Photo by Daria Volyanskaya on Behance

The Journey to 2 Hours

In the summer of 2017, I came across Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson. At that time, I’d never read a book that big. The size almost seemed formidable.

To my surprise, Steve’s life (and Isaacson’s writing) was quite captivating. Not only did I read it in full, but I also read it up to five more times, cover to cover.

For an aspiring entrepreneur like me, the book was full of lessons. Every page gave me an insight into Steve’s character. For the next 2 years, the book served as a great inspiration as I re-read it every time. In an effort to follow in his footsteps, I started my own company and was doing fine.

Until 2019 that is. This is when we had a huge fall-off with the investors and the whole thing came cracking down like a house of cards.

During this fall, I was giving Steve’s biography another read. This time though, my search did not end with the book. I hunted the internet for his videos, documentaries, talks, and quotes. I learned more about the aspects which were left uncovered in the book — like his relationship and talks with Kobun Chino, his spiritual advisor.

With that, I started going deep into Steve’s spiritual nature. I learned more about his visit to India. I scrounged the interviews of his college friend Daniel Kottke to know more about what kind of books Steve read and what spiritual practices he engaged in while still in college.

Buddhism, meditation, spirituality, fad diets, and acid. These seemed like the major themes of his life back then.

Inspired yet again, though in a different aspect altogether, I resolved to meditate every day. I was struggling to even sit for 5 minutes. But thank God, I never gave up.

I read books like [Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/402843.Zen_Mind_Beginner_s_Mind) and [Cosmic Consciousness](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2047118.Cosmic_Consciousness_A_Study_in_the_Evolution_of_the_Human_Mind). Apparently, I followed Steve’s book recommendations to the letter.

In hindsight, my quest was about getting into his mind — to see the world from his eyes. This is why I was vigorously replicating what he did (thankfully, not his diets and LSD).

In this process, one book stuck out — [Autobiography of a Yogi](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/639864.Autobiography_of_a_Yogi) by Paramahansa Yogananda. I’d decided to read the book, but it didn’t really seem interesting at that point in time. So I didn’t order it.

Soon after that, I was at an airport book store and saw Autobiography of a Yogi starting me in the face. I decided to give it a shot. Yet, even then, I kept it on the shelf for a long time! “400+ pages about a yogi? Eh, not sure,” I thought.

At this point, my startup was almost finished. I had to think about something new. And it was at this time I picked up the autobiography.

It was difficult to stop reading. I read it everywhere, anytime I got the opportunity. As soon as I finished the book, I had to learn about Kriya Yoga (which Yogananda mentions in the book as the great technique for Self-Realization).

I was then elated to find out that there was a center near my house that was teaching Kriya. And lo! Their introductory course was coming up in 2 weeks. I didn’t tell anyone about this and secretly went for a 3 hour class on meditation.

From there, I developed the habit of sitting for 15 minutes, at least once a day.

As the course progressed over the next year, I slowly increased my time and added another session in the evening. I tried my best to be the most diligent aspirant in my class!

Around 10 months after my first class and training in different techniques throughout, I was finally initiated into Kriya. 9th May 2020. It was a turning point in my life.

From then on, I’ve been consistently meditating for at least two hours a day split into two sessions. I also do longer meditations once a week and go for seclusions whenever possible.

Here are a few of the changes I’ve seen in my life since then.

Finding a Happy Place — Inside

Meditation gives me a happy place to dissolve myself into whenever I like.

It’s as if you enter a room, and all outside disturbances and worries start to fade away. In the vacuum so created, joy, happiness, and love step in to thrill my soul.

It’s dramatically easier to cope up with stress, heavy workloads, and difficult situations with meditation. (*If *I have stress, that is).

Material things don’t matter as much when you find this hidden gem in your soul. You can eat, or fast. You can drink water, or remain thirsty. You can wear the latest clothes or damaged clothes. It doesn’t matter.

When you meditate, you reach a point where, scientifically speaking, you’re able to withdraw energy from your nerves and the senses. This is not a very high state.

Even if you meditate for 20 minutes, you’ll find you’re less aware of what your hands and legs are doing. You’ll be completely still. Gradually, you can experience subtler-than-material realms that every yogi and master talks about.

Once you get a taste of that reality, it’s hard to be confined to this material body. It’s hard to obsess over little things in life.

By giving you an experience of the Infinite Love that is in store for you on the other side, meditation helps you to be even-minded in all circumstances.

In fact, I’ve started to develop dispassion for the pleasures of this world.

That brings me to my next point.

Suffering Becomes Painfully Apparent

All of us have some bad habit or the other. Some habits are grave like smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. Others not so much — addiction to TV, coffee, meat, etc.

