Q. When I meditate, my thoughts wander and I am restless. What should I do?

M. After working all day, it is not easy to calm down right away. Meditate for a while longer. It will help you to calm down. Remember to recite the Holy Names whenever you can. Ignore all the wandering and unwanted thoughts. You may read Master's books, listen to Her tapes and watch Her videotapes before you meditate. You may also play one of Master's tapes softly while meditating, but be sure the sound comes from the front and not from behind you. Any or all of these practices will bring you tremendous blessing. Remember to focus your concentration on the wisdom eye when you meditate.

Q. What does one do if one cannot just sit down and meditate?

M. Then stand up, walk around for a while, wash your face, or take a shower. Take a walk and come back; try again. Don't give up. When you meditate every day, it's not that every day you will get good refreshment and results, but you must do it every day. You must do it whenever you can because God's grace doesn't make a rendezvous with us; doesn't make an appointment with us, saying, "Tomorrow, I will come to give you peace; tomorrow, I will give you a vision; tomorrow, I will take you to the third Heaven." No, no! It comes anytime, any second, even when you least expect it. So you just have to persevere with whatever technique you meditate, and pray to the Godhead, the Most High within us, to guide, help, sustain, and bless us.

Every day we must meditate, with or without success. And anytime, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next minute, you will get it. Just don't give in. Just like when we open a shop to sell things, you never know when the customers will drop in. You have to be open all day long and wait. With or without customers, we have to be open. Sometimes the last customer comes and buys the whole shop, or half of the shop.

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Q. What should I do if my feet get numb while meditating?

M. Try to adjust the height of your cushion. Tolerate the numbness as long as they do not hurt because not changing your posture too often will lead you to samadhi (a blissful state of consciousness) more easily. Being a beginner, you are not yet used to it, but you will gradually become accustomed to this after practicing for a while longer. It is not necessary to cross your legs when you meditate. As long as your back is straight, you may use the most comfortable posture for you, even sitting in a chair.

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Q. Master, when I meditate, I cannot keep my mind concentrate at here. It runs all over the place and it talks about all kinds of different subjects. How do I concentrate and meditate better?

M. Is that the initiated or not? (MC: Are you an initiate?) Because I would answer differently. Who asked that question? (Somebody answers: Yes.) That's why we have to go to group meditation. Because the concentrated power will help us, and we have to take time; some people can concentrate right away; some people take a longer time. I have mentioned previously in the lecture. Also forgive yourself. The situation in this world is not conducive to our tranquil meditation and calm thinking, but try again and again. In this world, we have an advantage, that because this world is so difficult for us to practice, God's blessing is with us many folds. So we walk one step and the Master Power will walk a hundred steps to help us.

If we are in Heaven and practice, it's not that lucrative. Therefore in Heaven if you want to practice, it takes a longer time. For example, here we practice one day it is equal to one hundred days in Heaven. That's why many devas, heavenly beings, they like to be incarnated into human bodies, in order to practice faster. It's because here we have all kinds of rubbing force, like karma and situation and disaster and war and suffering and happiness, all these mixing. It's a kind of a high degree fire to forge us. These fires will forge us into a strong, useful tool for ourselves and for the world.

While we are practicing here, we have also the opportunity to help our fellow beings and, therefore, we gain more merit as well. For example, you meditate alone at your home, so you have only one personal merit. But, if you, through your effort or through your eloquence, you offer your place, for example, for a hundred persons to meditate, then you have a hundred more merit to add up to your personal merit. So you have a hundred times more quicker, you understand what I mean? Or you get another hundred persons to come in to get initiation, these merits are also yours. Because after all we are one, the more we connected with more people, the more expand we become and the greater we become, in terms of merit. Mathematical wise speaking, it is like that.

So it is better than in Heaven. In Heaven everybody is having a good time and so they take it easy. They don't have the motivation behind them to push them to concentrate. That is why I say when you are in deep sorrow or when you are despair you pray better, and sometimes you meditate even better. At that time you remember the master more; you say, "Oh, Master, please, please, please ..." (Laughter.) And then you get better experience that day, bigger light, stronger sound or feel more elated, more near to God. So it is good to practice in this world even though it is difficult.

I am happy that many of our fellow initiates practice very diligently. Some come to the center just to look around but later... Well, they don't look around that long because everybody closes their eyes. So they feel embarrassed after sometime and they also close their eyes, and then they see something inside, instead of looking at pretty girls outside. So there is a very good advantage of having a temple or having a center, where people come together and do the same thing, concentrate and one-pointedness thinking of God; that helps very much. So you take your time. You can look around for a while, and then when you are fed up with it, you close your eyes and meditate with all the people. Okay?

The mind is always having trouble to be controlled; that's why we have to practice everyday. Otherwise, I would tell you, "Get initiation and you are the Buddha." No more work! Right? It is because our habit is long term. It has been many thousands of years of time, maybe more! So to take one lifetime to clear all these is hard work, but it's worth it. Or you want to stay here a thousand more years to continue to do that? Well, it's fun! So that is why I tell you to have to meditate longer time, two and half hours or three hours, because the first twenty minutes is struggling. Just go on, go on with it and after about twenty minutes, it begins to settle down.

After half an hour, you begin to enjoy, and forty minutes, you are gone. (Laughter)

Q. During meditation do we need to keep ourselves awake so that we know that we are meditating? If I fall into a state of not fully being awake or I fall asleep, is there any good in my meditation at all?

M. Yes, it's a good sleep. (Laughter.)

Q. Master, sometimes during meditation with the Convenient Method, I feel a chill from my spine going up to my head, and then there seems to be a feeling of energy encircling in my head. What does this mean? Is this a bad or good sign?

M. It's okay. It's your kundalini at work. Afterward you'll be used to it. It's only a Convenient Method, and still it works all so much, because of the master power blessing you. Other people they practice many years to try to awaken the kundalini, and they can't do it.