In Sahaja, we regularly speak of the power of our attention and how important and central it is to our meditation practice. If you’re new to Sahaja, here’s the upshot. The rising Kundalini energy elevates our attention to a higher plane of consciousness. All the wide-ranging and amazing benefits of meditation result from our attention being in that higher unique spiritual realm. A purer and clearer attention can get us more easily into that state, and vice versa, when our attention is in that higher state, it gets purified, steady and balanced – enough for us to take full control of it.

While there have been many aspects of our attention spoken about in our articles, and we’ll continue to do so in the future, here are the most important things your attention needs to avoid. These are abjectly harmful to our attention and, therefore, to our pursuit of spirituality and meditation.

Our attention is the vehicle of our consciousness. It represents and manifests the states of our consciousness. These states include the states of deep sleep, waking, regular existence, and the higher state of consciousness that we reach during Sahaja meditation. In that higher state, we perceive the spiritual realm of the universe by connecting our spiritual being to the all-pervading energy of the universe. 

Most other forms of meditation result in benefits, with the attention being in the lower and regular state of consciousness. Sahaja distinguishes itself by lifting our attention to the higher spiritual realm, also referred to as the Collective UnConscious by renowned psychologists like Carl Jung.

This makes monitoring and managing our attention the most important aspect of our meditation practice. And this is not just during each meditation session but the entire time that we’re awake. Focusing on our attention and controlling it is vital for a meditator; even though in Sahaja, a large part is done spontaneously by the power of the rising Kundalini energy.

Last Friday, our instructor and experienced practitioner David Dunphy gave a very interesting introduction and guided meditation session on how our attention works over time in creating a permanent and lasting effect of meditation. While we all are familiar with what meditation can achieve for us during a session of meditation, what about the lasting and permanent effects of meditation on us?

In the last part of this article, we wrote about how Sahaja meditation is all about developing precision skills with your attentional control and using it for effective meditation experiences. The most interesting part of how this works in Sahaja is that it is part cognitive and part spiritual, primarily because of the elevation of our attention to a unique, higher state of consciousness.

This higher realm is entirely spiritual but not completely unknown to researchers and psychologists. Carl Jung spoke about it relatively vaguely and from a theoretical perspective, for instance, and called it the Collective UnConscious. However, Sahaja is a one of a kind practice of meditation that helps materialize and experience this higher state in a tangible manner to unleash a host of powerful benefits. And it gives us living and real proof of this higher realm in a much nuanced manner.

What do people most regret at the end of life? Either not spending enough time with family and friends or spending too much time on inconsequential things. What it all boils down to is not protecting their life’s greatest asset— what they direct their attention to.

Sahaja is all about attention and attentional control. It’s the lifeblood of your existence. Our consciousness manifests as the power of our attention. And our attention gets subtler and begins to focus on better and higher things soon as we perceive any journey of self-improvement, let alone Sahaja meditation.