Self-inquiry Meditation with Swami Shankarananda

Track 1. Self-Inquiry Guided Chakra Meditation

I suggest that you try and listen to this meditation and the following healing meditation every day during the time you read this book. Set aside at least 20 minutes daily. This will assist your practice and help develop Self-inquiry naturally.

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Track 2. Healing Meditation

I suggest that you try and listen to this meditation and the previous chakra meditation every day during the time you read this book. Set aside at least 20 minutes daily. This will assist your practice and help develop Self-inquiry naturally.

Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.

Track 3. Reviewing Your Day Inquiry

Close your eyes. Review the day in sections. Think about the morning, the afternoon, the evening.

• Did your emotions shift and change during the day?
• Did you have an emotional reaction to any event or encounter?
• Particularly regarding negative experiences, did you handle the emotion immediately or not?
• Did the emotion affect later events during the day?
• Is the feeling still with you?
• What did you need to do at the time to shift your experience?
• What do you need to do now to shift your experience?

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Track 4. 'Who Am I?' Inquiry

Ask inwardly, ‘Who am I?’ and become directly in touch with the context of all experience, which is your own Self.

Say:

• I am awareness.
• I am the screen.
• I am the space.
• I am the feeling of Self.

Make these statements and reflect on each. These are in the spirit of Ramana Maharshi’s inquiry. Alternatively, you can ask yourself, ‘What is my awareness?’ and get in touch with the place towards which that
question points.

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Track 5. Becoming Present Contemplation

Close your eyes, think about the past; everything that’s happened leading to this moment has gone. Think about the future; the future has not yet come. What’s real, what’s actual, is the present moment. In the present moment, listen to the sounds. Now feel the sensations in your body—the sensation of sitting, your neck, your back. Now be aware of your breath coming in, going out. You’ve breathed a lot in the past, you will breathe in the future; the only breath that gives you air is the present breath. Breathe that breath.

Now turning to the inner world, become aware of your mind, of thoughts in your mind. The mind is thinking. We’re not concerned with the content of the thoughts, but just that thoughts are occurring. Be aware of thoughts. At the same time, there’s a feeling aspect of your inner experience. Be aware of your feeling or your mood in present time. It doesn’t matter what the mood is, just be aware that there is some feeling, some mood.

Going deeper, go to the sense of ‘I’. Say ‘I am’ and feel the feeling of being you in this moment. The feeling sense of ‘I’—it’s the most intimate, most personal, closest to the centre feeling: ‘I am.’

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Track 6. You Can Always Have The Meditation You Are Having

Sit down and look within. Whatever you experience, pleasant or unpleasant, is what is given. This is the meditation you are having. Shaivism says every thought, every feeling, even every contraction is Shiva.

If you can make a verbal A-Statement, do so. If not, simply ‘be as you are’ in this existential moment. Say to yourself, ‘I am this form of Shiva’ or ‘I am Shiva in this form’ or ‘All this is Shiva’ or, as Popeye would say, ‘I yam what I yam’. Meditate with this awareness—your present experience is Shiva. As you do this, you honour your present experience. You do not reject it in favour of some imagined ‘better’ experience. You do not compare it with other possible meditations or with the meditation the person next to you is having. You simply have the meditation you are having, knowing that it is Shiva.

At the beginning, your acceptance of your present state might be tainted by the hope that Shiva will reward you by taking it away and revealing something more profound. Gradually you let that thought go and settle into your present experience. As you relax into it, it will reveal your deeper nature to you.
This method gives peace because it eliminates the phantom of the better meditation and the higher state we’re always seeking. ‘You can always have the meditation you are having’ is a meditative technique you can use forever.

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Track 7. Making A-Statements

Go inside. Say to yourself, ‘I feel …’—mad, sad, bad, scared or glad. It might be a mixture of things. You might feel a cocktail of emotions. Don’t worry or torment yourself about accuracy.

Make an A-Statement in this moment: ‘I feel …’—let the word come to you, then fit it to the feeling and see if it seems true. Then make the A-Statement to yourself.

Feel what it is like to make an A-Statement.

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Track 8. G-Statement Contemplation

Read the following G-Statements. They are either directly from the Shaivite scriptures or glossed from them. With each one, you should watch how they impact you. See if they are easy to accept or not, and notice where they affect you. Do they go into your heart, your third eye? Do they uplift you? See if any of them open up a doorway within you. In these G-Statements, ‘Shiva’ is synonymous with the Self, God, or universal Consciousness.

• Everything is Consciousness.
• Consciousness is the most healing and desirable thing.
• I am Shiva.
• Every thought and feeling, even my blocks, are Shiva.
• The way I think creates the experience of my life.
• This universe is drenched in love.
• I am the Lord of Matrika.
• There is absolutely no problem.
• All these people are Shiva in their own universe.
• Everything is perfect as it is.
• Whatever meditation I am having is Shiva.

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Track 9. Personal Inquiry

Look within. Scan the four chakras for tension.

• Find where you hold the most tension or second force.
• Give yourself A-Statements until you are satisfied that you have accurately described the feeling.
• Give yourself B- and G-Statements until a shift occurs.
• Meditate.

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Track 10. Advanced Personal Inquiry

This is a streamlined version of personal inquiry for adept meditators:

• Discover where you hold the most second force, and make A-Statements.
• Keeping in mind that any second force or tension you hold is based on some sort of wrong understanding, ask yourself, ‘What do I have to do to shift this feeling?"

Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.