Very often, especially when we are new to meditation, we feel that we are responsible for the experience that we have in meditation – we feel that it is up to us to make something happen! Sometimes we push and pull and become discouraged, but as we progress in our spiritual journey, we begin to realise that meditation is something that occurs quite naturally and spontaneously from within – like a river that flows from a spring in the ground. We cannot necessarily see the source of the river, but we can see or, as it is with meditation, feel the results.

The act of meditation is in many ways an immersion into the deeper part of our being – an unlimited consciousness that lies beyond the often superficial human existence. True, the human reality cannot be ignored because it needs perfection and fulfilment. But if we are only ever aware of our limited human nature, we never get to expand into the deeper reality, the heart and soul. In meditation we try to dive deep into the sea of tranquility that we all possess inside us – that “sea of peace and joy and light” that Sri Chinmoy alludes to in his poem, The Golden Flute.

In this weeks meditation exercise, Sri Chinmoy offers a simple visualisation to help us discover and swim in the inner sea:

This week Sri Chinmoy offers a meditation exercise for increasing our good and divine qualities by allowing them to enter our spiritual heart – through “your heart's door” as Sri Chinmoy puts it.

You tell me that you do not want to fall anymore.
You want to rise, only rise.
I tell you the secret of secrets:
This moment cry like a child,
Next moment smile like a child.
This is the way you can rise and rise at every moment.
(Source)