The Benefits of Meditation

The benefits of meditation are enormous. It calms our mind and body. In these fast and frenetic times, it has the most important ability to replenish mental and emotional energy.
Meditation enables you to create new attitudes and responses to life, giving you a clear spiritual understanding of yourself.

Meditation is the process of re-discovering, enjoying and using the positive qualities already latent within you. Like any skill, meditation requires practice to achieve positive and satisfying results. By doing a little every day, it soon becomes a natural and easy habit, which generously rewards you for the little effort it involves.

What Does Meditation Do?

Meditation energizes your awareness bringing both peace and wisdom to a busy mind. It expands your capacity to love and heals broken hearts. Also it dissolves many fears replacing them with lightness and freedom from anxiety.

Meditation is both the journey and the destination, revealing the secrets of consciousness and the treasures of the soul. It develops the power to be more alert and effective in our interaction with each other and with our precious world. But perhaps the greatest gift that comes with meditation is the glow of inner peace that is both gentle and strong.

The practice of Raja Yoga meditation or intellectual communion with God brings into the soul many powers. Of these, eight are very important. Please refer to the adjoining diagram.

Eight Powers of Raja Yoga

The Power To Pack-Up

With the ability to go within, one can learn how to pack up all wasteful thinking in a second, so that there is lightness and freedom from burdens and worries, though there may be many responsibilities. The mind is not scattered over the wide world and so much drawn out to men and matters that he is unable to sleep or to detach himself at his will. With the practice of meditation, one can wind up his thoughts at will.

Power To Tolerate

Just as trees offer the same fruits even to those who pelt stones at them, a yogi tolerates all attacks on him and does good even to those who offer brickbats at him. In the light frame of mind, one will be able to tolerate all types of situations and people to the extent that there is no sense at all of having to tolerate something or someone. With the understanding that each one is simply playing their role in this immense world-drama, impatience, irritation and annoyance disappear like mists before a strong sun.

The Power To Accommodate

Just as the ocean accepts different rivers that flow into it, whether polluted or clean, one will be able to adjust to all that is happening around him, a yogi would be able to accommodate others with him. It makes the man broadminded. One will be able to adjust into all the happenings around him. Even when the atmosphere is weak and impure, they would not affect him.

The Power Of Judgment

One will learn to take correct and quick decision. One will get the ability to accurately assess any situation with clarity and confidence. In a detached, impartial state of mind, one can judge one’s own thoughts, words and actions to see if they are beneficial. One will become a judge of the self and not of others.

The Power Of Discrimination

Just as an expert jeweler can easily distinguish the false from the pure diamonds, one will acquire the power to distinguish between right and wrong or good and bad. One can accurately discriminate between real truth and the apparent truth, between things of temporary value and those of eternal value and between superficial and the subtle. The power helps in recognizing illusions even when they are sweetly decorated and enticing.

The Power To Face

Meditation develops the power to endure hardships. Adversities like death of those on whom one depends may come and high storms may rage strongly, yet his flame of equanimity does not get extinguished. Having confidence in one’s spiritual state brings the courage to face any type of situation.

The Power To Co-Operate

The natural result of all the powers is that I am able to share with others the tasks and qualities that my Father has given to me. There is no feeling of competition, so I can give as well as accept suggestion as to how to proceed with the task of world upliftment. By learning meditation, one will develop the spirit of co-operation. This is a great achievement because if everyone gives his little finger, the society could lift great mountains.

The Power to Withdraw

With full awareness that I (soul) am is an entity different from the body, one can withdraw from the senses and become a point. In the same way that a tortoise retreats into it’s shell in a moment of danger, or just to rest, a person would be able to retract himself from any situation and remain protected.

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