Who is Training Whom?

Khush Raho with Sangeeta

However hard I try, I am unable to meditate every day. This is the common refrain. This predicament took me back to my own struggles with regularity. I too had difficulty being a regular practitioner. There are a couple of things I wish to share.

Each of us generates around 56,000 thoughts per day. Our mind is constantly processing, mulling over, and examining these thoughts. And if we look at them honestly, many are not helpful or forward looking. Many are repetitive, replaying some interaction or conversation, random what ifs, could haves, would haves, should haves, examining problems or obstacles, or simply evaluating things we observed. A very mixed bag, but it all adds up to a huge cloud of thoughts. And as we understand today, thoughts and emotions are energies. We are energy beings, and these thoughts are swimming around in our biofield, clogging the highways of proper energy flow in our system. 

So what is the purpose of meditating? It is first and foremost a hygiene practice, clearing the tension and unhelpful noise that most of these thoughts create. When we sit in awareness to meditate, we are being present in the moment, distinct from the active mind and its thoughts. The core practice is becoming a detached, impartial observer of our own body, mind, and feelings, letting them drift away, and experiencing a state of stillness, of no-thing. Think of it as a spiritual shower. Just as we take a physical shower every day, by meditating we are cleansing our energy field of unnecessary and negative thoughts and emotions.

The more we accumulate negative energy, the more it can settle into our aura and chakras, leading first to imbalance, and then to niggling conditions like frequent headaches, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, skin issues, and hair fall. Over time, without proper energy hygiene, it can manifest into chronic physical conditions. However, with regular practice we gain physical, emotional and mental strength and acuity. Happier and healthier — that is the goal. Don’t be hard on yourself if you cannot practise every day. Keep the intention alive, and gradually build the habit—from twice a week to three times, eventually reaching six or seven days. Like any habit, meditation will eventually become second nature, and you may even miss it when you skip it.

The second obstacle is boredom. He has 20–25 minutes blocked daily but sometimes skips meditation because the practice feels repetitive. Think of multiplication tables: they were boring to learn, but eventually 9 × 12 = 108 became effortless. Meditation works the same way.

We are all trying to train AI these days so that it quickly understands what we want and delivers it. But here is the question worth sitting with: who is training whom? Our mind, like AI, is a machine. Left to itself, it will run its own programme, generating those 56,000 thoughts, replaying old conversations, spinning what ifs.

The higher self needs to step in and do the training. Otherwise the machine is running us, not the other way around. Meditation is how we take back the controls.

And here is the thing about doing the same practice every day. I meditate daily at the same time and in the same place, yet the experience is never the same. As Heraclitus said, "A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man." The practice is the same. You are not.

So here is the simple protocol. A little exercise first, to get the physical body moving, the blood flowing, and the energy moving through the nadiis and chakras. Then some pranayama. Then sit in silence. Draw your awareness away from the cloud of thoughts by focusing on a flame or a star above your head, or use a guided audio meditation. Feel the lightness, your energy body bathing in a spiritual shower, cleansed of all negative thoughts and emotions and filled with fresh, positive energy. 

(Sangeeta Bhalla

 is an Energy Healer, Instructor, and Therapeutic Aromatherapist. She can be reached at www.sangeetabhalla.net )