Combining Vipassana with Hindu Mantra Meditation

These past months have seen much change for myself. Spiritually, I'm not the same person I was a year ago. Whether it was moving, starting a business, music production etc, one thing has always been a non-negotiable portion of my routine: Meditation.

Now I've been meditating for some years now, mainly insight meditation or vipassana. You notice a thought and let it go. The goal being non-judgemental awareness. But lately, I've had trouble with compulsive thoughts and behaviors/patterns, that no matter how much I try, seem to keep cropping up. I value being mindful because I've noticed it's directly correlated to me accomplishing more in my life. Not to mention an increased sensitivity that improves the quality of my life.

This strategy has limitations when it comes to substantively changing behavior however. I was becoming more aware, but more aware of things that were holding me back from my true potential. This is where mantra comes in. I have been studying the methods of spiritual development laid down by the renowned occultist Israel Regardie. In his book "12 Steps to Spiritual Enlightenment" he recommends that the aspirant, before undertaking more esoteric/complex spiritual operations, concern himself with building bodily and mental awareness through stillness and rhythmic breathing and then learning to control and focus the mind through mantra.

I'd already had years of experience in the former with the exception of rhythmic breathing. With this new knowledge I began to enact these practices of foundational spiritual development. The results were nothing short of astonishing. Most of the behaviors I didn't like naturally started fading and was replaced with a renewed sense of purpose and fervour. This wasn't easy mind you, there were still instances of intense craving and unrest but when I noticed this I would stop whatever I was doing and spend a couple minutes in quiet reflection listening to chant. These practices gave me just enough of a fighting chance to start conquering my lower self. Needless to say, I'm excited to continue. In a further post I'll detail more physiological phenomena that have begun occuring.