Sri Anandagiriji:
1- Become conscious that we are suffering. We need to admit it. When a charge surfaces, when we are not feeling all right, the force of habit and social conditioning is to tell ourselves that we are feeling fine. When we are in pain and suffering, we need to acknowledge and accept it. No need to make any effort to move away from it. When you are in fear, there is no point to say you are feeling fine. Admit you are feeling low.
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2- Become aware of habitual questions of the mind to take us away from the discomfort. The mind throws up wrong questions: Who caused this suffering to me? Why did they do it to me? Why should life be so cruel to me? This makes us interested in finding cause and blame to attribute to somebody or a situation and disperses our attention to the questions instead of experiencing what is going on inside. If we get stuck in these questions, we cannot concentrate. What habitual questions are you asking? Once you're suffering, the important part is how you deal with it. It's irrelevant about right and wrong or because of who or why you are suffering.
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3- Ask the right question. Right questions are driven by a vision to experience our emotions. So the question must be how to I deal with the pain? how do I experience it? how do I become free? This takes you right into the experience instead of distractions of the wrong questions. Liberation comes from the attention to the feeling in our body and our hearts. As we pay attention, this is where the process moves deeper. Who and why are irrelevant. You can feel immense focus building up as you ask the right question of how do I become free of it through the experience.
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4- Become aware of the habitual response of blaming, fighting with the situation, or losing all motivation in life. Moving into depression and self-hate. All these are old habits, how we have trained ourselves to deal with it. We fight with ourselves or others, feel guilty, blame others, condemn ourselves or others. Attention is then moving outwards. Constantly prompts you to believe liberation is elsewhere by someone else or situations changing. By doing something else and turning attention away is the habit and the biggest mistake. This brings you more entanglement.
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5- Make the decision. Once you know this is a habit and no sense or logic in it. It's just a track where the mind is moving out of habit. It is foolish. Breaking a habit requires a firm resolve. We need to become clear in ourselves and re-program our responses. Making the decision that I am not moving away from this experience come what may. I'll do anything and everything required to pay attention to the experience. This will break the old habit pattern. This is not a one day affair. Every time you get in touch with charges and you keep repeating your resolve, you will be more able to engage. It takes practice. Resolve and face each time and eventually you will have a breakthrough and the process will get easier. Even if we fail 100 times, we need to resolve the 101st time. That is our ultimate goal. We must reach it. No moving away, no other alternative. Body posture will also help to reprogram new habit-to physically anchor by sitting erect as you make the decision. Close your eyes and breathe deeply and keep your left palm below and close it with the right palm on the right thigh. As you inhale, then hold your breadth, make the decision-"I am experiencing this feeling completely." Then exhale. Do this 7 times.
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6- Invoke the Divine Presence. It's also a matter of divine benediction. We need the intense focus and extra bit of energy. It's important that the spiritual energy or kundalini is activated by divine grace. The brain must be pushed into concentrating all attention. This is like focusing a magnifying glass lens onto cotton in the sunlight. That is what is happening in consciousness. Our emotions can undergo a transformation. You can ask for a blessing from AmmaBhagavan by touching their picture or to receive a blessing from another facilitator.
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7- Allow yourself to go through the whole experience. Just see what you are feeling physically and go with it. There is nothing to make sense of, it is just an experience to go through.
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8- Inner affirmation: After you complete the experience and feel sense of silence, joy or gratitude, you will make an affirmation that "Suffering is not in the fact, but in my perception." Repeat this 7 times. With the first hand experience through the first 7 steps, this teaching will be deeply lodged and the next time the teaching will be inside you and you will effortlessly begin to focus inward. Breathe in and out as before, joining hands on your heart-as you breathe in and hold the breath, make the affirmation, and then breathe out.
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9- Conclude with expressing gratitude to the Divine and/or to AmmaBhagavan. Spirituality is not so much about experiencing higher states and mystical happenings, but about re-programming our responses. Our responses determine our destiny. If we respond out of old habits, we break up our relationships and cause disease. If we respond through acceptance and experience it and see the transformation, we are creating a new golden age.
Teach yourself this new response and that you keep doing it. It will become faster and faster. It is like kick starting an engine that has not been started for a long time. If you follow these 9 steps, we are retracing our mind back. If you become a master in this and it is a habit to transform suffering into bliss, imagine how much confidence you will feel.
We're constantly ensuring that suffering will not come to us. We try to keep it at bay. Do not waste your energy protecting yourself from experiencing difficult emotions. Our need to feel right and analyze and blame keeps us running away from suffering. Once we are a part of the feeling of bliss from following these steps, we will be liberated.
If you see your charges dissolve, your fears and traumas giving way, you will clearly see you are proceeding on a spiritual path. We're always concerned about whether or not we are moving forward. If you can see more and more joy filling your heart, you know you are progressing towards a higher state and better form of living. How beautiful this is. Don't give up! It will seem difficult in the beginning because of the old entrenched mental habits and the mind doesn't want to give up.
We simply need determination in our hearts to do this. As each of us successfully manage to transform suffering into bliss in our lives, we are creating a new program in collective human consciousness and more people will spontaneously notice themselves experiencing emotions. This is our contribution to the Golden Age. Be prepared to put in consistent effort over time. Spend time every day practicing as you come across difficult emotion or adversity. Take this as the opportunity to practice to undo the collective pattern of avoidance.
All analysis and psychological activity is the habit of the mind to run away. If we stay with what is there, we have freedom of the effort to avoid the thoughts. Allow the suffering to freely flow and just keep watching it. I'm sure you will see beautiful results as you practice this sadhana. Practice it. Do it.
