Last Sunday, we commenced a new series on solving problems in our lives using meditation as a tool.

The lives of meditators who pursue spirituality are different in some ways. We consider spirituality and Higher Purpose at the center of our lives and to guide us at every step. More importantly, the patience, calmness and resilience we develop because of our meditation percolate to every other facet of our lives. That is, of course, the goal.

The fundamentals of the approach to problem-solving involve two parts – working on our spiritual state at all times and finding specific or targeted solutions to our and others’ problems. The former can even help us stay clear of problems, so we don’t have to worry about them or solve them. The latter helps us quickly resolve our problems to continue to focus our attention on more important things in life.

The purpose of our lives is to evolve to better states of spiritual existence. But what does this really mean?

Fortunately, Sahaja teachings make this crystal clear and provide a definitive path and approach for spiritual self-improvement. The short answer is that we’re supposed to improve our personality traits, gradually but surely, compared to an absolute scale of moral and ethical values. And these values have been carried in spiritual teachings and scriptures from very ancient times. In fact, they are consistent across civilizations and their spiritual texts and literature. The ten commandments are an excellent example of such values. 

More importantly, these values and this code of conduct are coded in our subtle energy system. In simple terms, we can become better people by overcoming all our weaknesses and imperfections within us till we become nearly perfect in our personality and character. 

The spiritual journey that we follow is also interesting. At the most basic level, we seek food, water, shelter, and security; then we progressively climb to higher forms of seeking behavior, such as quests for wealth, affluence and power. Ultimately, we pursue the higher, subtler aspects of existence: self-actualization, self-realization and spiritual truth. And through these subtler phenomenons, we can improve our subtler inner self and get it to dominate our behavior, in other words, control our mind, ego and body. We also develop a superior intellect that can see the higher truth.

The drive, energy and power to evolve in this manner is placed within the Nabhi chakra. It is the force in us that pushes us continuously to seek the ultimate.

The truth is that there is no definitive answer yet about whether we can change our personality. At least not as proven by scientific evidence. Despite offering one of the most powerful forms of meditation there is to practice, we at Sahaja, still will stop short of making any such claims that it can help change your personality traits.

We human beings are incredibly complex creations, and we were made that way by nature and God. And we are also the ultimate sophistication of awareness within living beings. Perhaps, God created us to establish an ironical truth that the personality and character traits of human beings cannot be predicted or influenced with a high degree of certainty by science or technique or human beings themselves. The fact that the divine itself cannot cross free human will is a testimony to this. In a way, we were built as the ultimate version of living beings – with maximum subtlety, complexity and free will.

Let’s examine, however, the extent to which meditation can influence personality and how we can take advantage of it.

A brand new study conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that teens rate Anxiety and Depression as the top problem amongst their peers. And this plays right into what we offer and talk about all the time – meditation, whose core and gateway benefits are indeed stress, anxiety and depression relief.

But in our view, the solutions for teens are a bit more nuanced. Can we get teens to meditate? Even before that, how do we establish credibility and a positive rapport with them as a member of the family so we’re talking at the same wavelength that they can understand? How do we show them that we care and can help them out?

Something as profound as Sahaja meditation has many answers in achieving a holistic and workable solution to their problems.

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.