Going Within (7 page)

Then I tried directing my thoughts to my body, beginning with my feet, to relax. Slowly and with care and attention, I told each area of my body to drop its tensions: “Knees, thighs, abdomen, chest, neck, and head, drop your tension!” I knew that each area carried tension for its own reasons. I concentrated on each muscle, flexed and relaxed it, waiting between each new relaxation to make sure the tension was not returning. I allowed the tensions to drift away. And waited, consciously enjoying the growing relaxation. Then slowly I allowed myself to drift away. I drifted and floated … drifted and floated. If a thought bothered me, I told it to go away or evaded it by concentrating on a small muscle in a toe or finger. Slowly I realized that my body was completely
relaxed. Then I shifted my focus to my interior center. It was easier than I had suspected. I found a ball of light that I’d heard was always there. It was small. I don’t know whether I “found” it or whether I visualized it. It was irrelevant. It was there. At first it was barely recognizable in the “darkness” within. So I visualized it until it became larger. Now it glowed. Again I wasn’t certain whether it was actually there or whether it was my creation. Again it didn’t matter. Slowly I visualized the light growing, becoming a larger and larger ball of pulsating brilliance. Then, when I felt ready, I directed the light to the pain in my back. It was as though I could feel, on another level of reality, the warmth of the light. I held it as long as I could, and my back pain subsided somewhat. I moved on to my legs, particularly my knees, which took a pounding from the high heels I danced in. I visualized the ball of light splitting into two balls, one for each knee. I bathed my knees in the light. I
literally
felt warmth, because I believed in my visualization. I held the two balls of light firmly in my mind. They were real to me because I wanted them to be real. I
perceived
them as real. It was my choice, my power to hold such a reality. I went with it even further. I decided to make the balls of light blue—a brilliant royal blue. I had read that blue was a healing color. Not only did the balls of light become royal blue, but they seemed to be speaking to me as though grateful to be recognized at last! The blue lights melted into my knees. It was as though I
was listening to the internal language of color and light, which had a meaning all its own. Yet, I was listening to something I had created. Or had I? Had it always been there inside me, waiting to be recognized as a healing device had I only been conscious of it?

I answered my own question: I had created everything myself. I had created the pain. And I had created the healing. I was in control of it all. The pain
and
the healing were inventions of mine. On some level I didn’t understand yet, my knees felt healed. So did my back. I had read about people using visualizations in hospitals (with the aid of doctors) to help heal cancer, tumors, and so on. One boy had apparently healed a hole in his heart by visualizing golden threads sewing it shut. Using some unseen talent and understanding from some other dimensional truth, I had used my own unrecognized power to heal my tired, tense body. If I had created the pain and the healing in my body, was I also creating the pain and the healing in every area of my life? And was that light inside me a tool with which I could create my reality to be whatever I desired?

This, then, was a spiritual technology worthy of examination. This was a new Soul Physics. And how did it happen?

Simply by going within.

4

Meditate and Ye Shall Find

Prayer is speaking to God.
Meditation is listening to God.

Trust tranquility.

S
o my first tool, or exercise, in my self-exploration became meditation.

The first time my journalist friends and eloquently cynical acquaintances learned that I was “into” meditation, they looked at me blankly and murmured a few vague responses—“Oh.” “Really?” “Uh-huh.”—and quickly changed the subject. A few said, “Oh, great!” and then we were off to what might be a fruitful discussion. The ones I really liked looked me in the eye and said, “Shirl, what the hell
is
meditation? I mean, what do you
do
when you meditate?”

So first, exactly what is it? Put in its simplest terms, for me meditation is the process of relaxing my body and mind so that I can quietly go within myself.

For this to happen, I need to be in a quiet place (at least at first; in the beginning I could rarely meditate in, say, a crowded airline terminal). Meditative
techniques vary, but quiet, concentration, and comfort are three keys to settling body and mind.

What does it do? Meditation, or “calm centeredness,” allows the mind to recognize other aspects of its identity. Suppression of the mind is not the object of meditation. Instead, the object is to still and calm the personality in order to allow the mind to freely explore the perimeter of its own consciousness.

What do I do in meditation? First, the position in which I meditate is extremely important to me. You should find your own posture, one that creates the fewest pressure points on your body. Meditating in the lotus position as the Buddhist monks do is not important in the beginning. A painful position is disruptive to meditation and contradicts its purpose. On the other hand, a position that is
too
relaxed will only induce sleep. “The middle way,” as the Buddhists say, is what is appropriate, which is “the way free of rigidity and tension but also absent of self-indulgence.” So sitting in a chair is fine.

The aim of meditation is to stay alert but relaxed. Sitting upright with my back resting against something is what works best for me. This position gives me a “centered” freedom of energy in the spinal column and allows even, gentle, rhythmic breathing. If I’m sitting in a chair, my feet are grounded flat on the floor and one hand is placed on each leg. I place my hands with the palms up and close my thumb and forefinger because that closes the body-current cycle and directs its energy to continue flowing in a
cyclic fashion without loss. I keep my lips and teeth closed gently, which also allows the recycling of energy.

I gently rock back and forth and from side to side to “feel” my center and to make sure that I am comfortable. Then I try to imprint on my body the physical feeling when body and spine are centered, so that I will sit the same way behind the wheel of a car, at the dinner table, in front of the television, or at my desk. It’s a sort of Braille method of remembering how to sit. I don’t mean that I will meditate during those activities, simply that the position of my body will be infinitely more comfortable and less tense.

