Every day our attention is drawn to promotional and marketing messages on virtually every channel or platform we spend time on – the internet, social media platforms, TV, billboards and so on. There’s always someone who wants to sell something. The better ones try to make your life better or build a relationship with you – but they eventually are on the mission to make you buy something. 

For decades, we’ve seen advertising on the rise and diversify into so many channels – from print media, radio, and television to now into streaming platforms, social media and ever clever and innovative methods of catching our attention.

While many of us have matured to this phenomenon and even grown resilient in some cases (turning off or muting the advertisement for instance), it’s useful to understand the deeper effect of marketing and advertising on our spiritual life.

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.