In the “Introduction” to SELF-TRANSFORMATION MEDITATION GUIDE, Volume One, I wrote:
Over the years, I used dozens of meditation guides. Most had one thing in common: their authors wrote in a way to try to inspire me and to “pump me up” for the day. They often produced that result very effectively, but in my case the effect was too-often gone by the time I reached my first traffic jam on the way to work. Eventually, I met my Teacher who gave me a new objective in my daily meditation time: rather than trying to become pumped up temporarily, I was challenged to “consider” and to “contemplate” certain key lessons in order to bring about an unwavering and permanent shift in consciousness. This guide, therefore, will differ from the “pump you up” guides of the style that I used in the past. If you have a guide of that type and find it useful or enjoyable, you might consider using this guide in combination with that one. This guide, however, will offer to you a series of considerations that have allowed many people to bring to light the knowledge of Who They Really Are; likewise, it can give you the Understanding of Who You Really Are. Daily fluctuations in temperament can be replaced with a permanent shift to a stable attitude. The high of being pumped up—followed by frustration if that high does not last all day—can be replaced with a new vision of Reality that can render powerless the things that often bind. The up’s and down’s can be replaced with a steady and constructive evenness if one completes all of the exercises and thereby attains the maximum benefit that will come from a guide that can lead one along a journey through Self-Inquiry and into Self-Knowledge.
[Of course there is no “SELF-TRANSFORMATION.” The term merely points to the shift from contaminated consciousness to pure consciousness that accompanies seeing all that is false and realizing That Which You Truly Are.]
The guides are arranged so that each day the Advaitan reader is offered (1) a quote from an Advaitan novel entitled The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders, (2) a consideration dealing with the content of the quote, and (3) an invitation to find a quiet place to consider the pointer. Over the next days, this site will offer a variety of selections from the SELF-TRANSFORMATION MEDITATION GUIDES, Volumes One and Two which have led many to realization. Today, entry #4 from Volume One will be posted:
#4
The deer simply does what is required naturally to live, and when you live naturally, then perfect peace comes…but only after perfect freedom comes. (p. 261, The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders)
Consideration: Anthropologists suggest that for millions of years humans spent 2.5 hours per day involved in the activities necessary to sustain life. Interestingly, many humans today spend thousands of dollars per year on “hobbies” which include the same thing that our forefathers did during that 2.5 hours: hunting, fishing, etc. The remainder of the hours when our ancestors were awake they spent in leisure activities: swimming, running, socializing with family and friends. Few can meet the expenses of modern life with only 2.5 hours of work, but are there some things that you could do to live more naturally? What would those be? Please enter the silence of contemplation.
