What's Your Mantra?

I was just sitting here, doing some japa to my guru mantra, and it got me to thinking. What's your mantra? Do you have one? Do you use one? Can you tell me or is it secret? Do you use more than one? If so, what's your system? I'm curious.

The mantra I use is the one that I was initiated with at Kripalu. It's not secret - anyone can use it and we did use it as a community way back in the day. That mantra is Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya. The translation I was given is, "Thy will be done Lord, not mine," basically, "I surrender to what is."

While I lived at Kripalu, I did receive another mantra with a group of people during a retreat. It was supposed to be kept secret, except for those of us who were together that day. It was one syllable and I'm not going to try and spell it out here - I don't even use that mantra.

I like to chant the Gayatri Mantra and there are others too, but if I'm going to sit down and "do a mantra," the one I do is the first one. It's comfortable, I know it, it comes naturally to me now, and it seems to be effective.

So, what do you use?

Transparency

I'm big on this. You probably already know that about me. I don't have much to hide. I'm open. What you see is what you get pretty much. Some people I know are uncomfortable with that - it turns out the people I know for sure who are uncomfortable with that are people who do a lot of hiding and lying. Okay person. Nevermind.

It can be uncomfortable to say one thing and have that ring out in space. Other people may hear what you have to say. So if you like to say one thing to one person and something else to a different person (sometimes known as talking out of both sides of your mouth) you may not be comfortable standing by what you've done or said or having what you say be public. That doesn't mean you have to go around saying everything you've got going either. Filters are useful!

I sometimes like to say what's on my mind and when that changes, I'm happy to update. I think it's great that we share ideas and opinions and clips and songs and pictures. During the teacher training something came up about when to play mantras. It was suggested that maybe we don't play mantras doing certain things (supposedly unconscious things that perhaps happen at parties ha!). My point is if you can't play mantras doing what you're doing because it's not worthy of the mantra, why are you doing it at all?

Just this moment's thoughts...

Mantras

Oh Dear. As I wrote that I realize I have a lot more to say about this than I'm willing to type out at the moment.

So point form.

-it's better to have something good rather than something bad going on in your head
-ultimately you don't want to have anything going on in your head
-and then eventually you'll have all kinds of normal things going on in your head but you won't care either way because they'll just be there
-mantras can help this process happen, they can be placeholders for the space in your head while you're shifting the negative out
-they have more or less meaning depending on what you attribute to them
-they are vehicles to the space inside although they may have intrinsic value on their own, but this is less important than where they bring you

Did that make any sense?

Mantras are what's happening anyways - they're the things we repeat in words to ourselves. Some mantras are designed to clean things out. They're like helpers or tools that we can use to create an inner environment that's peaceful. It's like burning incense inside.

A conversation with a YTT student this evening was about whether or not it's cool to play mantras as background music. For some people this doesn't work because the mantras have so much value as sacred tools that to use them as ambience is to take away the value or drain the importance of them. For others, it's so nice to have that as input into the space whether or not full attention is paid to the mantra while it's happening.

Some mantras are like medicine. This mantra from Krishna Das makes me cry when I hear it just about everytime. So for me, it's not practical to have it playing while I'm driving or leading a class. It's not that I think it's wrong to hear it while I'm doing other things, it just calls to me and demands my full heart.