Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin’s Press ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great
reads, sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use
only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright
infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you
are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher
at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
This book is dedicated to my most influential teachers of meditation, including: Mark Beshara,
Dr. Earl Barunum, Dr. Vivian King, Djual Khul from the Alice Baily teachings, Satya Sai Baba,
Ram Das, Anandamayi Ma, and St. Teresa of Avila. And all those saints, sages, and explorers of
the inner realms who have paved the way for the evolution of consciousness through meditation
as well as all those seekers to come, including you, my beloved reader.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to express my deep appreciation for all those who have contributed to this
book, including: Joel Fotinos, for inviting me to write it and all his
encouragement throughout; Bethany Reis, for copyediting; Richard Oriolo, for
page design; Tania Bissell, for proofreading; valuable feedback and input from
friends Jeffrey Gero, Jenny Gago, Rev. Stephen Rambo, Rev. Maur Horton, Kim
Robinson, and Gretchen Cassidy; Tracy Marcynzsyn, for the initial copyedit;
and my lovely wife and partner, Corina Villeda, for help with research and
feedback.
 INTRODUCTION

Isn’t it interesting reflecting back on certain events in life that led us in a

particular direction? Perhaps we would end up in a similar place if we hadn’t
experienced the same events, or perhaps we wouldn’t. My sense and belief is
that we would arrive at a similar station and philosophy of life, but certainly not
exactly the same. Nevertheless, the path that led me to a life of meditation
unfolded in what seemed like random events, but I am certain I would have
landed here one way or another.
My first job, at sixteen, working for someone other than my mom as her
tennis instructor assistant, was stringing tennis rackets at Paramount Sports
Tennis Shop in Hollywood. I made three dollars per racket. This was at a time
when tennis was extremely popular in the United States. Lots of people were
taking lessons and learning and playing the sport, so there were tennis shops in
most cities in Southern California and Paramount Sports, which I always
assumed was named such because of its proximity to Paramount Studios, was
the most popular shop in Los Angeles County.
But how did this job lead me to a forty-two-year practice of meditation and
ultimately writing this book? My boss at the time was not only an excellent
businessman and shop owner, but also a mystic. He invited me to attend an
introductory meeting at a training called Mind Probe One and told me if I
wanted to take the weeklong training, he would pay for half, which I think left
me with a price tag of 150 dollars. Upon attending an introductory meeting, I
thought the process seemed pretty weird. On the other hand, weird was not much
of a deterrent for me. In fact, it was more like an incentive. As an introspective
and inquisitive child and throughout my life, I have consistently challenged
traditional beliefs and societal norms.
There were many aspects of the training that I won’t go into, but the primary
process was a meditation technique called the Color Cycle—essentially
imagining yourself surrounded and immersed in the colors of the spectrum and
rainbow in succession—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and
finally, white. Each color represents a specific energy and quality, and white
represents the center of the mind, where all things are possible. There were many
other techniques and practices involved in the training, including visualization,
psychic diagnosis, and energy healing, but all of them were preceded by the
Color Cycle process.
After completing the weeklong training, I continued to do the meditation
practice for many years. The only classes I found of interest in late high school
and college were philosophy, psychology, and a smidgeon of sociology, but I
hadn’t studied much Eastern philosophy up to that point. Purely as a result of
meditation practice and not from the influence of any reading or teaching, at
twenty years old, I had a mystical experience, where I knew and felt myself as
one with the Infinite Universe. I was given answers to any and all questions. I
knew without a doubt that everything and all sentient beings were part of one
interconnected organism we can call the Infinite Universe, or God. Every action
or occurrence affects the whole and everything and everyone within the whole.
Time is an illusion. At the level of true reality, everything that has ever happened
or ever will happen occurs at the same time, in one moment. I was going to write
“the present moment,” but there isn’t even a present moment, because that would
mean there is a past and a future.
It wasn’t until I was twenty-three that I found New Thought philosophy,
specifically Science of Mind (named after a book written by Ernest Holmes),
which includes a strong influence of Eastern and Western metaphysics and an
emphasis on meditation and affirmative prayer. I found in New Thought a
community of people who understood (at least at a conceptual level for some
and an experiential level for others) what I had already learned from my own
mystical experience.
My journey was somewhat backward from that of most people on a
meditative path who learn about metaphysics and spiritual philosophy, then start
a practice, then (for those who take it to a deeper level) have mystical
experiences. I had the mystical experience through my meditation practice,
which ultimately led me to be part of a larger community of like-minded people
and a student of many different meditation schools. My studies in this system led
me to become ordained as a Minister of Spiritual Awareness in 1986 by the late
Dr. Earl Barnum, a pioneer in the field of New Thought and Religious Science. I
later affiliated with Religious Science International in 2010, which is now called
Centers for Spiritual Living.
While I am writing this book from a spiritual practice, it is important to
emphasize that embarking on a spiritual path is not at all necessary to receive the
benefits from meditative practice, but if you continue to meditate, don’t be too
surprised if you sooner or later deepen your appreciation for the inner realms of
your own consciousness and the mystery of life.
