The Miracle of Mantras.
{Sitting Meditationvia Tumblr / Artist Unknown}
Miracles can come in many ways. We’ll find them throughout our lives, glittering like lustrous little bits of star-dust if we only know how to look.
But I discovered a secret. An amazing, direct link to manifesting the healing I was always hoping (and waiting) for: mantras. Mantras have power! In mantra there is a very real capacity to heal, transform, and inspire; to elicit miracles for ourselves.
A couple of years ago, through a series of divinely synchronistic events, I ended up in a Kundalini yoga class. It’s insufficient just to say that I liked it; in truth, I fell wholly in love with it.
Before Kundalini yoga, I had never worked with mantras. Sure, I had chanted the obligatory “OM” in a yoga class here and there, but I can’t say it ever really moved me.
I had never before experienced what it was to sing and chant the sacred sounds that are mantra with intent, and when I did, I was captivated.
I felt as if my spirit had poured through my lips and glided into the heavens. I am not a singer or a musician, this wasn’t just a love of music that stirred me so deeply. It was an offering of undiluted devotion to the Divine that I encountered when I sang mantras. This is Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, of love.
Mantras are syllables, words, or verses that are spoken aloud or repeated silently in the mind. Mantras can be any language and although many are related to specific religions and their deities, you need not be religious to use them. Whatever name we give the Divine, it is all One. Mantras come from your heart and they may go where your heart pleases.
The mantras I fell in love with were Gurmukhi, as used in the Kundalini yoga tradition (as taught by Yogi Bhajan).
I found me in mantra, my inner self. I found a stillness and silence within the melodies and rhythms of mantras that was exquisite and expansive. I experienced Grace. The Gurmukhi mantras carried me there.
Still it was months after I fell in love with them, before I actually experienced the power of mantras.
The winter after I started my Kundalini practice, I went to a yoga retreat. I drove up with my Kundalini teacher and camped alone for the first time ever. While I was there, an illnesses that I had been struggling with for years flared up. I was in a lot of pain and very weak. The severity of it terrified me, it had never been so intense.
I went to the camp doctor who was an ER doctor, an Ayurvedic doctor, and a yogi for over 30 years. We talked about what was happening and how to treat it from the different perspectives, many which I had already tried without success. Then this beloved doctor gave me his yogic prescription: He advised me to chant the mantra “Wahe Guru” to the sick parts of my body.
“Wahe Guru” is a statement of awe and ecstasy, an expression of wonder and reverence for the Divine.
I chanted it constantly, sometimes silently, sometimes loudly. I chanted with fierce dedication. The mantra soothed me when I was scared, and allowed me to feel that I was being taken care of, that everything would be all right.
I had to leave the retreat early. Returning home, I was so sick that I expected it would take months for me to heal and anticipated having to be in bed for quite a while. Still, I kept chanting my mantra.
Then the most magnificent thing began to happen. I started healing. Rapidly.
In less than a week, my health was better than it had been in many, many years! I had tried everything under the sun to heal this problem, from detoxes to doctors to prayer, nothing had worked and I had thought I would live with it forever. While the complete healing took a bit more time, today I am blessedly free from that illness. The beginning of that transformation, that miracle, was my mantra: Wahe Guru. Wahe Guru. Wahe Guru…
Since then, I have experienced the capacity of mantra to heal numerous times. Like silken strands of alchemy, mantras have weaved transformation through all the corners of my life.
The power of mantra lies in the Naad, in the vibration of the sound current. Because everything that we are is vibration, the Naad influences body, mind and spirit.
We have totally forgotten that this Universe is the outcome of vibration. This Universe is not communication. This Universe is not money. This Universe is not love, it is not sex, it is not beauty, it is not even God. That one line is true: “In the beginning there was the Word, Word was with God, and Word was God.” That’s all it is about.
What is a word? Creative vibration.
“Every element of the Universe is in a constant state of vibration manifested to us as light, sound, and energy. The human senses perceive only a fraction of the infinite range of vibration, so it is difficult to comprehend that ‘The Word’ — mentioned in the Bible — is actually the totality of vibration which underlies and sustains all creation. A person can tune his or her own consciousness into the awareness of that totality with the use of a mantra. By vibrating in rhythm with the breath to a particular sound that is proportional to the creative sound, or sound current, one can expand one’s sensitivity to the entire spectrum of vibration. It is similar to striking a note on a stringed instrument. In other words, as you vibrate, the Universe vibrates with you.” ~ Yogi Bhajan
Mantras are an experience, not just a sound. They lift me away to other worlds and carry me into the depths of myself. The ethereal, magical words are etched in my heart forever, so much so that it aches when I don’t do them for too long.
When I sing mantras, I sing to the Divine, but I also feel the Divine sing through me. I feel connected to everything, the edges of separation blurring, melting away.
If you have never tried, find a mantra. Try it. There doesn’t need to be anything formal to it, just find a song, a chant you resonate with. Maybe it’s Sanskrit, maybe Gurmukhi, or Buddhist. Hallelujah is a mantra.
It doesn’t matter, just follow the draw of your heart and see what happens.
You may just fall in love like I did.
{Do you have any creative, life-altering mantras? Share them with us in the comments!}
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