Whatever the case may be the suffering inherent in all these habits become painfully apparent as you meditate.

You start to see how smoking, for example, isn’t giving you the joy you thought it would. That it’s a momentary pleasure that leaves you with nothing but ill-health.

I’ve been able to completely cut or at least reduce my dependence on each and every bad habit in my life.

As a result, I follow a better diet, I watch less TV, I don’t obsess over negative news, I exercise more, etc.

Perhaps the most surprising habit that I’ve dropped is drinking coffee. I was someone who drank 4–6 cups a day. Coming from that to zero has been a great achievement for me.

And meditation made all the difference. It made me realize how caffeine excited my nervous system and how I can get the same energy with just a couple of breathing exercises instead.

Playing the Game of Emotions in Third Person

To put it simply I went from “I’m angry” to “I’m feeling anger.”

There’s a huge difference in those statements. In the first one, you’re identifying yourself as someone who’s angry. In the latter, you realize that you’re in fact a nice person and just feeling anger at this moment in time.

With the realization, you can work backward and see what caused you to be angry.

Are you trying to control others? Are you wishing for things to be different than they are? Do you have unrealistic expectations of someone?

These questions are truly powerful. The problem is, no one asks themselves these questions.

We’re so caught up in the anger, that we lose any opportunity for introspection.

Meditation flips the game, allowing you to observe yourself and your negative patterns of behavior so you can work on them.

This brings me to my next point.

Self-Awareness > Self-Deception

Humans have the magical ability to deceive people. But even more fascinating is our ability to deceive ourselves.

Think about this. We all have issues in life, right? We have bad habits, big or small, and even if we don’t there’s always something we can improve.

If it is so, why do most people remain stuck in one place. Why is their improvement stunted or linear at best?

Because they’re simply not aware of the issues within themselves. We spent the majority of the moment in our lives finding fault in others — and some people are pretty good at it! Yet, we fail to turn that searchlight inward and introspect our own follies.

Meditation does just that. It reduces self-deception and increases self-awareness. Remember this — awareness precedes progress.

You cannot solve a problem that you’re not aware of. And once you’re aware of that problem, you can’t ignore it for long. Sooner or later, you’ll have to face it and conquer it for your own growth.

Photo by Daria Volyanskaya on Behance

Increased Intuitions and Synchronicities

Intuition can be understood simply as a higher voice in our head that we rarely listen to. It’s a feeling in its highest sense.

The more I meditate, the more my intuition seems to grow. It’s not that I’m able to make scientific discoveries or answer the riddles of the universe. Intuition can easily be tested in little ways.

For example, the uneasy feeling you get when you meet a stranger is significant — that feeling can be your intuition guiding you to not be with that person.

I’ve been able to gauge a person’s level of consciousness just by the way they behave. This helps me significantly in deciding people to hang out with.

You may think that this is just a prejudice of the mind. I won’t deny the possibility of being so. But the more you meditate, the clearer your understanding becomes. With a clear understanding, your intuition becomes more refined.

Just like intuition, synchronicities in life are also happening all around us. But we’re the ones who fail to notice them. The more aware you become as a result of your mediation practice, the more time seems to slow down (space and time are illusions anyway).

Thus you can notice patterns that others don’t. Strange things may happen that others don’t understand. But to you, they make sense because you know something significant is going on.

The more I meditate, the more dots I’m able to connect to make sense of life.

Those Around You Can Sense the Change

One of my friends asked me the other day, “How are you so gentle? If someone talked to me like that, I’d smash him in the face!”

I just smiled inwardly and knew it’s because of my meditation practice.

Energy works in subtle ways. We don’t see it because we live in a material world — we can only see and feel matter. We can’t *see *energy. That doesn’t mean it’s not working!

When you meditate, you start to form a certain kind of uplifting aura all around you. There are aura cameras that can capture this. I once heard of a man who was inwardly chanting ‘Aum’ and was being photographed by one such camera.

In the photo, one could see a white light surrounding his body which is associated with a higher consciousness. Ergo, these things are real.

When people sense this change, they come to you for advice. They know that there’s something different about you, but they don’t know what. Whatever it is, they want more of it.

This is why it’s said that meditation is not only about *you. *It’s a great service to mankind. By uplifting your aura and consciousness, you help people in unimaginable ways.

Clear Sense of Purpose in Life

When you start to understand where real happiness comes from, your goals in life change. And they become clearer.

You now know that everything you might like to run after will probably not give you what you’re looking for. I believe in that with all my heart.

