If you observe the thoughts that disturb you most during dhyan, they would be centered on the people who are closest to you – spouse, children, parents, the next would be financial problems and third would be office problems. None of you will be disturbed or get up early from dhyan because you have to feed someone or help your neighbour. If that is happening, it is a progression, otherwise you are simply disturbed by the play of maya and are ruining your life and birth under its influence. Understand that whatever is disturbing you is temporary. It will disappear sooner than you think it would. Everything in the physical is bound by time and whether you are 20 or 40 or 60, that time will pass very soon and since time will pass, so will that object of desire that is disturbing you. What will not pass is dhyan because when you go into the state of dhyan, time ceases to exist. And when there is no time, nothing passes. Time is the swaroop of maya, for you it is the 5 senses and the 5 elements constituting your body. Once you still your thought process, i.e. when the death of mind happens, then your 5 senses become shant and so do the 5 tattvas and once that happens there is no time, your body does not age and you have no problems. The period for which you sit in dhyan, that much time doesn’t exist for you and the result of that is that the effect of maya starts declining on you. Till there is effect of maya, you cannot do yog or dhyan. And the effect of maya is what I mentioned before—you earn and someone else spends it, you take tension and someone else enjoys it. Have you ever seen tension on the face of the one who is spending your money? 

—The writer Yogi Ashwini Ji is the head of Dhyan Foundation, Delhi. For details contact: ashwiniyogi@yahoo.co.in