Dharana
by
PedroComment: I am not sure what you meant by 'Dharana', I never heard it in terms of yoga. There are two similar words in hindi:
1. DharanA (pronounced AA in the end) -> means belief.
2. Dharan (pronounced n at the end) -> means acquire, wear, put on etc etc.
anyway the main thing that I wished to write is I did a form of meditation similar to this one. With a little difference, the aim was to concentrate on one thought and so that we could give atmost energy to it. But to achieve it the path that I took (and was suggested to me) was to first switch off the mind from all the thoughts. That is make your mind a zero thought mind. Now once you have done it you could control your mind and can concentrate on anything.
Switching off mind is not so easy as it sounds. It was tough, I got up early in morning around 4 am, took bath and sat out for meditation. I tried and tried. It took me 4 months before I could make my mind toughtless (may be for around few seconds).
There were few other rules I had to follow, most difficult of them were:
1. do not lie
2. Do if you have committed.
I could honestly say that at least for a year or so I did not lie at all. Even now when it comes to my own matter I could not lie. (no matter how bad the consequences I get after it).
The rewards, were great, just after that I had very very good memory.
In my 11th standard I did not buy any book and still scored highest marks in science and maths.
I remember I was able to read the biology book before the start of 11th class and I remembered almost every thing from it.
Became very good at maths and arts.
Life never been the same, still my teachers say that they would never know what happened to me, that a mediocre student suddenly started to top all the science and maths exams.
anyway meditation is good, if you could afford to do it.