222 guided exercises suitable for both beginners and advanced seekers who wish to explore the world of meditation. 222 Meditation Techniques by Sri Chinmoy offers a very broad selection of meditation exercises, recognising a widening, mainstream focus on meditation and mindfulness. 222 Meditation Techniques is intended as a daily life manual, relevant, accessible, simple and eminently practical. It has no unnecessary philosophical trimmings but rather leads its readers directly into a world of meditation exercises from the very first page. This Everyman’s guide to meditation contains 222 exercises, which are suitable for both beginners and experienced meditators. From breathing exercises, guided meditations and the use of mantras, to special exercises for runners, artists and musicians, ways to overcome bad habits, and even losing weight, this book offers a truly broad canvas of possibilities. The book has an attractive design and its hardback binding allows it to stay conveniently open on the chosen page for easy reference whilst practicing.
Excerpt
16 — Put the mind into the heart
Just grab the mind and put it into the flood of the heart. As long as it allows you to meditate, you do not have to worry. But when starts it bothering you, when it starts creating pain, that means it is resisting. It is not allowing you to receive more peace and light from Above.
39 — Breathe through different parts of your body
Before you start meditating, please breathe in deeply a few times. With each breath, try to feel that a stream of energy is entering into you. Then try to feel that you are breathing in through different parts of your body: your eyes, your ears, your forehead, your shoulders, the crown of your head and so on. Feel that each of these places is a door, and when you breathe in, feel that you are opening this door. At that time, energy enters in from the Universal Consciousness.
Do you want to be happy?
Then make your life
As soulfully simple
as sleeplessly breathing.
How to conquer fear?
With oneness within
And oneness without.
In oneness-light
There can be no fear.
76 — A rose blossoming in the heart
Kindly imagine a flower inside your heart, a rose. Feel that the rose is not fully blossomed; it is in a bud form. After you have meditated for two or three minutes, please try to imagine that petal by petal the rose is blossoming. See and feel the rose blossoming petal by petal inside your heart.
Then, after five minutes, try to feel that there is no heart at all; there is only a flower inside you called heart. You do not have a heart, but only a flower. The flower has become your heart or your heart has become a flower.
After seven or eight minutes, please feel that the flower-heart or heart-flower has covered your whole body. Your body is no longer here; from your head to your feet you feel the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your feet, immediately you feel the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your knee, you feel the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your head, you feel the fragrance of a rose. Everywhere you feel the rose. The beauty and the fragrance and the light of the rose have permeated your whole body.
When you feel from your head to your feet that you have become only the beauty, fragrance, light and delight of the rose, then you are ready to place yourself at the Feet of the Beloved Supreme, who is my Guru‘, your Guru, everybody’s Guru. You feel, „Lord Supreme, now I place myself at Your Feet.“ Then your meditation is over.
132 — A child entering a garden
Feel that you are a child entering into a garden. When a grown-up enters into a garden every day, he sees the flowers and says, „They are all the same as they were yesterday.“ A child of four or five sees the same flowers that the grown-up sees, but he gets a totally different kind of experience, which is all joy. When his heart sees a flower, that flower is something new for him. We see the same kinds of flowers for so many days, and once we see them, it is enough for us. Even the second day, it is all old. But every time the child sees the garden, for him everything is new.
189 — Healing an injury
Healing an injury is a matter of inner capacity. One kind of capacity is to heal the injury by bringing down peace and light from Above. Another kind of capacity is to ignore the pain altogether. During your meditation, if all of a sudden you have intense aspiration, then you can bring down more light from above to cure your injury. But you have to do this consciously during your meditation. If during the day you casually say, „Oh, how I wish I didn’t have any pain!“ that will be useless. But while you are meditating, if you suddenly remember your pain, that is the time to pray and bring down more light.
Everything has to depend on prayer and meditation. Again, outer therapy is also of supreme need. Of course, the most important thing is the inner prayer. But it is like a boxer using two hands. With one hand you cannot do everything. You should take as much help from medical science as possible, and at the same time you have to think of our spiritual science, which is prayer and meditation. They have to go side by side.
Again, you can increase your capacity to tolerate pain. If the pain is bearable, try to run according to your own capacity. At that time, do not think of how fast this person or that person is running. Just go according to your own capacity and remain cheerful.
When you pray
Think of a lost child within you
Crying helplessly.
When you meditate,
Think of a morning flower
Smiling and smiling
Radiating its beauty
And offering its fragrance.
This is how you can make friends
With your soul
And fly with it infinitely higher
Than the confines of the mind.
