This is part 2 of a 4-part series. To read part 1, click here.

Imagine that you’ve gone to your favorite food market to pick up something for dinner. You’re scanning the bread shelves…looking for a tasty loaf…when you hear a voice calling your name. What do you do next?

You turn in the direction of the voice.

You shift your attention from the bread to the voice. The sound of your name focuses your awareness and you turn towards the person who’s calling you. It’s natural to respond when your name is called.

This is how mantra meditation works.

Because every being has a name. When the name is called—that being responds. The spiritual practice of mantra meditation employs this principle of “naming.” Because it’s not just things and people that have names.

Every state of consciousness has a name.

Because every state of consciousness is a living being: a self-organized field of information and energy. “Love,” “Freedom,” “Strength” aren’t abstract ideas.

Love is a vibrant field of energy and information.

It’s a living state of consciousness. Love isn’t an emotion—it’s a field of energy and information that is permeated and vibrating with the frequency of..um…love.

At the center of that field is the purest, most essential, vibrating quality—a pure presence of love. That vibrating presence is the mantra of love. Mantra meditation puts you in touch with that vibrating presence.

When you meditate on the mantra of love, you become…love.

When you meditate on the mantra of freedom, you become free.
This is what the great sages who developed the mantra meditation system discovered.

In their deep states of meditation, they communed with radiant states of love, freedom, and creativity.

They attuned to the mantric resonance pulsing in the center of those transforming states. When they opened their eyes and came out of meditation, the echo of the inner resonance remained in their awareness.

Returning to the everyday state of consciousness, the sages remembered the pattern of that inner resonance.

And in a flash of spiritual genius, they realized that:

• If they wanted to connect with that love-consciousness again—they could do so by invoking, chanting, meditating on that inner resonance…that mantra.
• If they could attune their mind and heart to the inner resonance of that mantra – they would infuse their mind/body with the energy and intelligence of love.

By meditating upon the mantra, the ancient yogis discovered that they could attune or re-tune their being to the awareness, energy, and wisdom associated with that mantra.

A mantra is the “name” of a living, vibrant state of consciousness. Here’s the key: it’s not the word for that state of consciousness.
It is the state itself. The love mantra is the essence of love in auditory form.
The freedom mantra is the essence of freedom in auditory form.

A mantra is the sound essence of a living field of energy and intelligence.
If you want to touch and be touched by a state of consciousness—be it freedom, love or peace—chant its name, chant its mantra.

And just as you turn from shopping for bread when someone calls your name…the energy & intelligence of freedom will turn toward you when you chant its name…its mantra.

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Ed: Kate Bartolotta