Meditation

When I first started to meditate, I couldn’t sit still for more than a minute without fidgeting, and by the five-minute mark I was literally groaning out loud. My mind was much stronger than my desire to sit still in silence for five minutes at the time, and I was way too hyperactive. It wasn’t until the end of 1991 that I started to really want to learn to still my mind and sit still long enough to do it. I had found a book titled “How Can I Help?” by Ram Dass and he described a method of picturing each thought like a leaf falling gently from a tree into a river and flowing downstream. I had been to a Pink Floyd concert at the Colosseum in L.A. in 1988 where there was an incredible light show and a video perfectly timed with a drop of water falling off a leaf into a river during Us and Them that had profoundly affected me, so this method was pretty easy for me to imagine. I decided to try it one morning while perched on the edge of the back seat in the express bus to downtown Baltimore. The bus was packed, and I definitely was not uber-focused, but I tried anyway. Late to work, I jumped off the bus at my stop and made a dash for the Inner Harbor where I worked in a law firm as a secretary.

Suddenly, I stopped dead in my tracks because the entire world had transformed in front of me and inside of me. Every particle of space was filled with a moving, floating, almost milky substance that was not only connecting everyone and everything in it, which was everything, but It was Love. Capital “L” love. I was overwhelmed and filled with the glory of That Love to the point that I wanted to cry out and may have actually done. I’m not sure about that, but I was conscious of a man walking fast towards me in a business suit, also probably racing to get to work, who looked wary and who I swear I heard think, “don’t think about it.” The whole experience may have lasted a minute, and as I started to notice the gray sky and fog and melting black/white snow on Charles Street against the curb, the effect wore off and I continued to work.

But my entire life changed that day and in that minute. My appetite was whetted, and I began to frenzily meditate, and started a spiritual group with a good friend of mine where we would meet at different houses and occasionally take field trips to psychic mediums, channelers, and other spiritual events. I attended everything around me that could teach me about God and about meditation. I eventually started to use the mantra, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God, and the Word was with God,” from John 1:1 in The Bible because someone told me I needed a mantra to overcome my “monkey mind,” the nonstop chatter in my head. It wasn’t until I met Kathy years later that I would learn how to really meditate. Looking back now, every single thing I tried and did is what led me to Her.

Kathy would always say that no time is ever wasted seeking for and praying to God, and that at some point, every seeker would meet a real Teacher and be given the gift of Nam. But initiation doesn’t guarantee that a seeker will fulfill their vow to meditate 2 ½ hours every day. In fact, at some point for every seeker, meditation becomes either impossible or very difficult. It is during this time that Kathy used to tell us that even slipping away for five minutes, or 10 minutes would help us progress. I know I have used the advice many, many times, and that eventually I always get back to the full 2 ½ hours daily.

Kathy used to tell us about the benefit of regular and punctual meditation and how that creates an atmosphere of meditation where it is easier to focus and clear the mind. The same is true with the “hour of elixir’ at 3:00 AM, when the airwaves and ether are the clearest. After now 33 years or more of practicing meditation, there is little that I have not meditated through – physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, broken bones, migraines, and devastating losses. And slowly, slowly, slowly, my mind has learned to calm pretty quickly when I sit to meditate. Not always, but usually, and I realize that it is true that there are no quick fixes when it comes to meditation. It is indeed the turtle and not the hare that will win the race. Ultimately, as Kathy used to say, “It is the quality and not the quantity that matters.”

Oh my, I miss Her!

Sending Love,

Kelly