Mental Chatter.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Dear Deepak, I recently heard that we should not use a mantra during meditation as it is part of “mental chatter”. That the best form of meditation is simply watching the breath. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks and love.
Response:
Any thoughts, or mental activity could be called mental chatter compared to pure awareness. That includes the activity of watching the breath or thinking a mantra. But the whole point of a meditation practice is to allow the mind to go inward from the state of mental activity to a state of silence beyond thought. Certain mantra meditation techniques work by allowing the mind to settle down and experience the self without thought. When you meditate watching the breath, it is your active mind that is watching the breath. That watching activity is also thinking. The benefits of breath meditation don’t come from watching the breath, they come when the mind slips into the gap between those thoughts of watching the breath. Thousands of years of experience has shown that mantra meditation is an effective and powerful tool of self-realization. It’s not a matter of what meditation is best, it’s a matter of finding what spiritual practices work best for you in your journey now.
Love,
Deepak
