The Mantra I Learned Too Late

Transcendental Meditation

I remember as a young teenager back in Canada hearing about transcendental meditation. It was supposed to be the latest and the greatest thing. I remember people talking about it and it was in the news. On the other hand, nobody was actually doing it, that I new. I read a bit about it and decided to find out for myself what all the hype was about. I learned that you use mantras, and repeat them for the meditation. I tried it a few times myself but percieve any changes or benefits.

Couldn't Understand

I also struggled to grasp the concept of transcendental meditation, as I shared in Thinking is Overrated, and found it difficult to see how something so simple could have such a profound impact on one's life. It seemed like a complex and mysterious practice that didn't quite deliver on its promises. I also couldn't understand the discrepancy between those who said any word could be a mantra, and those who said you had to receive a special mantra from a guru. It was like the expression "All that glitters is not gold". I was just too young to really understand it.

Emotional Baggage

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My experience with clearing emotional baggage, as I wrote about in How to Be Quiet, has shown me that it's not just about finding inner peace, but also about releasing the underlying causes of stress and anxiety. There is no mantra in this technique. There is no focussing on nothing or empty minds. There is no mindfulness. It is a slow, calm recapitulation of one's memories. I have found it to be exceptionally slow and exceptionally reliable in delivering results. Now it is a relatively simple task for me to clear my mind and hold it clear for even several minutes. My day to day activities are no longer clouded with extraneous thoughts or worries. When I do get worries, I can easily banish them.

Meaning of Mantra

Well, I came across a video article on the BBC site that talked about mantras. It looked interesting, so I watched it for a break. I found it particularly interesting to hear that the meaning of 'mantra' from sanskrit is the combined meaning of two parts: 'man' which is the sanskrit for mind, and 'tra' which is the sanskrit for tool. Thus a mantra is literally a mind tool. If I summarize some parts of the video, the mantra is a tool to disarm the 'monkey mind' which is always jumping from one extraneous thought to another, and making us feel all sorts of emotions along the way, damaging our well-being.

Too late

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This tool is amazing! If only I'd discovered the power of clearing emotional baggage sooner, as I wrote about in How to Be Quiet - it would have saved me a lot of time and effort trying to understand transcendental meditation! But for me now, it is close to unneccesary, as I have found a far more powerful tool to defeat the 'monkey mind'. This relates to what I discussed in The Neglected Language of Feelings - when we neglect our emotions, they can build up and cause problems. Clearing emotional baggage is a key part of maintaining emotional well-being. Without fuel it can't last long or often it can't even get started. This relates to what I discussed in The Neglected Language of Feelings - when we neglect our emotions, they can build up and cause problems. By addressing these underlying causes of stress and anxiety, as I wrote about in The Neglected Language of Feelings, we can create a more peaceful environment for ourselves.