Month: April 2026

Using Disturbance to Strengthen Your Meditation

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The Thief in the House

Recently, I received a disturbing message from a man I know — someone whose personality is chronically enraged, and who makes threats.

When, not long after reading his messages, I sat to meditate, I found my mind circling: Might he come and try to hurt me? What do I need to protect myself?

I watched those thoughts for a few minutes, and felt their effect on my body: my body was tense, my hands were cold, my breathing rate was increased.

So I decided this was a great opportunity for practice.

I brought my attention to my mantra, and almost immediately, it returned to those worries. Again, I returned my attention to the mantra, and this time, I also felt the smooth flow of my breath at my nostrils. Again, in a few moments, I was back in the worries, but this time, not as quickly.

This repeated a few more times.

Then I became aware of the feeling in my heart generated by the mantra. That felt good and more strongly attracted my attention. I found it easier to keep my mind stable there.

Over some time, I was able to keep my awareness on my mantra, breath and that warm feeling in my heart, and the worries slipped into the background of my awareness.

By the end of the meditation, the worries had lost their power and I felt calm.

In this way, we can use situations that upset us to strengthen our practice. It’s not necessarily pleasant. It takes some gentle effort. But here’s an important thought: these unpleasant situations are going to happen. Everyone faces difficult situations. We can simply suffer them, or we can use them for practice. If we use them for practice, at least we’re getting some benefit out of them. We’re turning lemons into lemonade.

The Mind Is Like a Dog

Just as dogs seem to be attracted to every smelly thing, difficulties attract the mind. Have you noticed how your mind goes in circles, keeps coming back to that unpleasant circumstance — replaying the situation where somebody said something upsetting, over and over?

I’m not saying you should never think about those things. But obsessing on it, living your whole day feeling terrible because the mind keeps coming back — is not helpful.

If you’d like to make something beneficial out of that circumstance, here is a plan:

Number one: Choose to use it as practice. Keep bringing your mind back to your point of focus — your meditation, your mantra, your breath, or your body. Don’t let your attention keep going off to the thing that is attracting it.

Number two: Sometime when you are not emotional, spend a little focused time thinking constructively — not worrying — about what to do. What actions can I take that will resolve this problem? Make a plan and stick to it as best you can. That’s all you can do.

Every time your mind goes back to the disturbance, drag it back. If you feel emotions as a result, feel them for a while. Really feel them. But you don’t have to feel them all day. Feel them for a few minutes, then let go and turn your attention somewhere else.

Yoga practice gives us the skill we need to direct our attention in this way. Use it. There will always be something to upset us. So, we can get a lot of practice.

What to Do When the Emotion Hits First

Sometimes we can’t get ahead of it. When that message arrived this morning, I couldn’t keep myself from being upset — it happened instantly. It was like somebody blew up a bomb inside of me. That’s the way it’s always been when I hear from him.

So then what do you do?

First: Don’t push it down. Don’t try to push the feelings away. Feel them. Breathe and really feel what you’re feeling inside. Surrender to the feelings.

Second: Use the feelings as objects of meditation. Just observe them. Watch how the thoughts keep circling — and notice how that repetitive thinking makes the emotions worse. Worrying is not going to help. You’ve probably worried about that difficult situation a million times over the years. There’s no point in more. Instead, keep bringing your attention back to your focus. In this way you grow strength of will.

Swami Veda said — and I believe it’s true — that when we meditate regularly, we become more able to observe our inner world clearly. When something happens outside of us, we can notice that there are certain moments when we may choose not to take the next emotional step. Not to take the bait. To feel the fear or the hurt, without reacting from it.

I have found it is possible to do that sometimes. Sometimes it all happens too fast and I’m not able to. Each step is something we can learn and grow from.

Swami Rama said to use every circumstance to help yourself on your path. Use it all as grist for the mill. When you find yourself saying, “This is so hard, this is so miserable” — try to wake up and say instead: “Maybe I can use this to help me grow as a meditator. How can I come back to center?”

Swami Hari, who was always joking, once pointed out that you can turn dog into God — it’s the same word, just reversed. The idea is to turn the dog mind into the God mind. The mind that runs compulsively after every disturbance — that same mind, steadied through practice, can become something else entirely.

Embraced by the Grace of my Guru

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Om

About a year ago, I felt an inner calling to India, my second home. The Guru works in mysterious ways, and little did I know what was to come. With no advance preparations, I followed this call.

From the days of the Gurukulam to returning 17 years later, I find myself once again walking those familiar halls, embracing the rhythms of each day and surrendering to what unfolds.

