Many people, in particular teenagers and college students, are interested in third eye meditation. What is third eye meditation? How do you practice it?

The practice of third eye meditation is very easy to understand. On your forehead, above your nose and in between your eyebrows, is a spot which is often called the "third eye." In third eye meditation, you concentrate on that spot with concentrated visualization. The purpose is to bring chi or prana to a dormant chakra, or energy center, which is located right at that spot. When it opens we say that you have tentatively succeeded at third eye meditation.

The visualization that you perform on this spot is usually a picture of a little diamond, silver flame, white moon, a Sanskrit letter, a Hebrew letter, a Buddha, or some other auspicious silverish or bright white figure. The principle is that when you concentrate on a region inside or outside of your body, the chi energies of your body will tend to go to that point. Because the chi or natal energy of your body goes to a particular point, it will mass in that region and when it masses, it will open up the chi channels and chakras in that area because of the friction.

Let's take another example that you can easily understand. You can visualize any of the bones in your body by imagining the shape of the bone and that its color is bright white. In time, with continued practice you will send the chi or energy of your body to the bone. This will often cause the bone to seem to glow inside your mind. By sending energy to a bone in this way, you can also banish sickness and pain. If you suffer from arthritis, this often improves the pain in a bad area. All you have to do in your visualization practice is concentrate on a region inside the body and thereby send the body physical energy to a mass at that point.

When it comes to the region of the third eye you are performing the very same function. But why should you do this at the region of the third eye? That's because the third eye is the location of a chakra in the body called the two-petalled "Ajna" charka. This is a major upper termination point of the chi channels (acupuncture meridians) in the body that stretch all the way from the perineum up your back and to the front of your head. When you concentrate on that point because of the visualization, you will tend to send the chi to that area which will in turn help to open up the chakra in that region.

It is very easy for people to develop slight psychic abilities from doing the technique. In Anthroposophy, for instance, people often visualize the stages of germination of seeds at this point in order to help open up the chakra. In Tibetan Buddhism, many people are advised to visualize a bright image at this point, within their throat, behind the breastbone and in their bellies. Many spiritual schools have similar visualization teachings to open up chakras.

However some people who do this visualization never experience any psychic effects whatsoever. The reason is because in order to power the Ajna chakra of the third eye, the chi energy (known as prana in Indian yoga) from the lower regions of the body has to ascend upward. If all the chi channels stretching from below to above are blocked or obstructed, which is normally the case, then very little energy will ever reach the third eye no matter how much visualization practice you do. You have to practice a long time to first open up these other channels as well. That's why only advanced meditators who have practiced meditation for years, and whose chi channels or acupuncture meridians are thereby somewhat cleansed because of the prior practices, experience any of the psychic abilities that are often reported to occur from this practice.

The reason that you practice this method, however, is not to develop psychic abilities. The main reason you want to practice it so that your chi from down below will enter the region of the head and help quiet your mind so that you can enter an advanced meditative state called samadhi. That's why this technique is often practiced in Taoism and in yoga. But it's also practice in Esoteric Buddhism, western alchemy, and Sufism. The purpose is not so that you develop psychic abilities so that you can see spirits and ghosts and other beings made of Chi, but so that you can learn one-pointed concentration and let go of your view of being a body. Concentrating on the Third eye through meditation is just another way of trying to bring about this spiritual result and enter the real spiritual path.

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