As I’ve gotten older what meditation means to me has changed. In the beginning, when I was a teenager it was something I was drawn to as a part of a different lifestyle, a way to move away from the things my parents espoused as important, a part of the trailing edges of the hippie generation; free love, free spirit, a more spiritual way of living. But, I came to it furtively and with a small amount of fear. Even in those days I did not know of all the reasons why people say you should not meditate, but I knew only that it was not something “we” did. It was not something for a white, middle class young woman to embrace. My father took special care to speak to me of the dangers of cults in those days. But, even so, I was drawn toward the practice of meditation. That was in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Times have changed since then.
What finally dissuaded me from pursuing meditation was an out of body experience. With a fantastic whoosh I left my body and flew about the neighborhood one night. I had not thought it would happen. I am generally afraid to ride any of the rides at amusement parks and leaving my body in such a fashion without knowing that it might happen had frightened me. It would be more than 20 years before I tried to meditate again.
When I was learning how to channel the books I read suggested meditation would help. I attempted the exercises and though I don’t feel I met with much success, still, I think it helped a little. After I actually started channeling my guides suggested to me that I pick up the pace with my meditation and I began to practice more often. In those early days as I dipped into meditative states I “saw” in my mind’s eye faces that floated about. These were frightening to me, distorted, yawing mouths with saliva dripping. I stopped meditating, but the guides told me to continue. They said the fearsome faces I saw would stop. And, they were right.
It didn’t take long and the faces I was seeing settled in to the Guides and Folk in Spirit I’d been talking to. Later on I learned this is a common thing. You are leaving a reality you have been accustomed to for years and stepping into a wider psychic reality. It can be a little frightening. It also explained to me why I always seemed to come out of a meditation and go immediately to the kitchen to eat. Eating was a way of comfort for me and though the meditation had been pleasant it was still something I’d not grown entirely comfortable with yet. With time that also stopped.
As time went on I realized with the practice of meditation I appeared to be a calmer sort of person. Things that had, in the past, set me off at work no longer had the control or power over me they had before.
And, for the first time I began to think of meditation as a tool to use to sort of hang out with God; another way to pray. I would think, “I want to be with You” as I would start the meditation, as a statement of intention, and somewhere during the course of my brief time meditating, if I was lucky, a mantle of peace would settle upon me.
In the beginning it would sometimes take me half an hour to settle enough to, in my mind, be meditating. Later on I developed my own personal techniques of moving more quickly into what I thought of as a meditative state. One of them was to think of myself as melting, just as the Wicked Witch of the West had melted when Dorothy had thrown water on her. Hey, what can I say? It worked.
There are many techniques to use to meditate. Approach it calmly. Read what other people do. Dance like they say to dance and with time you will come upon the techniques that work best for you. All roads lead to Source.
Recent Comments