This time, I arrive with a different awareness. My time at Gurukulam quietly prepared me for this moment, though I did not fully realize how ready I was to receive the Guru’s teachings more deeply. The steady cultivation of discipline through mind-body awareness, integrated into each day’s schedule, has kept me grounded and centered. The wisdom, ever flowing through devoted teachers, has not only strengthened my faith but gently reassured me that I am exactly where I am meant to be.

To be welcomed again by familiar faces—still warm, still caring—felt like returning to the heart of something sacred. My spiritual home holds an abundance of love, a presence that naturally draws me inward into reflection, stillness, and transformation.

The surroundings themselves speak in silence—from the classic red brick cottages to the beauty of nature. The vibrant flowers were so captivating, as though they awakened something deep within my soul, mirroring an inner blossoming. The quiet rustling of leaves and the vastness of the sky create a silence that is not empty, but alive—a silence that calls me back to myself, guiding me gently within. The sanctuary of the meditation hall and temples carries a quiet reverence, inviting deeper immersion into contemplation. The daily chanting vibrates within my being, grounding me in presence and devotion.

Embraced by the Grace of my Guru and the tradition of a living lineage, I know I am guided along this path.

In that stillness, there is remembrance—a knowing that I am but a spark of the Divine. I am love. I am light. I am That. Tat Tvam Asi.

Namo Namah Sri Guru Padukabhyam

Editor’s Note:

Initiated at the age of 11 by Swami Veda Bharati, Sarita Singh returns to her spiritual home after many years, answering a call that had long lived within her. Having been guided early on the path, she comes back to fulfill a sacred wish once expressed by her Guruji—to complete the TTP—a journey now embraced with deeper awareness, devotion, and gratitude.

Your True Nature is Light

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Dear Beings of Light, our theme for the evening. And it will have two parts. First, a contemplation on illumination as the very birthright of your Being as the realization of becoming, and second, the experience of reuniting as dispelling the darkness of ignorance. On this pilgrimage from the self to the Self. And you will pass through the ignorance of causation and identification to again realize, awaken, and return to the pure light as the Consciousness—’That’ you are.

You had a most beautiful one this morning [referring to Rabindra’s session]. You might say a lullaby and song for your heart. The science of mantra is a living experience of enlightenment that awakens the consciousness darkened by ignorance.

So, a little background to this beautiful and experiential meditation. You’ll find it in Swami Veda’s book Kundalini: Stilled, or Stirred. Kundalini, the beautiful light of consciousness, and when ‘stilled’, an intensification in its subtlety. For this reason, “When I left the sun,” the narrative by Swami Veda, will be your meditation for the evening. It becomes a contemplation that naturally leads you inward, pulling and guiding you through the pilgrimage that eventually returns you to the source of light, the source of hiraynagarbha, the womb that births the sacred word, the living word, the word that is carried through transmission in our lineage. In the same manner that St. John has said in the Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, the Word was God.” A living lineage by way of understanding these subtle principles of mantra,‘man’, to think, and ‘tra’, to protect, to hold, to share and nourish. As you learned this morning about the nourishing aspect of the mantra, nourishment for the soul, nourishment for the heart, the nourishment for your personality to beautify your relationships.

Swami Veda’s pre-sanyasa name was ‘Usharbudh Arya’. ‘Usha’ is another name for the dawn. He is a holder of the dawn and was known as Pandit Usharbudh in his early years. During this time, he created one series of poems called ‘Hymns to the Mystic Light’. With this background, you can better understand the principle of mantra as word. Mantra is the vibration of consciousness that carries feeling that you recognize as your own being. A feeling that carries an identity of your self. Mantra has that illuminating quality that awakens of an internal light of being. Swami Veda would recall that when Swami Rama passed the diksha to him through that sacredness of the lineage, it felt like 10,000 suns radiating immense light. This is called the solar initiation. The lineage, through initiation, passes these principles of consciousness that awaken and draw us out of the darkness of misidentification and ignorance.

