Revisiting Mantra as a practice

About four years ago, I wrote a post on how to start a personal mantra practice. I noticed the date of the blog post, and it was right before a lot of things radically changed in my life: my mother and stepfather moved away, America got very strange with Trumpism, my father-in-law just passed away a few months prior. I wrote about how the pranava, or AUM (OM) can “dissolve” one completely, unless tempered with the assistance another deity. In many ways, after I started my mantra practice, my reality “dissolved” right before my very eyes.

Four years on, my practice has changed quite radically. I am not apt to do asana as much if at all. Almost as if that part of my practice has “dissolved.” The one constant is that I have a mantra practice. Every night I listen and chant silently. The practice has not only helped me cope with the Trump years, and has increased my sense of resiliency. Mantra feels like it is beyond prayers. When one prays, one is apt to ask for personal favors from the divine. Mantras align you with the vibration of the divine, and allow you to realize all you need is within, and you have far more than you can ever realize in this lifetime.

Mantras fall into the most of yoga’s categories, like Bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion), Nada yoga (the yoga of sound), and Laya yoga (the yoga of absorption). On a broader level, it could be Karma yoga (yoga of action) and even Hatha yoga (as it can work with chakra sound forms). A few years ago when I started, I simply used “LAM” which activates the Muladhara (root chakra).

I am not trying to proselytize here, as everyone is different and will have different results from this practice. I am simply stating that mantras feel like they are working for me at this point in my practice. They are transcendent of all the physical aside from the ability to listen and speak.

Gandhi once said: “One must be completely absorbed in whatever mantra one selects. The mantra becomes one’s staff of life and carries one through every ordeal.” It was a mantra that gave him peace and inner power to face adversity and the greatest of challenges with equanimity.

I cannot tell you how many times in the past four years how many times I’ve faced my personal fears and was at my lowest emotional points, how much mantras have given me strength to face them and emerge victoriously.

If you want to start your own practice, I would recommend just setting time aside to listen to the Ganesh Mantra: Om Gam Ganapataye Namah. Here is a nice version of this chant. Ganesh, always comes first, as he is the breaker of obstacles. Even if one just uses this mantra, it is sufficient. I feel after a long practice with this mantra, others will reveal themselves to you as needed.

Many blessings on your practice.

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