The purpose of my life has then shifted to seeking that state of Cosmic Consciousness and God-union. Believe it or not, that’s your goal in life too — the only difference is you don’t know it yet.

You see, many of us know the goal of life is happiness and bliss. So what then is the difference between a saint and a mafioso? The path they choose to seek happiness.

Even though we don’t understand it, but the mafioso truly believes that he will be happy doing what he does. Soon when he sees the results of his actions, his purpose in life is also bound to shift (if he’s aware enough, that is).

The more you meditate, the more your purpose in life will shift. Because you finally will be on the right path, the saintly path.

Life Is Not as Serious as You Think

In fact, life is not even as real as I once thought it was.

Here’s a thought for you to meditate upon.

When you dream while sleeping, you create all the objects and characters out of your own consciousness. These dreams often mean nothing. In the dream, you’re the villain, the hero, the victim, the oppressor, and the oppressed. Everything is coming out of your own consciousness. It seems absolutely real.

But when you wake up, you realize that nothing was real. The years that passed in that dream were perhaps only minutes. That there was no concept of space — one second you were in your room, another second you were in a shopping complex.

It makes no sense until it does.

You see just like you, God created this universe out of his consciousness. He is literally in everything. We are a part of his dream-drama. Our individual dreams are dreams within His Cosmic Dream.

Ergo, the world you see around you is not real. It is only a dream of God. And when you will wake up from this dream, you will realize there was no time, no space, there was only Pure Consciousness and Eternal Bliss.

When you start to meditate on these realities and get a taste of them, life is not serious anymore.

It doesn’t matter if your work wasn’t appreciated, or your boss screamed at you, or your spouse cheated on you. We only suffer because we think all this is real. Ah, only if we knew **from experience **the unreal nature of this world all suffering would vanish in an instant.

Photo by Yogi Singh on Behance

Mundane Tasks Become Interesting

There are no mundane tasks, there are only mundane states of mind.

When you feel inner joy and happiness, you can access that even while copy-pasting stuff into a spreadsheet, doing laundry, or driving.

People Stop Relating to You as They Did Earlier

Even you don’t relate to them as much.

This is one of the drastic changes that happen in your life when your consciousness starts to rise.

After all, when you know that this world is just a false reality, you stop relating to people who spend their lives chasing money, fame, sex, or anything else that death will take away from them!

It’s not that I roam around the streets like Jesus finding people and telling them the Truth. Instead, I don’t find myself as interested in the day-to-day conversations that once captivated me.

Those around me notice this as well. They stop seeing the reactions they used to see. And that’s fine. They now know that I’ve changed and there are new boundaries to be kept.

It’s all for good.

A Desire to Run Away

Often, in moments of spiritual inspiration, I feel like quitting everything I do and going to the mountains to meditate in a cave.

But that’s rather a form of escapism. I have to remind myself that no matter what I do, I have to play some role in this world. I have to do my work with compassion and not use mindfulness to hide from my responsibility.

I have to be a warrior of light and love instead of hiding in a cave.

Life Becomes Easier

Daily tasks that seemed like a burden get checked off easily. There’s much less resistance.

Meditation has helped me develop an attitude of surrender and acceptance. I’m in no way perfect in that practice, but I’m consciously trying to improve.

When you don’t resist life but try to flow with it, it becomes a downhill ride rather than an uphill battle.

Life Becomes Difficult

You didn’t think that life is all roses, did you?

The truth is, you just face different challenges the farther you go.

Whenever you try to do good in this world, there will be people who will not understand you. They may even try to push you down. That’s the harsh reality you have to accept.

I know many people who just don’t believe how someone can meditate for 2 hours. They think perhaps, I’m doing something else. That there’s an ulterior motive behind all this.

This is the same kind of doubt that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. People couldn’t believe the light he bought into this world. They kept thinking that he has evil intentions.

Paramahansa Yogananda said, “Living for God is martyrdom”: martyrdom of the ego; martyrdom of self-will and selfishness; martyrdom of all that worldliness clings to so desperately.

Higher Energy Throughout the Day

Meditation fills you up with physical, mental, and spiritual energy. It’s hard to get that kind of boost from anything else.

The reason this happens is meditation adds fuel to the fire of your consciousness. When your consciousness rises, you feel blissful. Your sense of awareness also expands.

You become loving, calm, kind, and compassionate. These attitudes in turn give you the power to face any challenge throughout the day.

It’s beautiful when you experience it.

Final Thought

This was a lot to take in! Even I didn’t know about all these benefits until I sat down to write about them.

I hope my experience pushes you in the right direction and brings curious truth-seekers like you on to the path.

Joy to you!

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