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Sleep rests the body, but meditation rests the mind. Three simple principles can help you let go, slow down, and experience deeper inner stillness
Start your meditation with longer and deeper breaths, which quieten the mind and help you slip easily into meditation. (AI Generated)
We all want a deep relaxation that refreshes us so that we can be useful when we wake up. But when can you truly rest? Only when you have stopped all other activities. When you stop all voluntary activities like moving around, working, thinking, talking, seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting, only then do you get rest or sleep.
In sleep, only involuntary activities remain, such as breathing, heartbeat, digestion, and blood circulation. However, even this cannot be called total relaxation. Total rest can occur only in meditation. So the real question is: how can we deepen our meditation?
Three golden principles can be very useful in going deeper into meditation.
The first golden principle is achah: for the next 10–20 minutes, gently remind yourself, “I want nothing for a few minutes.” When you go to shower, you don’t go in with your robes on, right? You remove the robe, you remove your shoes, and then you step in. In the same way, when you meditate, set aside all the wants in your mind. You can have all your wants or desires back after meditation. Taking a good look at one’s desires and realizing that they are futile or nothing great is maturity, or discrimination, and this understanding takes you deeper.
The second golden principle is aprayatna: “I do nothing.” You just be. You do not even have to make an effort to think, “I want nothing” or “I do nothing.” Let there be just an effortless intention. A strong tendency to keep doing something—whether important or unimportant—becomes an impediment to meditation. All intentions, good or bad, trivial or important, need to be dropped for meditation to happen.
The third principle is akinchan: “I am nothing.” You could be somebody—a lawyer, a doctor, whatever—but during meditation, you become a nobody. Whether you think you are someone great, rich, or intelligent, or you think you are poor, not so smart, or weak, in either case, meditation will not happen. So just for those 20 minutes, be nothing. These three principles will help calm your mind and deepen your meditation.
Now remember, meditation is not concentration. When you are being guided in meditation, do not listen to the instructions too intensely; that can make you tense and stiff. Just allow the instructions to float into your ears and relax. That is the key to meditation. When the mind is uptight, all we need to do is relax and let it blossom.
Start your meditation with longer and deeper breaths, which quieten the mind and help you slip easily into meditation. After practising some pranayamas and Sudarshan Kriya, a powerful rhythmic breathing technique, meditation happens effortlessly. Every emotion is connected with the breath. For example, when you are happy, or when you smell a flower, your inhalation is slow, steady, and strong, and the exhalation dissolves. But when you are frustrated, your exhalation is stronger. Change the breath, change the rhythm, and you can change the emotions too. Pranayama and Sudarshan Kriya bring harmony between all these rhythms.
To have a good experience, it is important to accept the surrounding sounds, thoughts, and feelings, and not fight them. The more you try to get rid of them, the more they will stick around. The nature of the mind is such that resistance does not eliminate disturbances—it prolongs them. So you have to let go and not resist. That is when meditation begins to happen.
While you sit for meditation, let the world be the way it is. Your mind may trick you into believing that other tasks or assignments are too important. But the truth is, nothing will go wrong if you postpone your tasks by 15–20 minutes and invest that time in meditation. In fact, you come out feeling refreshed and energized. Work is not life; it is one expression of life. When the mind is restful, work becomes purposeful.
The mind has a habit of postponing what is good for you and immediately acting on what is not very beneficial. That is why meditation must be prioritized, come what may. If you want to be happy, if you want more positive energy, if you want to be pleasant in your mind, then meditation is a must. The more regular you are with meditation, the deeper you will go into it.
Meditation is a delicate phenomenon. It takes months to deepen, but neglect it for a few days and it wilts like a flower. Meditation requires regularity. Through meditation, you will discover those golden peaks of consciousness that are beyond your imagination today. The irony is that until you begin meditating, you won’t even realize what you’ve been missing in life.
If you are not having good experiences in meditation, then do more seva (selfless service). Seva and meditation are complementary. When you bring relief or freedom to someone through seva, their life force, which was suffocating, begins to feel free. When they bless you from that state of freedom and relief, it creates good vibrations and merit. Merit allows you to go deeper in meditation.
Continue the practice until you realize that meditation is your very nature, and you cannot be without it. And remember, just as happiness is contagious, meditation is contagious too. If you are a good meditator, people around you catch on to your positivity. The vibrations from your meditation bring blessings not only to you and those around you, but even to your ancestors. It brings them relief too. So it is upon us to meditate today and every day, and help free this planet from violence, tension, anxiety, and stress.
The author is a humanitarian leader, spiritual teacher and an ambassador of peace. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
Click here to add News18 as your preferred news source on Google. December 15, 2025, 08:56 IST