral mind, close your eyes and look inside your head:
1) Identify what you see. Some possibilities are — space, empty, black, cave, void, nothing, etc.
Identify something that is under or behind your thoughts. If you are looking at colors or images and they change, then that is not IT. Look deeper into a generic uncluttered space. Whatever IT is is your access route to your neutral mind.
2. Pay attention to your experience.
Pay attention to what you see. What matters is that you focus your attention on something. There only two options (1) pay attention and (2) do not pay attention. To awaken our neutral mind, to wake up, to cultivate awareness, and to have an experience of peace, we must train ourselves to pay attention.
Keep looking until seeing becomes awareness. We pay attention with our faculty of awareness. We are either aware or thinking. When we are thinking we are in our dualistic mind. In awareness we can experience our neutral mind.
A critical part of meditation is about training ourselves to pay attention. With focus, we open our third eye and strengthen our neutral mind. As both get activated, it is easier to pay attention and our awareness increases.
3. Exercise – Always There
After you have identified your inner space, open your eyes. Then close your eyes again and look into your space, darkness or whatever IT is for you. Is IT still there? If IT is still there, than this experience is IT for you. If you were looking at something that is no longer there then that is not IT. Again look deeper.
It is of critical importance that you experience that your space is always there for you. You may not pay attention and lose connection. But when you look for it, it will always be there. Over time, the experience of permanence and stability will become stronger and anchor into your psyche. This experience is very healing and empowering.
Our neutral mind becomes a sacred refuge where we can go to experience Peace, which grows into a Presence that supports us and accompanies us wherever we go.
4. Exercise – Control and Not Control
Once you have identified your ‘space, black, etc.’ do something to try to change it. Use your breath, intention, or movement to try to alter your space. Did it change/ Could you influence it? The answer is ‘no.’ You may be more or less aware of your space. But you cannot change it. If you were paying attention to colors, movement, or thoughts in your space, then look beyond or underneath this activity until you identify what is still there that you cannot change.
This exercise is very important because it gives us a visceral experience of what we cannot control. It helps us distinguish at an awareness and feeling level that which we can influence and that which we cannot. In our neutral channel we can experience an imperturbable force that which remains stable and does not move.
We do not create our neutral space or its qualities. It is there all by itself. It exists independent of our thoughts, desires, intentions, etc. Through attentive meditation, it becomes deeper and more available.
5. At Peace
In our neutral space is a Presence, a universal energy that is peaceful and unaffected by what we do, think, or feel. When we can experience within us this energy that exists independently of our whims, thoughts and moods, we can experience the essence energy of Peace.
Once we have identified the experience of Peace, we must pay attention to it with awareness, listening, and feeling. Stay conscious in your mind and feel in your body that which is at peace within and with itself.
6. Peace is a Force
Simply pay attention to and enjoy the experience of peace. Peace is a force, a universal energy, that is inside you, that vibrates in every cell of your body. Create a relationship with the Force of Peace. It is always there for you.
7. Become One with Peace
The Presence of Peace invites you to be at peace. ‘Be one with me and be at peace like me. You cannot influence me, but you can join me and become one with me.’
8. Peace Lives within You
In meditation we practice being aware of the fact that the Presence of Peace lives within us. The Infinite is at peace. It is always available to support us in feeling at peace. We enjoy Peace and let it be with us.
In fact, what is in us, is us. We begin to identify with Peace. Our soul is at peace. Peace is one of the essence qualities of our soul. Your soul is always available for you to experience peace. Be with your peaceful soul and let it shine, dance, and be alive in you.
9. Peace Is a Resource
Peace is a resource that you can always count on. Peace is a security blanket that keeps you safe and comforted. Be cozy with Peace. Let Peace protect and nurture your mind, body, and emotions. Let Peace be your companion in life.
10. Relief and Let Go
The immutability of the Presence of Peace is a source of deep relief. Let your whole body relax into a deep experience of Peace. Our job is to pay attention to and to feel the Presence of Peace until we are able to let go and become one with this universal energy. Letting go becomes possible as we realize that we are not in charge and that we can count of the Presence of Peace to always be there for us.
Letting go is not a one-time willful decision or event. Letting go happens incrementally. Letting go becomes energetically availability, as we release our resistance. Everyday relax and let go to the extent that you are able. Just a little bit everyday builds our capacity to let go.
11. Trust and Surrender
Our ability to trust and surrender depends upon having an actual experience of something greater than ourselves that we can trust. We have to feel the presence of something that we can always count on to be able to surrender to IT. Like letting go, trust and surrender are not a one-time experience or conscious decision. As our experience of the Infinite Peaceful Presence grows and we feel supported and nurtured by IT, we are able to trust and surrender a little bit more. Every day notice the powerful Presence of Peace and allow yourself to trust it a little bit more.
12. Enjoy, Relax into, and Live from Your Space of Peace
In your safe space of peace, you are free to relax, to trust your soul and the Infinite, and to enjoy your life in peace. Every day practice staying connected to Peace, in you and around you. With every breath, live your life from this space of grace.
Touchstone – Are you aware or thinking? This is the question of consciousness.
Inspiration adapted from Tao te Ching
If you open yourself to Peace,
you are at one with Peace.
When you feel and embrace Peace completely
you can operate from a peaceful inner stance.
Accept Peace in you and around you.
Then trust your soul, the Infinite, and your natural responses
and everything will fall into place.
Everything is a gift.
Kundalini Yoga and Meditation
Kundalini Yoga is very practical. This technology offers us practices that make it possible to expand our consciousness and to enjoy a richer life. The techniques activate our glandular system, strengthen our nervous system, to align our physical and subtle bodies so that we can be aware, and not a slave to the endless thinking of our dualistic mind.
Mantras are an integral aspect of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation. We chant mantras to clear our space, raise the frequency of our physical and subtle bodies, and open our neutral channel so that we are able to experience Infinite Peace. All mantras given by Yogi Bhajan work. So you can choose which ever one you like or you are practicing at this time.
The kriya for Neck and Thyroid below (page 79 in Sexuality and Spirituality) is a good one to practice as you cultivate the experience of inner peace. The mantra ONG SOHUNG resonates the experience of I am one with all creation. Powerfully vibrating ONG at the third eye opens this mechanism of higher perceptive awareness
Neck and Thyroid Set
1 a) In Easy Pose, hands in Venus Lock behind neck, slowly, deeply inhale and exhale 8 times. Then, in same position, do Breath of Fire for 1 minute. Inhale, exhale and apply Mulbhand. Breathe of Fire one more minute.
1 b) Relax in Baby Pose, forehead on ground, and chant – Ong Sohung (3 minutes)
2 Reposition legs in Lotus Pose and place forehead on the ground in Yoga Mudra, hands clasped in Venus Lock, and continue chanting for 3 minutes – Ong Sohung (3 minutes)
3 On back, bicycle legs for 3 minutes.
4 a) In Cow Pose, look at ceiling with long, deep breathing for 2 minutes.
b) Then Cat/Cow, arching back dropping head, alternating with sagging back and arched head for 1 minute.
