Mantra Meditation: How To Use Mantras Effectively To Enhance Your Life

A mantra is a tool that you can use to free your mind from any problem you have in your life. As you chant a mantra diligently, you will see a transformation happen in you. You may feel happier, more at peace, calmer, and more focused on what matters to you. 

Mantras will get you in the right mindset to achieve your goals. Using a mantra with a central purpose and a specific number of repetitions will improve your awareness and reduce stress, turning you into a more compassionate person with more positive thinking.

To achieve spiritual objectives, a person needs to chant the same mantra 125,000 times or more. You may think this is impossible to achieve, but the good news is that, for our daily problems, the solution is much simpler.

Mantra Meditation: Using Mantras to Solve Our Daily Issues

Before you start your mantra, you need to understand what the issue is — it has to be clear in your mind and heart. Be as clear as you can when describing the problem you want to resolve, and then write it on a piece of paper, fold it, and place it somewhere visible. Make sure it is visible when you are performing your mantra.

You may want to decorate the place where your issue is placed, but that’s not necessary. All you need is to make the problem physical and have serious intent to solve the issue.

People who have chanted for a while are ready to adopt some chanting discipline. Chanting disciplines typically include saying one or more Sanskrit Mantras for a period that helps address an issue. There are two basic approaches to chanting mantras: repeating the mantra as often as possible or the forty-day discipline.

Repeating the Mantra Often

If you choose this approach, you will need to remember to say the mantra as many times as you can. It is possible to do it while performing basic tasks like dishwashing or taking a shower, but you must concentrate on saying the mantra. In this case, you should spend at least 21 days doing this practice.

If you want to keep track of how many times you are saying the mantra, here’s an easy math exercise you can do:

• Sit down with a watch and repeat the mantra for five minutes while counting the number of repetitions — you can use your fingers or beads (a rosary or a mala).
• Multiply the number of repetitions by 12. The result is how many times you say the mantra in one hour.
• Keep daily track of how many hours you say the mantra.
• As you finish the period you have allocated for this discipline, add up the number of hours and multiply by the number of mantras you calculated as your rate per hour. The result is the number of mantra repetitions you did for the entire period.

Forty-day Discipline

This approach is usually given by Eastern texts and used by people for thousands of years. However, the 40-day method has a few particularities that you need to look after:

Place

Set a specific place where you can practice your spiritual mantra twice a day.

Time of Day

Repeat your mantra at the same time daily, once in the morning right after you wake up and once in the evening before going to bed. The best time to say your mantra is at sandhya, the moment the day meets the night — two hours before dawn until dawn and two hours before sunset until sunset. According to Eastern scriptures, this is when great spiritual energy is streaming across the earth.

Completing the Practice

You should do your best to complete the practice without interruptions, so you might want to turn off your phone or put it on silent, tell your roommate or partner that you need some time alone, or make sure there’s someone else watching the kids.

Prayer Beads: the Rosary or the Mala

You may want to use a rosary or a mala to help you count how many times you repeat your mantra. Make sure you are only using it for this discipline until the end and that you place it in a safe place. Some people even wear it when they are not saying the mantra. Whatever the religion, both the rosary and Mala can be used to count the repetitions of a prayer or mantra.

The Mala

The mala consists of 108 beads. The end bead of the mala is called the Meru (mountain in Sanskrit) and contains the accumulated power of all the mantras chanted. The chanter should never cross over the Meru. The mala is finished when the person reaches the Meru. Then, to continue chanting the mantra, the person should start counting backward from the Meru.

The mala has 108 beads because Vedic teachings say there are 108 main astral channels leading from the heart into the subtle body out to the rest of the subtle body. These channels are like astral nerve tubes, or blood veins, that receive energy every 108 times that a person says the mantra.

Malas can be made of:

• Sandalwood: General-purpose material used for any spiritual discipline.
• Tulasi or basil wood: Mantras invoking the energy of Rama or Krishna are strengthened by this material. It also aids the invocations of the feminine energies Lakshmi and Saraswati.
• Plain Wood: General-purpose material used mainly in Tibet and Nepal for any spiritual discipline.
• Rudraksha: It increases the power of mantras of Shiva and Durga, and Kali. One can also use it for the Gayatri mantra.
• Crystal beads: Crystal beads also become repositories of spiritual power.

The Catholic Rosary

The rosary is an ancient spiritual tool. The most common Catholic rosary has 54 beads and a pendant with five beads. This rosary equals a half mala, and the pendant is the Meru. There’s yet a longer rosary with 15-decades of beads plus the pendant.

Religious and Personal Images

You can put a picture of a saint or another religious picture that is dear to you next to the written mantra or the place you meditate. If you are doing healing work for someone else, you can place a picture of the person for whom you are working.

Spiritual Diary

As you meditate and repeat your mantra, you may see or hear things you want to refer to later. Therefore, it’s recommended that you record your impressions so that you don’t forget your spiritual experiences and can refresh your memory as you need to.

Any Mantra Will Do

You can do a spiritual discipline with any mantra you like. The critical thing to remember is that the more effort and concentration you apply to your practice, the better the results. That’s why the disciplines are done twice a day.

Moving the Levers, Spinning the Dials

Once you start on your spiritual discipline, you will notice the consequences of your efforts as a result of clearing out negative energy.

Don’t worry if you start to hear or see supernatural things during your mantra meditation. These are spiritual forces working to bring the practice’s benefits into your life. Remember that your body is doing two things. One, it is bringing energy from the near-spiritual surroundings and processing kundalini energy through the chakras. Two, this new energy is releasing the accumulated junk energy from your body. 

You will feel certain emotions and have specific thoughts as you experience them momentarily until the lousy energy is entirely out of your body and mind. When you finish the meditation, you will recall anything important to you. Honor what you see and hear, but move forward.

You may see mystical symbols, such as a flame, a patch of blue, or a five-pointed or six-pointed star, at the center of your brow.

Press forward even if your body fights to change

Some parts of ourselves fight change because it is not comfortable. So try not to miss a day, even though some obstacles to your practice will arise. We call these spiritual tests, and they are the result of a powerful force that you have brought into play within yourself.

Sometimes when we do mantra meditation, we may feel there’s an internal conflict starting. This is because we are changing the nature of internal and crystallized energy clusters that are part of our subconscious mind. 

Don’t give up on your practice. Things will improve, and you will see the mighty changes that mantra meditation will bring into your life when you finish the 40 days.

A Sample Spiritual Discipline

If you don’t know when to start, you can use the Maha-Mrityunjaya mantra for longevity and good health. 

Om Trayumbakam Yajamahe

Sughandhim Pushti Vardanam

Urvar-ukamiva Bandhanan Mrityor

Muksheeya Mamritat

(OM TRY-UM-BAH-KUM YA-JAHM-MAH-HAY

SOO-GAHN-DEM POOSH-TEE VAHR-DAH-AHN

MRIT-YOUR MOOK-SHEE-YA MAHM-REE-THAT)

“Shelter me, O three-eyed Shiva. Bless me with health and immortality and serve me from the clutches of death, even as a cucumber is cut from its creeper.”

You will feel the benefits due to the power of the mantra combined with your commitment to complete it, no matter how long it takes you. Even when you do the discipline for someone else, you might experience unanticipated positive outcomes.