I rarely talk about my methods of meditation to anyone. The subject came up because of a woman who can’t meditate because she cannot clear her thoughts. I told her of an experience with a friend of mine, Chrysta, who on one of her trips to Los Angeles, went to a Zen Buddhist Temple downtown for a many hour meditation session. The monk who spoke with us when we first got there, was AMAZING. His presence was SO STRONG it was impossible to ignore, yet he spoke in a gentle, assured tone bereft of arrogance. After Chrysta’s session, when I picked her up, she told me about the experience and something the monk told her that I remember to this day.
Chrysta had expressed to him her frustration with trying to find a quiet place to meditate. There was no place where she lived, she told him, that was peaceful and quiet enough to meditate. He told her there is noise EVERYWHERE! You cannot escape it – no matter where you go on this Earth. He said the mark of one who can meditate successfully is one who can go ANYWHERE, ANYTIME under ANY conditions of noise and meditate.
While imparting this story to this new acquaintance of mine, I mentioned I also cannot clear my thoughts, so I often meditated to music. She surprised me by saying forcefully, “that’s not meditation!”. I countered gently by saying, “well, yes, that is how I meditate”. She continued in her violent opposition to my methods and I let go the argument, knowing her narrow-mindedness would not let her see it was indeed possible to meditate with music. I doubted she would even listen if I had imparted that I had often successfully achieved states of bliss and restfulness as one would obtain with many hours of deep sleep. Because I have to work with this woman in ritual, I calmed my initial reaction of thinking her arrogant and let the subject rest.
Over the next few weeks, I thought about what she had said. I tried an experiment. The next time I sat down to meditate, I did it without music. It took a couple of sessions, but I learned to just let the silence carry me and the ever-present case of tinnitus I suffer with let go while I strove to see what I could achieve with this new method.
The results started coming within a couple of days. I noticed my dreams beginning to shift in theme and emotional temperament. I decided to add silence to other times I was accustomed to music, such as while driving and working on the computer. I HATED doing this because I dearly love music, but it was my choice and knew I could quit if I saw no results.
During these times I visualized an incident that happened to me way back in 1st or 2nd grade. I was caught daydreaming many, many times by the teacher. I would stare at a corner of the ceiling, falling into a sort of meditation where any noise around me was just noise and not important. It was easily ignored. During this revisiting to those times, I kept telling my subconscious it was all right, she has my full attention now. Tell me anything she needs to.
Here I am in the second week of my experiment and the most profound change in my dreams occurred last night. I dreamed I was an ethereal being – playful, beautiful, delicate – joyfully flittering about the material world. At some point some evil people had imprisoned someone I loved and I broke down sobbing inconsolably in front of his cage where he was being held captive and tortured before my eyes. While they discussed over me what to exact in blackmail from me, for they coveted my powers, I suddenly realized that if they let him go free, they would never stop hunting us while we were alive. A great calm overcame me as I decided we must shed our physical bodies in order to escape them.
They were confused as to why I had grown so calm, but they could not stop me as I freed my love in preparation to take us both Across the Great Divide beyond life and death. Never had I felt so powerful and sure I had this ability. The entire dream I had much power – like the dragonfly, but this was the point in the dream I was the most powerful.
The dream carried an undertone that while asleep, I knew my subconscious was rejoicing that I had stopped the noise and ignoring it and was imparting to me its “thank you” in gratitude.
