Tratakum Practice – Gazing Into The Infinite
The meditation technique known as Tratakum, Light Gazing Meditation, is a practice used for centuries by countless yogis, sages and masters. It’s a powerful moment of refocusing and re-calibrating one’s mind into the HereNoWhereNow moment, the point of Origin.
This technique is exquisite for the solitary practitioner, but also a powerful healing tool for couples looking to reconnect, reunite, and heal.
In essence, Tratak Meditation is light gazing, whether it is a candle flame or a ghee or oil lamp, the idea is to sit with the flame at eye level and begin to silence the mind nd gradually the being by gazing at the flame, until the eyes must blink or begin to tear. Then, with eyes closed, sit and observe the imprinted image left from gazing.
“We live each day in a world of accelerated and jolting vibrations. In an age of pollution, freeways and constant noise we seek means to relax our overwrought systems without recourse to the vicious cycles of drugs and sensory overload. The first step, we recognize, is to simply sit down quietly and dismiss the cares and tensions of the workday world. And for a moment, all appears cleansed and freshened.
Tratak brings the mind to a one-pointed view, the object of all yogas. It is the single-mindedness of the child, which we can re-integrate into our adult lives without the practice of arduous and esoteric disciplines.
Through daily meditation on light we can learn to penetrate beneath the fleeting, superficial world of names and forms to perceive the timeless essence within. Through it we become aware of our own higher form. Try it and see for yourself.
Tratak, meditation on light, is a tool to bring together the widely scattered thoughts and feelings – a way of focusing, of learning to concentrate. Tratak tames the wild horse of the mind, enabling the meditator to saddle his/her mount and maintain a firm rein.” – T.R.I. Tantra Research Institute
When To Meditate
To be most effective, tratak should be practiced daily at a regular hour. The best times to practice are those which synchronize the meditators daily life with the larger cycles of the planet and the cosmos.
The mood of the planet changes dramatically at the times of sunrise and sunset. This change, which begins about 30 min before the Sun touches the horizon and lasts for an hour, also produces marked changes in blood chemistry.
At the exact moment the Sun touches the horizon, the organism automatically breathes through both nostrils simultaneously. This is the state in which energy can flow u thee shushumna passage of the spinal cord to the brain (the central channel). This is also achieved by practicing Anuloma Viloma or Alternate Nostril Breathing technique.
During shushumna, the body chemistry is balanced. Because both nostrils are working, the temperature of the air in the sinus cavities is equalized. The temperature of both hemispheres of the brain is balanced, and metabolism is equalized. Both hemispheres can now function in synchronization. This is the ideal state for meditation.
The meditator should make use of these planetary cycles and energy changes in the organism. This enables one to live more harmoniously within the natural flow of life,and is the reason meditation at sunrise and sunset has been taught within all the world’s ancient teachings.
Tratak For Couples
Meditation on the flame of a lamp, or a candle, produces a state of mind called “the witness consciousness”. This witness of the self is ageless nd timeless, that essence which survives all transformation of personality, all emotional storms, all changes of thought, all experiences.
The witness is what remains when all social experience nd hereditary traits have been stripped away. What remains is common to all human experience. Called the “collective unconscious” in psychological literature, the witness is centered in the region known as the third eye. According to yogis, one who centers his being here gains access to the reservoir of all human experience, past, present and future.
The individual personality is illusory. Thoughts change, emotions come and go. The cells of the body die by the millions between the rising of 2 Suns, just to be replaced by equal numbers of new cells. Nothing of the body, mind, intellect or ego cannot and does not change in any way, shape or form. There is a sweet continuity of being, “I am” what remains.
Because the individual is like a myth, an illusion, the game being played. The witness is the player. The individual is the droplet, the drop of water merging with the sea. Tratak enables the played to become the player, to gradually erode the barrier of illusion which hides the essence of being. Tratak burns though the myth of individual personality nd restores contact with the divine existence in the human experience.
Because Tratak works with the balance of energies in the system, it is by nature tantric. Tantra is the discipline of yoga dealing specifically with the balance of energies.
This is where the technique becomes powerfully helpful when couples practice together.
Sitting face to face, across from each other, with the lamp or candle in between the two, gazing into the flame for whatever time allotted, there is a masterful reconnection that occurs here.
When soul gazing, the practitioners gaze at each others eyes, and attempt to link their breathing cycle as if breathing together, creating a complete circuit of breath between the two, and as the eyes look into each other’s, the idea is the person in front becomes you, and you them, and together one, and no one, into the infinite, becoming the all.
They become a reflection of self. Creation staring at itself.
When two people bound by Love practice Tratak, the conditioning codes of beliefs, expectations, individual values, childhood/earlier life programming become secondary and placed in a space available for transmutation. At this point the couple begins to feel and feed each other with absolute closeness. The guard begins to release nd resistance begins subside, healing begins.
It is imperative to fulfill the time allotted. If the plan is to gaze for 11 min, fulfill the 11 min.
Meditation Is Not Stress-Reduction
Often people get seduced into the idea that they should sit in meditation for long periods of time. Perhaps they find a certain comfort in this idea. But this is more often than not a way of using sitting meditation as an anesthetic, an escape from our suffering. Meditation is not fundamentally about stress-reduction, even though it does get marketed this way.
Meditation is about much more than this. The disciplined practice of meditation is about transforming ourselves and our world. In truth, sitting on a cushion is like sitting on a bomb. As we become more still, all of the suffering that we have carefully kept out of our awareness, through all of our action and activity, will begin to surface. At times it might even explode into our awareness. If we continue to practice sitting meditation at this key point, we will learn how to be present with all of this. We’ll learn how to be at peace with our unpeacefulness, how to develop steadiness and awareness under any circumstance. -Claude Anshin Thomas
The Outcome
So what exactly does this practice give the practitioner?
Well my friend, try it and discover the world you have not yet seen.
