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Meditation demands fitness to keep your body steady, to quiet your
mind for Meditation.
Yoga works mainly on flexibility, strength and endurance of your
body muscles and bones. Holding poses for extended
periods increases muscular endurance and improves range of motion in
the joints, helping to enhance posture and balance. Each type
of Yoga works on different areas of body. Ashtanga
yoga works on thigh and
bottom. Pavan Muktasan work on working of stomach and letting
release gases. Make sure you choose right style and yoga to
prepare for meditation. The breathing control in Yoga also
helps in concentration during Meditation.
Sadhana
is: Any
spiritual practice, such as reading the scriptures, meditating,
distributing one's wealth to the needy or withdrawing one's mind
from worldly pursuits. |
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Introspection and
Self-Analysis
Examine your life as lived by you as though you are a spectator.
Under this observation, the worldly life of earning and spending, of
desires and disappointments, of love and hate, of ego strips of its
glittering, alluring aspects. You decide to walk out of its embrace.
Impartially judge something is possible only when one stands apart
from it. Detachment cannot exist when we have a sense of intense
ownership or possessiveness. We always call for a second opinion
when we are in doubt of our actions. Our attachments make a false
beauty to things; blinded with the pride of possession, we then fail
to see the ugliness of cherished possessions, which is visible to
the bystander.
Just as we, blinded by attachments and prejudices, fail to see the
real nature of things and beings, so also do we, deluded by our lack
of detachment, remain blissfully ignorant of our own weakness and
faults. The divine life starts with the practice of detaching
ourselves from our body, mind, and intellect, and impartially
estimating the motives, intentions, and purposes that lie behind our
thoughts, words, and deeds.
Such impartial witnessing is called introspection. It is no easy way
to accomplish. Self-analysis and self-criticism are hard and
relentless tasks. At every stage our self-conceit and egoistic self
congratulation cover our faults and shortcomings and invest them
faith a false charm. No one can easily understand himself as he is,
though he may be an intelligent and acute critic of other people and
their actions, of institutions and their achievements; yet, in
himself, be may be harbouring a million weaknesses and faults, often
the very same he so honestly condemns in others! This contradiction
exists because, even for the best of us, it is a trial and a severe
challenge to be asked to observe ourselves.
Each person generally goes about with the idea that he or she as an
ideal personality. Very few of us are without some kind of
conception of what is the ideal. The very attributes of the ideal
honesty, goodness, love, selflessness, tolerance, pleasantness, and
the cheerfulness create in our thoughts a total ideal personality;
and, in our eagerness to be that ideal, we accept ourselves as
actually established in that ideal already. Only others around us
know how far away we are from the goal!
No one approximates his own idea of the ideal.
This mistake is often seen in seekers, watch yourself, be your
critic and continually improve yourself. The goal is to seek control
over your mind.
Be a Satvic Thinker.
By Acharya Swami Chinmayananda
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