Meditation to reset yourself
Updated: 7 days ago
The Backward Meditation: A Vigyan Bhairav Tantra practice and meditation to reset yourself and freeing yourself from the past.
Intro
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra lays out 112 methods of meditation. One of them asks you to look at a past happening and watch it as if it were unfolding on a screen, seeing even your own form in it, without stepping into the scene as if you are playing a role in your life. This is a practice I return to often as it helps you detach from the events and experiences, and it benefits you more than you know. Here is exactly how to do it.
The purpose: what this practice is really for
At the surface, this practice unwinds the mind. The events of the day leave loose threads: an insult you never let settle, a desire you barely noticed, a sound you heard without hearing. Going backward through them lets them settle, so you can sleep clean. But the teaching points to something deeper.
The root problem is identification: being so merged with what happens in time that you can't step back from it. You can already see how it works with your childhood. It's a memory now. You can look at it from outside, and it feels like a dream. The one looking hasn't aged a day. The sutra asks you to watch not "you" but your form.
The teaching is precise about this: you were never in the scene, only your form was. When someone insults you, they insult the form that stands in front of them. When you see your past form on the screen of memory, it loses the characteristics it had in the present and is transformed. It stops feeling like me and becomes something you watch.
At its deepest, this is a way to know the untouched reality within you. Body, mind, and story all happen in time, and they come and go. What watches them is not in time. Success and failure, praise and blame, youth and old age all pass over it without touching it, and you remain innocent and unscathed. From this seat, desire, which is really the past projected into the future, loses its grip. As the past becomes a dream, the future dissolves too. That is where the transformation lies.
What you need
A bed, a dark room, and 10 to 15 minutes
Nothing else
The practice, step by step
Lie down and settle. Do this at the very end of your day, when you're ready to sleep. Close your eyes. Let your body relax.
Begin at the end. Start with the last thing that happened: you, lying in bed. This is the first frame of your film. Do not start from this morning.
Rewind slowly, scene by scene. Move backward through the day one scene at a time: getting into bed, brushing your teeth, dinner, the conversation before it, the commute, the meeting, the morning. Go as slowly as a slow-motion film. Include small moments you barely noticed, like a song from a street or a house you passed. The mind recorded them all, and they can cling if they're never seen.
See your form. In each scene, notice yourself as a figure: how you stood, what you said, how you looked. This figure is your form at that moment. You're the one watching. Try to look at it as if you were remembering someone else's day.
Feel nothing new. If someone insulted you in the afternoon, watch it without getting angry again. If someone praised you, don't get elated again. Each of these landed on the form of that afternoon, which has already gone by, like a river.
Catch yourself when you get pulled in. You will get pulled in. When you notice you're angry or stirred again, don't fight it. Take a breath, tell yourself, "This is a film," and carry on from where you left off. The noticing is the practice. If a memory feels too heavy, open your eyes, pause, and come back another night.
Stay backward. The mind will want to jump to the morning and run forward, because that's easy and familiar. That re-emphasizes the day and tightens the trap. When you catch it, return to reverse. If you find it hard, warm up by counting backward from 100 to 1, and notice how unnatural that feels compared to counting up.
Arrive at the morning. Keep going until you reach the moment you first woke up today. Your mind is now back at the freshness of dawn. Let go and fall asleep like a small child. Don't chase sleep.
Going deeper: a day for your whole past
After a week or so of nightly practice, set aside a full day. Go to a quiet place, a beach or under a tree. If your body allows it, fast, and stay silent. Lie down and begin from the present moment, feeling the sand or the ground and the sun, and move backward through your life as far as you can remember. Stay the observer the whole way.
Common mistakes
Going forward instead of backward
Reliving instead of watching
Rushing through scenes
Judging or scoring yourself in the replay
Bringing it into daily life
Starting with the past is easier because nothing is urgent there. Someone insulted you a long time ago, and it's just an old picture. But keep practicing, and one day you'll notice, in the middle of a real insult, that you can step aside and watch it as it happens. Anger requires identification. Without it, there's nothing for anger to grab.
What the practice gives you
The teaching is clear that this is a slow cleansing, and that the benefits build over time. Here is what practitioners can expect:
A lighter mind at night. Going backward unwinds the mind. What was tangled in the morning gets settled by evening, and you return to the freshness you woke up with.
Better sleep. The text says the practice helps deeply with trouble falling asleep, because sleeplessness comes from a day that's still hanging on you. Over months, the quality of sleep itself changes, and the mind becomes more aware even in rest.
Less reactivity. As you practice watching insult and praise without getting pulled in, you begin to do it live, in the market or the office. Anger becomes hard to sustain when there's no one to be angry at.
Freedom from the old story. You stop being pushed from behind by your past. You're no longer dragging unfinished business into every new day.
Loosening desire. Since desire is the past looking for repetition, seeing the past as a dream lets desire wither on its own.
Recognition of the witness. This is the real fruit: knowing, not as an idea but as experience, that you are the one who watches, and that this one is never touched.
A note of care
This is a gentle practice, but memories can be intense. If you're working through something heavy, trauma or grief especially, consider doing this with a teacher or therapist. There's no rush.
Closing
Try it for seven nights and notice what changes: your sleep, your reactions, your relationship with your own history.
This technique comes from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. This post is my adaptation for daily practice.
PS. This blog is created with the help of AI to ensure readers gain from the practice itself. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the content is authored by me, Shiva Tejo.
Comments