One of my favourite meditations is tonglen.
Those of you who are familiar with it will know that tonglen is a compassion meditation.
Briefly, this meditation consists of taking in suffering and then transmuting it to light.
Those of you who are familiar with Buddhism and practice Buddhist teachings will appreciate the immense benefits of learning compassion for all sentient beings.
Feeling compassion for others is a way to experience oneness.
When you experience oneness you fee el incredible calm and peace.
In this place the entire universal field unfold with its immense potential, which is infinite.
This state is also the most fertile ground on which the seeds of manifestation are sown.
However, many of us have problems assimilating eastern practices with their western traditions.
The idea of consciously taking in suffering, particularly that of others fills many with a sense of dread and unease.
These feelings are derived from a misunderstanding of the practice though.
In order to explain this I want to share with you the very simple and basic premise of all healing modalities.
Healing of body and mind are accomplished by accepting and acknowledging the negative and then reframing it into the positive outcome desired.
In other words, you acknowledge two opposites with equal strength and thus create a neutral position.
Mathematically, I could also simply say: Plus and Minus equal Zero.
Zero is the perfect state of balance.
The universe always seeks balance in one way or another, because from this state it renews itself and evolves.
This principle naturally, is also true for humans, since we are an expression of the universe and our existence is governed by the same laws.
We are constantly evolving, and if we learn to allow the process this can happen pretty seamlessly.
Unfortunately, our conditioning throws many a spanner in the universal works.
We have learned to operate against, rather than with universal laws.
Initially, when you learn to go with the flow of things, which means working with the universal laws, it can feel strange, unreal and counter intuitive.
But this is only so because we have had, until now, a very limited, thus false view of how the world operates.
As a result, we create roadblocks for ourselves, which we experience as delays in the realisation of our goals, and this can cause us much suffering.
In order to evolve and be in touch with the world free from interference, (our negative and limiting conditioning and self induced trance state), we need learn how to be mentally nimble.
When you learn to be mentally nimble you also learn to go with the flow automatically and let change take place with less and less resistance.
Tonglen is a practice that trains your mental flexibility as you move from acknowledging the negative to visioning the opposite, the positive, in quick succession.
When you practice tonglen for 20 minutes or so, every day you will feel a merging of the opposites as your mind gradually becomes every peaceful, because you are neutralising negativity, that blocks progress.
The resulting neutral territory is a very powerful ground for mental and physical regeneration.
When in this mental place you can produce new visions and ideas which get you to closer to the answers of your problems.
Another benefit of regular tonglen practice is that you widen the field of infinite possibilities beyond yourself, because everything you do also has an effect on the world.
It is therefore very worthwhile for anyone interested in self improvement and self mastery to seek out workshops or retreats that teach tonglen.