An Easy Meditation Practice for You and Your Dog
Practicing interspecies mindfulness can help us increase the ability to live in a state of ...
Carl Gustav Jung knew how. By 1933, he had lost interest in analytical psychology and was embracing alchemy as a means of transmuting material consciousness into the pure gold of enlightened spiritual perception. He succeeded so well that towards the end of his life, he could say, “At times I feel as if I'm spread out over the landscape, that I am living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the weather as it comes and goes. I am in the spaceless kingdom between the world and the psyche's hinterland.”
The expansiveness that both Yogananda and Jung describe is not exclusive to them but part of us all. It's a reflection of our true nature as souls, which is why we sometimes feel confined by our physical bodies. As babies, we are born with a natural connection to the bliss emanating from the atoms that lie just behind our body’s cellular structure. The nature of an atom is bliss. This connection is not destroyed as we grow up, just misplaced and lying waiting to be re-triggered. When you stroke your cat, its fur picks up bliss from the surrounding atmosphere and your touch and goes into ecstasy. It purrs with pleasure, a humming sound that is its way of chanting Om. This innate bliss nature is not limited to babies and cats. Yogananda and Jung made a permanent connection with bliss. If it’s a natural part of us, how can we start to reclaim it?
There are people online who teach humming as a means of generating nitric oxide in the body to optimize health. This activates our vagus nerve, triggering our parasympathetic nervous system and putting us in a deep state of relaxation necessary to enter bliss. So, humming can be a key initial element in the alchemy of reconnecting us to our original state of happiness. Here is one of the best how-to-hum introductions with demonstrations.
Once you've familiarized yourself with these techniques, you can incorporate them into your daily routine and experiment, humming over the surface of your brain, then down into your body, actively engaging with your inner self. Try adding a blissful smile to your face. Then, send an inner smile, along with the humming vibration, into your lungs, heart, and other internal organs right down into the Hara, the power center in the belly just below the navel.
Doing this daily will cleanse your body of negative thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, releasing the light trapped in your unconscious mind to sync your body up with the bliss in the atoms that create it. This modern form of alchemy is tailored to our 21st-century needs and adapted for the Western world. It's a practice that anyone can embrace. Carl Jung would have loved it. Try it for yourself, and you will love it too.
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