My Experience First Learning Meditation

After my NDE type experience in Kauai, I developed an intense desire to move back into the state of Bliss and Perfection that I felt from that time, permanently. The inner junk that temporarily disappeared at the time of the NDE, started to return slowly, over several months. I vividly remembered the Perfect state, but it became more and more a memory, rather than the fully-embodied experience of right Now. I looked back all the time in longing. I started to look in different directions, trying to find a meditation I could learn to bring me back to expanded Consciousness. When you experience great Expansion, and then it fades away, what you are left with is more suffering than you were in before the Expansion, because now you have the memory of what can be, and what feels like should be.

It took a little over a year before I finally learned a meditation technique. It just dropped into my lap, so the speak. I was in a Somatic Massage Therapy program in Northern California, just having turned 22, when some Ishaya “monks” came to the school to teach a weekend class. I just a the chance to learn. My friend and I went to take the course together, which was held at someone’s house. The host allowed us to stay in her spare bedroom, which was so generous.

The very first time I “used” the first technique, I dropped immediately and deeply into such a beautiful, timeless Peace. It was very obvious. I couldn’t have wished for a “better” first experience with meditation. I was sold right there and then.

We spent the weekend learning, meditating and laughing our guts out. In the night, when everyone had left and we were in bed together, we just talked and laughed…and laughed…and laughed. I decided on that first weekend that I was going to write a book called, “Laughing your way to Enlightenment”. And I’d still like to write that book.

After the weekend, I was very dedicated to meditating three times a day, as we had been instructed to do, 20 minutes at a time. I was never able to stick to this 20 minute recommendation, as every time I closed my eyes, when I would open my eyes to check the clock (we were told not to use an alarm, because that would be far too startling), 2 hours would have passed by…every single time. And I was aware and awake during my meditation. I was very Silent and Peaceful. I knew I hadn’t fallen asleep…and yet, what I thought felt like 20 minutes was actually 2 hours. My life began to change rapidly…on the inside.

I changed my schedule to allow for the time I needed to meditate in two hour increments, in the morning before breakfast, in the afternoon, when I didn't have class, and then I would meditate as long as I could before falling asleep. This meant I had to drop the one and a half hour yoga class that I normally took most mornings. We had an excellent yoga teacher, and I loved taking yoga, but meditation became the most important thing in my life. I suppose you could say that I quickly became addicted to meditation, and the profound depths of Unmoving consciousness that I was being dropped into each time I meditated.

Because I was meditating for so many hours, many hours more than we were told to meditate each day, I started to feel like I was "going crazy". I talked to the teacher that lead the Breathwork class that I took as part of my curriculum, and she told me to stop meditating. She made me promise to stop. I lied and told her I'd stop. But I knew I couldn't stop because it was the only thing I had left to hold onto. Everything else that I thought I knew was quickly flying away from me. I felt I had no foundation under my feet, I couldn't even tell what was up and what was down to find a ground to stand on. I still had 4-5 months left in my 750 hour Somatic Therapy Program, and I just did my best to complete all the work and hours required of me, even though I was in a sense dying inside. My ego was dying. My sense of who I am was dissolving, and I had no one to help me day to day, to understand how to navigate this path.

My friend and I, who learned to meditate together, lived next door to each other in dorm rooms. We bonded even more deeply with meditation. We would meditate together often on the weekends, and I had such profound experiences during all of these months. I think I was just ripe for meditation, and I was dropped into an immense Universe inside that was so beautiful and blissful to explore. Even as the ego was confused and loosing its grip on this person.

It has not been a straight and direct path. This was the beginning of a long and winding path to stabilize my inner experience, and to learn how to unwind all the fear-based energy that was stuck inside. The rejected parts of myself. I tried too hard, I struggled, but I also never gave up. I will continue with this story in future posts. Stay tuned!