“During the day,
Use your imagination-power
To remember your soulful and powerful
Morning meditation.
Imagination is a world of its own,
And this imagination-power
Can save you, illumine you and fulfil you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Most of us do not meditate to enjoy the blissful experience of meditation for its own sake; we are motivated to meditate to improve our consciousness and hence the quality of our daily lives. We meditate to enter into our inner peace, light, love and joy so that we can embody, utilise and manifest these qualities throughout our busy day.
Yet we have all experienced how difficult it can be to maintain these sweet, pure feelings, this expansive, lofty perspective once we enter into the noise, stress and conflict that characterises our outer life.
Firstly, we must properly assimilate our meditation experience. Just as food needs to be digested before we commence strenuous activity, so we need to “digest” our meditation’s peace, love, light and joy. Remain quiet for a while after meditation – reading, singing, listening to music or writing something meaningful. Don’t rush straight into anything challenging or engaging of the mind or emotions.
If you polish a wooden table in the morning, as dust settles during the day, it will lose its sheen. Yet the table doesn’t have to be re-polished to bring back the shine; it just needs a quick wipe, because the morning’s polish is still there, right below the dust. Similarly, by taking a minute or two to consciously remember our morning meditation, we can easily and quickly revive its clarity and poise, thereby dispelling the accumulated ‘dust’ of stress, tension and confusion, and reinforcing our inner fortress against the world’s negativity and chaos. This way the fragrance of our morning meditation can permeate our entire day.