Hi, my name is Mark Heath, and I'd like to welcome you to this short introduction to Transcendental Meditation
I have been a teacher of TM for 25 years and in this presentation I will talk about what TM is and what it is not, a little bit about how it works, some of the benefits, and how you would go about learning.
I’d like to start with a few key features of Transcendental Meditation.
Number one, it’s simple
It's simple not because it's simplistic or a beginner's meditation, but because there
is an elegant simplicity to the practice, a profound, elegant simplicity
Number two, it's natural.
There's no manipulation, there's no suggestion.
Anyone can practice Transcendental Meditation as well as anyone else
It’s simple to learn, and enjoyable to practice.
Number three, it's effortless...effortless in contrast to many other meditation techniques, which involve concentration, or control of the mind, trying to clear the mind of thoughts.
TM is practiced ideally for twenty minutes twice a day, sitting comfortably in a chair, with your eyes closed.
It can be done on a train, on a plane, in a car, if someone else is driving.
It starts working right from the get go. No need to wait weeks or months to see the results
And this is what it's not...It's not a philosophy.
There is no doctrine you have to practice or study
Secondly, there are no behavioural changes required — you don't have to change your diet, your lifestyle or anything.
And finally, there's nothing to believe in.
I want to emphasise this, because sometimes people think, "Oh when I learn to meditate, I have to believe in it for it to work.”
You can be 100% skeptical and the technique works just as well, the benefits are just as profound, as if you went in thinking, "Oh I believe in meditation, it's gonna work.”
So there's no belief whatsoever.
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To understand what Transcendental Meditation is, and to understand how it compares to other forms of meditation or self-development, we can use the analogy of an ocean.
You're on a small boat, you're in the middle of the ocean and all of a sudden you get these huge swells, these huge 40, 60 foot high waves, and you might think, "Oh my god, the whole ocean is in upheaval."
Well, not really.
Because if you do a cross-section of the ocean, you see these 40 foot high waves, and the ocean is like in reality a mile deep, it’s active on the surface, but at the depth it’s naturally silent, and it doesn't matter if those waves are 200 foot high waves — at the depths the ocean is untouched, naturally silent.
This is the nature of the ocean...active on the surface, silent at it's depth.
And the analogy is our mind.
The surface of the mind is the active thinking mind...all the things that we're thinking
about all during the day... like the waves on the surface of the ocean.
It’s the gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta mind...I gotta
do this, and I gotta do that, and I gotta call him, and I gotta call her, and then I
gotta make a list, and then I gotta find the list, then I gotta make a new list, and I
gotta get going, and I gotta slow down, and I gotta get to sleep, and I gotta wake up..
And there's a natural inclination, a natural desire to have some inner calm, some inner clarity, some inner focus, some inner inspiration, some inner peace, some inner happiness… it’s natural.
And the operative word there is inner.
So the question is, where is that inner?
And how do we get it?
How do we get there?
Deep within every human being, the mind of every human being, deep within all of us, is a level of the mind that is already calm, already settled, already wide awake.
It was there yesterday, it's there right now,
It'll be there tomorrow...we've just lost access to it.
So we are stuck up here, we're stuck up on the surface level — the gotta gotta level
Transcendental Meditation is a simple, natural, effortless technique that allows
the active thinking mind to settle down, and experience quieter levels of thought, and quieter levels of thought, and then experience what can be called ‘the source of thought,' or the 'transcendent level of the mind,' — it’s ‘pure consciousness,' and is within every human being.
This part of ourselves is a reservoir of infinite calmness, stability, creativity and intelligence which over time becomes infused into our day to day lives
Our next video explores in depth the wide range of benefits that result from the daily experience of this level of profound calmness and stability.
