Day 3 of Deepak Chopra's 21 Day Meditation ~ Feeling the Mantra!

Day 3  

Sanskrit mantra: Sham

Repeating "Sham" awakens the third eye chakra, your intuition

Centering thought: My mind and body are in perfect sync.

My mind became so active at the beginning of the meditation tonight.  It was difficult to quiet my thoughts when the meditation started.  I think it's partly because I am so excited to hear Deepak sharing the wisdom of Ayurveda to countless listeners, it jacks me up instead of calming me down.  I've been working towards a way to spread this knowledge on a mass level for several years now because I truly believe Ayurveda is the answer to Americas health woes.   To think of all the people receiving this knowledge…It's just so exciting!  I've decided to do each meditation at least twice, first, because my 14 year old son, Luke, has started participating a day late and I want to do the meditations with him, but also, practicing the meditation twice gives me more opportunity to explore how I can best connect to the exercise.  

Tonight I explored focusing on the feeling of the mantra in my body.  I said the mantra aloud - Sham - and could feel how it resonated through me - the "sh" sound filling my head, the "a" in my throat and chest and the "m" all the the way down into my stomach.  When I repeated the word to myself I focused on that feeling in my body more so than just the word in my head.  This helped me to better connect to the practice and bring my mind and body into perfect sync.  

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Side story:  Luke started the series today beginning on the 2nd meditation because the focus of that specific meditation is balance - something we've been discussing a lot lately.  Luke lost his video game privileges because of the imbalance they have been causing in his life.  He calls this game restriction a punishment.  I tell him it is not a punishment, rather a step to bring balance back into his life.   He agreed to do the 21 day meditation "challenge" and journal about his experience if I gave him back his privileges.   Yes, I'm bribing my son to meditate...I wish I could just force my will upon him, but he's just too much of a young man to not give him some say over what he chooses to participate in.

I wanted to quiet the energy of the house and cultivate a sacred space so I decided an intention setting candle ritual would be a good way to begin our 21 day meditation venture together. I've been exploring Wicca again lately and have been building supplies for my chest of magics ;) so we had all the necessary "ingredients" handy. 

After the whole process and performing the ritual to dress the candle to cleanse it of negative energies we discovered the new beeswax candles didn't even fit in the holders.  Dressing the candle with frankincense oil had helped cultivate a quiet space so rather than seek out another candle option we decided to commence with the meditating. 

We got comfortable on the floor, pushed play on the meditation, and as soon as we got past Oprah's all too noticeable segment I started to hear a loud scratching sound upstairs.  It was really noticeable in the quiet space we created and I didn't want it to disturb Luke so I got up to investigate the unsettling distraction.  I stood on the bed in Luke's room where I heard the sound the strongest.  An animal in the ceiling was digging with all its might to get to the warmth of his bedroom…or maybe he was digging because of the positive vibrations we were cultivating in our household.  It sounded like a big animal because when I knocked the ceiling to inspire his departure he didnt scamper... He took steps... strides even, but he didnt leave.  He continued his frantic digging. I closed the door to Luke's room trying not to worry about whether the poor little/big guy was trapped and whether we would have to listen to his scratches become more and more faint as he weakened from starvation and thirst.  I cleared all the horrid thoughts from my mind, blessed the creature and proceed with the meditation.   The scratching continued the entire time but Luke fell asleep in the first few minutes after I left the room so it didn't detract from his level of peace.

This story really has nothing to do with the 21 day meditation series... but I wanted to share it anyway.  One of the reasons I stopped blogging is because after Exploring Joy came into being I was told by various people that blogging my personal stories would detract from my following.  I felt so stifled by this that I stopped writing.   I don't want to bore any of my readers and if you are one of those reading solely for the info and not my side stories... I hope my randomness doesn't throw you off too much.