Visualization for Concentration

Listen to the visualization:

Imagine a flowing brook. Let its crystal waters sweep away your remaining restless thoughts. If any stray impression enters your mind, toss it lightly into the flowing waters, and watch it dance swiftly away.

As your mind becomes still, practice calming the senses also, one by one:

Concentrate on the sense of sight. Imagine a mist descending over your outward vision, releasing your attention for contemplation of the divine light within. Remember, it is because of people’s attachment to the sights of this world that they fail to behold the heavenly scenes within.

Next, concentrate on the sense of hearing. Withdraw yourself from the thought of earthly sounds. Feel those sounds merging into the rushing water of the brook, dissolving themselves in its steady murmur.

Gradually let your concentration shift to the sounds you hear in your inner ear-preferably, so yogis say, in the right ear. Imagine the voice of infinity speaking to you through the inner sounds.

Next, concentrate on the sense of touch. Feel that the surface of your body is not your skin, but an aura of light surrounding your body. Expand this aura. Feel as if, with every outgoing breath, you were gently inflating a shining balloon of radiant light.

Now, reach out in all directions around you with finger-rays of light. Touch, feel, and explore the greater reality of the Spirit around you. Try to sense behind everything the subtle presence of divine consciousness.

Finally, concentrate on the senses of taste and smell. Feel as though you were drinking great draughts of peace and happiness from a crystal chalice at a fountain of eternity.

Offer up the energy of your senses to your higher Self. Ask your higher Self to fill you with it’s bliss.

The deeper you go in meditation, the more your energy will withdraw naturally from the outer world of the senses. It will awaken you to the infinitely more wonderful world of the Spirit within.

When you find your mind becoming freed of restless thoughts, mentally build a dam across the brook that you first visualized. Watch the waters slowly rising, until they become a large lake.

Gaze calmly into the mirror surface of this lake. See reflected in its water the blue sky. Expand your consciousness into the overarching heavens. Feel, in infinite space beyond our earth’s atmosphere, the vast calmness of Spirit.

Stilling the senses is one of the best ways to rise above body-consciousness. Stilling the mind and the emotions is the way to enter the kingdom of Spirit.

Start a New Meditation Practice or Inspire Your Current One

The 10-week Ananda Course in Meditation online course is designed to provide in-depth instruction in scientific meditation techniques that bring more peace, deeper relaxation, and focused concentration to every area of your life, regardless of outer conditions.

These techniques are based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.

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