After I am positioned I close my eyes and begin to breathe naturally. Then I use my breathing as a point of concentration. Concentration is necessary to meditation because it narrows the focus of awareness from the external world in order to access the focus on the internal. I actually follow the course of each breath as I inhale and exhale; in and out. It is remarkable how concentrating on one’s own breathing can enable one to enter a meditative state.

The Eastern philosophies use controlled breathing to induce meditative states because it not only provides the intake of oxygen but also requires the expelling of carbon dioxide.

Westerners generally don’t pay much attention to the multilayered role breathing plays in our lives. We take it for granted and are, in the main, completely
unaware of the miracle that is actually taking place about fifteen times a minute. But breathing is profoundly related to our physical
and
spiritual well-being.

When we are stressed and tense, our breathing rhythms reflect such a state of mind—erratic, uneven, shallow, breathless, and so on. When we are peaceful and relaxed, the breathing rhythm is longer, deeper, more all-nourishing within. When we are depressed, or in moments of high stress, we automatically sigh or hyperventilate as though attempting unconsciously to inhale the “spirit force” and the oxygen that comes with a deep and nourishing breath of fresh air. The body knows, the spirit knows, but the Western mind doesn’t pay much attention.

In the Eastern cultures, people are more aware of the effect of breathing on the human being. Therefore, they are more expert in how breathing can influence the mental and spiritual well-being of an individual.

Buddhist monks, observed under laboratory conditions, can alter their states of consciousness by employing various techniques of breathing, which in turn affect the physiology of the body. They can alter their brain waves, heartbeats, and pulse rates by using the power of their own consciousnesses to control and vary their breathing.

We could do the same thing, to a somewhat lesser extent. Sometimes when I find myself angry in a traffic jam, I simply close my eyes for a moment, block out the distractions around me by concentrating
on the physical feeling as the air enters my nostrils, and gently inhale. I
feel
the breath and follow it to the innermost part of my chest, hold it there for a bit, then gently exhale. I do it again—then again. If I concentrate on the inhale-exhale rhythm, I am always amazed at how soon my anger dissipates and my energy is restored.

To be more specific about it: learn to inhale to the count of ten seconds and exhale to the count of ten. You begin to feel the miracle of the science of healing through breathing. When you can do ten, expand the count to fifteen, then to twenty and so on. An accomplished yogi can take
three minutes
to inhale one breath and another three minutes to exhale! Try it and see what sophisticated control is involved. You will never take breathing for granted again, and the exercise will help in your meditations.

So, even though we are normally unaware of the automatic miracle of our breathing, it is possible to utilize such a basic “involuntary” act in a more nourishing manner. In any case, good breathing is one of the essentials of meditation.

So now you are seated comfortably, eyes closed, concentrating on your nice, easy breathing, in and out, in and out. Already you are more relaxed, calmer.

With the use of breath during meditation comes the use of sound. In the Eastern cultures a sound used during meditation is called a
mantra.
The use of mantras in the West has also become very popular. A mantra is a phrase chanted, hummed, sung, or even
just “heard” as a sound within the mind to stimulate the calmness desired in meditation. It is usually a phrase evoking the name of God. Some people go to gurus to get their own personal mantras. Others try out chanting various phrases until one feels right. I, for example, do a silent mantra with each of my hatha yoga poses. I hold each yoga position for twenty seconds and internally chant, “I am God in Light.”

The sound vibrations literally caress certain internal areas of myself that seem to respond to the frequency of the mantra’s vibrations.

Chanting has always been believed to be very effective in experiencing “God.” Murmuring over a rosary; chanting in a synagogue; repeatedly intoning a prayer in church—all are much the same process. However, all religions seem to agree that the actual naming of the deity in each respective culture gets better results. Chanting seems to be a universally accepted method of removing all thoughts and interferences from the mind, which, when emptied, can be filled with “God feeling.” There is also new scientific research indicating that mantra sounds that rise slowly and are resonant can decrease the heart rate and induce relaxation. After all, we’ve been singing our babies to sleep for centuries….

I will have much more to say about chanting in the chapter on chakras, but for the moment I would like to backtrack and talk
about
meditation, rather than how to do it. As a process it is vital to your self-exploration, a basic first step from which the rest
flows. So it is important both to get it right and to understand its implications.

Meditation is not something to be taken casually. It is a pathway into the center of self. Therefore, it is extremely important to evaluate your image of your self
before
meditating. If a person believes in demons, evil spirits, Satan, and hell, it is possible that those conditions of belief—fear, panic, guilt—could emerge during deep states of meditation. But remember that such beliefs are a
conditioned
response. They have been taught—indeed, drummed in—precisely in order to produce fear and negativity. Remember too that we create our own reality. In the initial stages of meditation, the psychological and religious makeup of one’s temperament could be reflected in one’s meditative experience. Belief systems suddenly become “truth” and can return to haunt us. When we begin to go within we are stirring up our conditioned belief systems, sometimes painfully shattering a negative image by which we defined ourselves for many years. That can produce a sense of fear which leads us to stay with “the devil we know” rather than go with the angel we don’t know. Fear blocks access to the God within.