Meditation Chants and Tones

When I first learned about meditating, it was as a three or four year-old, and it was through a chant.

I was taught that the chant, or tone, had a deep spiritual meaning; and I felt this whenever I was in a room with people who performed it.

Many years later, as I picked up several other chants and were taught what they meant, I also learned about Chaos Magic. It was through a rather unexpected source, as many important lessons in my life often have been.

The gist of chaos magic is the same as it's whole motivating rationale: symbols have no inherent power, other than what we invest in them. Symbols include invocations, chants and tones.

It was then that I began to reflect on my meditation chants and tones: what if their power rested simply in what I believed them to mean?

The Power of Belief

There are many stories throughout the world of the power of belief. The whole idea of the placebo is based on this phenomenon. Chaos magic is also based on this idea: it is our belief in things that give them power. We channel whatever power we have access to/generate through symbols and tones; and these work because we disengage our conscious, judgmental mind, from the result that we desire to achieve. Unconsciously/subconsciously we are thinking of that result, but our conscious mind is not getting in the way of it.

The best way I can think of to illustrate this is when we are trying to learn something which we're struggling with. Often, our thoughts start to drift towards how hard the thing that we're trying to learn is; and our thoughts are focused on the thing being difficult, rather than actually learning it. How can we learn something if what we're focused on is how hard the thing is to learn? We're thinking of the wrong thing: the thing that we don't want, rather than the thing we do.

The use of symbols and tones gets around this problem, or blockage. It's like a trick to bypass our conscious mind. So, when we want to focus on healing ourselves, rather than focusing on the part that's unwell, and thinking of the unwellness, by consciously thinking of the symbol or tone that for us represents wellness, that's what we're actually, and only thinking of. We're not thinking of being sick, we're only thinking of being better, because that's what the symbol or tone represents.

How to put this in action

The easiest way is to find a tone or symbol that already represents what you want: a meditative chant, for example, and perform it.

You can though, create your own. One way that I've seen is to write down a series of words that represent what you want. Then take the first letters of each word, and from that craft a new word that you can chant. Another way is to also take the first letters of each word, and combine them into a symbol. Then imagine your energy pouring into that symbol; especially your negative feelings and energy, with the idea that when they connect with the symbol, they are absorbed and transformed by it, which powers the symbol and what it represents.

Finally, and this flows on from the above, pick tones and symbols that feel right to you, because that's your subconscious showing you what you feel connected with and what, for you, represents what you want and need. Go with the flow of yourself.