When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Thank you for inspiring my renewed meditation from when I was younger. You explain so easily what is very difficult for a lot of people and which was not well known for a long time here in the US. I was taught by Swami Shivananda in the late 70s and early 80s. He was from India but lived in New York and the Chicago area for about 8 years. Eventually we built a small ashram for him in Mahudha, Nariad, Gujarat. He died a few years back. We were very close. I was young, age 19 – 25 and have been to many places in India and the Himalayas. My question is that when I meditate on my true self and my breath is the only thing that ties me to the body, it frightens me as I don’t know what would happen if I stopped breathing and my body died. I’ve always thought that, of course, life is like a dream, and when we die, we wake up and realize it was like a dream, but if I stopped breathing, how will I experience what happens? It is a bit frightening. Not that I intend to stop breathing any time soon. I love your videos and think you are wonderful Thank you so much for the inspiration.
Response:
It’s always a pleasure to run into students of Swami Shivananda. He was a bright light of knowledge for this planet.
When you are meditating, you don’t need to worry about breathing. The body knows what it needs to do to sustain itself. Even if your breath gets very shallow, you don’t need to be concerned because that only indicates that the body is going into a deep state of rest and it requires less oxygen for metabolism. Even if your breath is suspended for a little while in meditation, there is no danger of dying. As soon as your body needs more air, it’ll automatically take a breath.
And during those periods of breath suspension, meditators will tell you that consciousness and experience still continues.
Love,
Deepak
