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Featured podcasts

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You can now listen to podcasts with George on your favorite podcast channel through https://rss.com/podcasts/mindtheownersmanual/. You can visit the website of the host, Lawrence Castilia, at https://www.mindtheownersmanual.com. You can take our Introduction to Meditation Program on his site, which is designed for those of you who have not meditated before or have not been able to successfully meditate.

You can now watch additional videos of George answering seekers’ questions on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@mindtheownersmanual/videos.

New Print Book

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We are releasing a new print book—we expect delivery before November 15, 2023. It’s called, The Path Across the Sky: More Reflections on Religion, Cults, and Terrorism. You can pre-order this book at https://mudrashrampublishing.com/MP_books%20info.html#PAS. You can view the cover and table of contents at this link.

If you are interested in the topic of religions, cults, and terrorism, you may also wish to acquire the original book in this series, Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing? at https://mudrashrampublishing.com/MP_books%20info.html#RCT.

You can view the cover and table of contents at this link, and order either one or both books on this site.

Mistakes Meditators Make

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By George A. Boyd ©2018

I have taught Integral meditation since 1983, and have published 16 books on this topic. I have observed the following mistakes meditators make:

  1. Meditating without a clear objective – if you meditate in this fashion, you will simply slip into a state of reverie. While this is relaxing, it effectively wastes your time. Every meditation needs to be done with a purpose.
  2. Not going beyond preliminary stages of meditation – while many people can reach the stage of mindfulness and begin to become aware of what they are experiencing in the present moment, this is only the first layer of meditation—the Conscious mind. Meditators need to reach the Superconscious mind to do the deepest work of meditation.
  3. Jumping ahead to practices that are not keyed to your current stage of spiritual development – This all too common blunder has people meditate on a spiritual essence other that your own Soul. If meditators practice powerful transformation techniques along with contemplating this higher essence, it can liberate powerful energies in the mind, and create dangerous splits in identity and perception. You can lose your motivation to pursue your personal goals; you can begin to sense that the world and your life are unreal; you can begin to hear visions and voices that tell you to do odd things.
  4. Get involved in a spiritual cult – While there are many reputable schools of meditation, there are a number of groups that, in exchange for teaching your meditation, expect you to let the leader of this group  completely reprogram and control your mind and your life, and have you dedicate all of your labor and money to him or her. I would strongly advise that those seeking meditation instruction have some knowledge of the dynamics of cults and if you start getting warning signs, get the heck out of there!

(1) We have articles about cults in our Library.

(2) Those of you who may like to understand this subject more deeply may benefit from reading our book, Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing?.

(3) In 2023, we released the follow up volume to this book, The Path across the Sky. Those who enjoyed Religions, Cults, and Terrorism may wish to add this newer volume that brings new insights into this subject matter to their library.

(4) Those of you who would like to learn more about cults may also like to take our Public webinar course on Cultism, which is available under the Public Webinars tab on the Public Webinars page. Once you create a Public membership by clicking on the link at the bottom of this accordion tab, you can purchase the webinars. Then you will be able download the text and listen to the webinar(s) that interests you in this series.

  1. Having only one technique – If you call a handyman to your house, he won’t show up without a whole toolbox. Many schools of meditation teach just one technique. It’s important that you have a whole tool box of methods to use to work on the issues of your personality, to lift your awareness into your Soul, to transform your Soul, to get guidance from your Soul’s intuition.
  2. Remaining in an altered state of consciousness – Some schools of meditation that cultivate the experience of enlightenment encourage their students to remain fixed in this altered state of consciousness 24/7. This is not a good idea. You can become narcissistic, believing that the whole Creation revolves around your needs. You can become arrogant and grandiose, believing you are a superior all-knowing god-like being. You can become delusional, believing you are a Christ-like being, and expecting everyone to recognize how enlightened you are.
  3. Not understanding the context or big picture of why you are meditating – It is important to have a long term goal of what you are seeking to achieve in meditation and have the appropriate techniques to help you achieve this. Many meditators get excited when someone does a “guided meditation” and takes them somewhere, but they no clarity about what is the purpose of meditation and how they truly actualize their spiritual potentials. The objective is not to take visionary journeys into the higher mind; the objective is that your Soul will accomplish the Great Work that it was destined to do.

We have developed our Integral meditation system to help you avoid these common meditation mistakes. Those of you who wish to learn a complete system of spiritual development that steers you away from these spiritual detours, you may wish to investigate our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and they by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Learning to Master Meditation

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By George A. Boyd ©2015

Many beginning meditators become dependent on their meditation teacher to guide them into a state of meditation. They are not confident about their ability to meditate on their own, and consequently, when they try to meditate on their own, they get poor results. If they can wean themselves from dependence on the meditation teacher to guide them, they can arrive at meditation mastery.

In general, it appears that the gradual acquisition of meditation mastery follows a progressive gradient through seven stages:

  1. Practice meditation through listening to a compact disk or recording of the meditation teacher’s voice; you may also utilize video recordings or Internet videos of the meditation teacher to learn the rudiments of meditation techniques.
  2. Learn the steps of a meditation technique and remember those steps. Practice the steps one-by-one until you can do them on your own.
  3. Develop the habit of regular meditation. Establish a routine of meditating at a regular time in a regular place.
  4. Explore how you can deepen and gain greater mastery of your attention using this meditation technique. Experiment using finer concentration, or greater relaxation; absorbing of your attention into new vehicles of consciousness; or gaining enhanced awareness of your vehicles of consciousness, as you meditate.
  5. Learn three to seven different meditations to take you to the same focal point. There is more than one technique, for example, to focus your attention on the attentional principle, the Self, Being, the spirit, a nucleus of identity, or your Soul.
  6. Make a detailed study of the vehicles of consciousness that you access through meditation through studying the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course [for those who have completed one of our intermediate courses—who have completed either the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the Accelerated Meditation Program], or taking a course like the Introduction to Meditation Program [for beginning, new meditators] or the Adventures in Pinda webinar series [for those who are experienced meditators, and have completed one of our intermediate meditation programs].
  7. Learn the meditation to the degree where you can guide others. Typically at this stage, you have integrated the ability to do the meditation into your Soul, and you have thorough knowledge of all aspects of the meditation.

We encourage you to make the effort necessary to master each meditation you learn, so you may ultimately be able to teach others how to meditate, and guide others in meditation, as you have previously been guided.

These same steps are common to any type of learning, so if you can apply these steps to meditation, you may be able to use them in other subjects you wish to learn. These seven steps are:

  1. Listening to or watching the instructor
  2. Initial practice
  3. Automatic, habitual practice
  4. Ability to explore and creatively innovate
  5. Gaining greater insight and facility with the method
  6. Integration with the Soul, so it becomes an expression of your deepest nature
  7. Teaching or guiding others

If you persevere, you will gain mastery. It will not come overnight, but if you will continue to practice, you will see improvement and progressively deeper meditations.