Alternatives to Meditation

Silent Meditation with all its glories and greatness,   is hard for most people. We can talk about various meditation practices that are widely practiced and some of the alternatives, that can be of immense help. Due to our scientific paradigm, and over emphasis on logic and rational thinking,  many of these practices are either being ignored or forgotten.
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Mantra Chanting:

We talked about Mantras and how sounds can change the brain bringing in new thoughts and mindset...Most religions have a large list of favorite invocations to God!  Specifically, we talked the new mantra which is the Shreem Brzee mantra and how it can help us create wealth consciousness.  We have the book called Mantram Handbook  and here is a review of the book.
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Homa or Fire Ritual:

The Rig Veda, which is the earliest written document of human spirituality.  The opening hymn 1.1 praises the method of using Fire as medium to propitiate divine beings, who in turn bless us with wealth.   
“Agnimeele purohitam Yajnyasya Devam-Rtvijam,  Hotaaram Ratna-Dhaatamam ”  
When Gramophone was invented by Thomas Alva Edison, he wanted to record the voice of an eminent scholar on his first piece.His obvious choice was Max Muller, a great Sanskrit scholar of the 19th century.  This disc was played to eminent scholars of Europe who had gathered in England for the Inaugural ceremony. Max Muller surprised the scholarly audience chanting  the first Mantra of Rigveda in the inaugural recording for HMV.

You will find a similar strain of thought in Gita 3:12, wherein Arjuna asks how the worldly desires can be ful-filled and gets a similar response.

​Ancestor Ritual (Tarpanam):  Honoring the ancestors

Several life problems related to health, finance and relationship could potentially be related to ancestor issues.  If there are persistent life issues, which don’t go away, it can be caused by neglecting ancestors. WE are expected to propitiate them which helps them to move to a higher plane, and they bless us in return with good things in life. It is said that even the thoughts we think, are influenced by the ancestors. 
I heard a spiritual teacher say that he was able to help more people by recommending to do the Tarpanam practice, than by meditation!!.  This takes advantage of the fact that we are closely connected with our ancestors, genetically (which is proven by science) and via soul.  Just as there is a lineage on the part of genes, there is an inheritance on the part of soul. Just because science doesn’t have a way to understand soul, it doesn’t mean the doesn’t exist.
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We are connected to ancestors emotionally as well which makes  it easy to connect to them during the ritual. This is a very simple ritual that takes only a few minutes at most…but this simple act works better than hours of meditation. ​
In India, people approach experts to do this, but the method suggested above is for own regular practice, without any expert help.

We talked about moon phases in our last post… The best moon phase for ancestor rituals is new moon or no moon (Amavasya), which happens once a month.
“There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.”  -- Max Muller
See you all next meet up!