‘Light’ has been the greatest subject of adoration throughout human history, and addressed in the Rig Veda, the most ancient of the ancient scriptures of revelation. The lights shining in the skies must have attracted the attention of the Vedic sages, and thus they began to sing what was revealed through that revelation. And the coming of the light of dawn, after the darkness of night, gave them hope. And thus they referred to ‘Usha’, the dawn, when looking to recognize their own spiritual light. They knew that a subtler light of consciousness lay hidden in the shadows of perception. For those attending to the outer world, there were layers of light waiting to be discovered deep within the human soul. It is called ‘Jyoti’. We have just sung of that – tamaso mā jyotirgamaya. So Jyoti, the light of wisdom and truth, becomes manifest in the ideals of the spiritual life, and this became the ambition of those Vedic sages. The Vedic rishi realized the source of light, and the process of awakening, and the purification of the darkness of ignorance. In that state of awakening, the voice of God spoke to the ancient sage and enjoined him to guard the oath of light through non-harming, kindness and compassion. And they received mantras, as the oath of light. They received the revealed word to guard the path of light which wisdom had opened.

As an introduction to our pilgrimage and meditation, let me share a verse from Swami Veda’s narrative, “When I Left the Sun” that will also introduce our Sangha Mantra and the Vasudeva principle.

O fellow beams of light, have we journeyed so far, forgetting our birth as the light beams of that magnificent light, the sun. As sun rays we have been one with the light of the sun. As the sun rays, each of us, the sun rays, we have been one with the light of the sun. We, whose nature, in that illumination, in that nature is light and remains light. Whose nature is bliss, and always remains blissful, whose nature is sweet, sugandhim, and ever remains sweet. For your eternal nature is in that Lord, and that Lord dwells within you, Vasudeva. Your eternal nature is the Lord, and that Lord dwells within – Vasudeva.

On your pilgrimage along the spiritual path, you begin to recognize the depths of light you are pursuing. Such a person searches for the inner light when a calling arises, ‘know thy self’ in relation to the outer world, with its laws and with its causes and effects. And, one passes through many stages of transformation, thus eliminating the lower for the higher, the gross for the more subtle, merging the smaller into the greater, and uniting the small part of that personality into a wholeness, crossing the boundaries and loosening the ties of bondage until the outer world and inner world are realized as one. These infinite divine forces, these universal forces, are the forces within our personality. They are our experiences that express an inner craving, express that quest to know and to love and be loved. This is the quest of light, to be in light, with light, and experience the human fullness of that enlightenment as peace, happiness, and bliss. This inherent impulse, is felt in every human being, every living being, every sentient being. It is the impulse that becomes the breath. And in that impulse the thought of SoHam arises with each breath. Thus every human being can realize their true nature. The darkness of ignorance and confusion that surrounds, that veils, that diminishes the light of knowledge, remains the bondage to which we seek freedom.

Thus your true nature is light. Why would you claim knowledge in untruth, happiness in jealousy, friendship in harmful relationships, and freedom when living with fears? The darkness of untruth, the darkness of those angers and guilts and depressions hold on to the instinct of the fear of death. That abhinivesha is our primary attachment that maintains ignorance.

So aspire for truth that leads to immortality.

mṛtyormā amṛtaṃ gamaya

And from the shadow of darkness, that fear of death, lead me to the immortality.

oṃ asato mā sadgamaya
tamaso mā jyotirgamaya
mṛtyormā amṛtaṃ gamaya

Cross this ocean of darkness and you arrive at the shore of truth, goodness, and beauty. The very nature of the immortal one that you are.

Once again, dive within the very mindfield of your buddhi, your intelligence, not to use it superficially simply for judging or deciding, but for the power of that iccha shakti, the power of intention, the power of sankalpa, willpower. So as you resolve that “May the intention be in this life to awake and attain the purpose of life, to diminish the darkness of ignorance, to reveal the light of love.”

So as to now mentally recite Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudeva with full intention as purposeful life unfolds through these sacred words, through the sacred word, that illuminating and vibrating quality of the consciousness that is awakening and carrying you further and further on that pilgrimage. As a ray of light from the Center of Consciousness, you venture outward into the darkness to be lost, and then once again to be found and and thereby return to the light. That is what is called samsara. You, a being of light, venture out from that pure sun as a ray and become mingled and entangled in the darkness. And, you say, “I am darkness.” When the mantra is there to protect you, when the living lineage of the revealed word is there as your companion and guide, a moment will dawn when you understanding your life. With that awakening, you follow that light wave back to the source of light. You are the ray of consciousness returning to the Sun, the source of Consciousness. Let each meditation become this pilgrimage.

In this moment, relax, release, breathing out, letting go; and breathing-in rejuvenating, filling and fulfilling.
Smoothing out the breath rhythms and uniting the fractured mind into that one wave of the mantra thought. Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya mantra, Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya, as the japa of the special Sangha mantra, that prayer for humanity, the peace and internal joy of the minds of humanity.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudeva,

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Om.

Editor’s Note: