Meditation For Beginners — Step Five: Mantra
Something that makes just enough sense to confuse you.
Step 5 in the Beginner’s Guide To Meditation series.
(Step 4 / Step 6)
Everything we’ve done up until this point has given you some lessons to hold onto. The way that you breathe, the way that you connect with your body, the way that you connect with the sound outside of you, how to focus on an object — All of these lessons are giving you tools you can hold onto to enable you to let go.
Mantra is the gateway to exactly that — to letting go. Letting go by keeping your mind busy. Keeping it turning on something that makes just enough sense to confuse you.
Mantras can be many, many different things and it’s not my place to share what a lot of mantras are. The mantra that we’re going to work with today is a great introductory mantra that can engage on a journey that flowers out into so many different amazing codes. That’s what these mantras really represent: codes.
Mantras are codes for programming your meditation in remarkable ways. The one that we’re going to focus on is called the ‘I AM’ meditation. It comes from the tradition of mantras that are referred to as the ‘So-Ham’ mantra or the ‘Ham-So’ mantra, depending on where you get it from.
It’s wavering between ‘I AM’ and ‘THAT’. I am that. You assign ‘I AM’ with your inhale and ‘THAT’ with your exhale. Work with how you breathe. You’ve learnt how to breathe in a very particular way. Down into the belly, pulling your belly into the spine when you exhale, relaxing your diaphragm, breathing in through your nose, breathing out through your mouth, connecting that idea with nourishing your body when you breathe in and removing the toxins, the waste, from your body, when you breathe out. You’ll use all of those lessons with the mantra meditation and altogether it creates this incredible rhythm that puts you in a state of coherence with the Universe.
It sounds ridiculous, I know — but it’s completely true and it’s going to happen for you if you maintain a level of focus on this mantra. The way you do this is, as you breathe in, simply say — out loud or silently — I AM. Then, when you breathe out, say — out loud or silently — THAT. Then repeat. I AM. THAT. You’ll do this over the course of five minutes of silence. As you continue this loop, you’ll find that it can carry different meanings with different inflections.
I am that I am.
That, I am.
That I am that.
I am that.
I am.
That.
Your mind is going to engage with these meanings from inflections until you might notice a connection with the rhythms of your thoughts and of your body and of the space around you. Then after that, you might begin to notice an awareness that arises after your brain is kept busy dealing with this mantra. Then you’re left with a question…who’s watching?
It’s up to you to answer that.