At twenty-one, I followed in my mother’s footsteps along the path of a tennis-
teaching professional. I taught visualization techniques (a form of meditation I
will write about later) to my tennis students to help them improve their
performance on the court. I found that people who practiced these techniques in
addition to physical practice would improve at a much faster rate than those who
did not. Scientific studies corroborate my own findings. I also invented a
practice called Zen Tennis, which I will elucidate in chapter 4, “Meditation
Practice.”
Many of my students reported that they used these techniques to improve
other areas of their lives. Eventually, it occurred to me that this is really good
stuff that needs to get out to larger numbers of people. At age twenty-seven, I
was teaching a class called The Nature of the Soul, which had a strong emphasis
on meditation practice and spiritual service and had a profound effect on my
spiritual evolution. The entire class and one additional person became the first
staff to produce Meditation Magazine, a national, full-color trade magazine that
was published from 1985 to 1992.
During that period, I also completed a four-year training in psychosynthesis, a
form of transpersonal psychology, with the High Point Foundation in Pasadena
under the late Dr. Vivian King. This system was another powerful teaching that
enhanced my spiritual and meditation journey. The main emphasis of the
teaching is that we are more than our sensations, feelings, and thoughts. In fact,
there is a meditation practice that asks us to observe these three elements of the
personality and finally ask the question, “If I can observe my sensations,
feelings, and thoughts, who is doing the observation? Who is the ‘I’ that can
observe and choose how to express through my threefold personality?” Once I
completed my training, I offered lectures and classes in spiritual psychology and
continued to offer spiritual counseling and classes in other metaphysical subjects
as well.
When I went into academic publishing at Sage Publications (a world-
renowned social science publisher) in 1992, I offered “stress-reduction” sessions
each morning for anyone in the company who wanted to attend. I also did
visioning sessions with my staff (twenty-five in my first managerial position and
seventy-five at the height of my director position). The production department
that I managed became a model for efficiency in the corporation. We achieved
unprecedented success, some of which was a result of wisely applied business
strategies, but I’m certain that our levels of success would not have been fully
realized without the application of strategic meditative practices.
All the experiences above inspired me to write my popular book, published in
2002, The Magic of the Soul: Applying Spiritual Power to Daily Living, which is
a compilation of all the philosophies and spiritual practices that led me to a life
of success and inner fulfillment. The book naturally includes a heavy emphasis
on meditation and a chapter specifically on the subject. After its publication I left
the corporate world and embarked on a career of traveling; speaking; offering
workshops on various subjects, including meditation; and life and/or spiritual
coaching, as well as training and certifying life coaches in what we call
consciousness coaching.
I haven’t quite thought of this realization in these terms until writing this
paragraph, but my work as a life coach and coach trainer is primarily about
assisting people to live in the state that is consistent with the consciousness that
results from extended years of meditation—the consciousness of love, freedom,
joy, creativity, and expanded insight.
People most often come to life or spiritual coaching because they want to
achieve some goal, but what they realize through the Living Purpose Institute
method of consciousness coaching is that the most important element in
achieving one’s goals is to live from the energy of the completed vision. To
embody the consciousness or feeling that is anticipated from the experience of
achieving the goal. When this is accomplished, the direction or action steps to
move toward the completed vision come into play in the most effortless, joyful,
and synchronistic ways. With virtually all my clients and students, meditation
plays a most essential role in raising consciousness and is a consistent action
step that ultimately leads one to live from an inner experience of freedom, love,
and joy, which is the key to a fulfilling life on all levels.
 In 2004, my wife and I traveled to India and visited many sacred sites and
spent some time at the Sai Baba Ashram in Puttaparthi. I received a profound
lesson there. I had been interested and intrigued by Sai Baba and his teachings
for many years, not only because of the reports of the miracles that he performed
in manifesting objects and other such phenomena but, more important because of
the social services he had provided. A great deal of the prosperity garnered from
his teachings was channeled into services to help the people of his impoverished
country.
He created a college and hospital that were both free for his people. He
funded irrigation projects to bring running water to villages that previously had
none. He was clearly an example of living compassion and service for the good
of all.
The ashram, which may sound like a small community where people come to
have an intimate spiritual experience, actually had anywhere from forty thousand
to eighty thousand people staying at one time. I had never been in a group of
even a hundred people who had such a unified intention, let alone the sixty
thousand who were there when we were visiting. The intention was a clear focus
on the teachings of Sai Baba, which are all about love, service, and honoring and
revealing the common truths within all spiritual traditions and religions. What
came to me while living and breathing in this constant vibration of love was a
clearer and deeper understanding of who we really are and why we are all here.
At the most basic level, we are all simply love unfolding more love.
My meditation practice has been consistent for most of my adult life as a
daily practice averaging thirty minutes a day, five days a week. I remember a
few times in my early twenties going a few months without meditating and
returning to the practice to find that I had lost a great deal of the peace
experienced when I was practicing consistently. The benefits of meditation are
subtle, so while there may be some important, noticeable benefits early on in
one’s practice, the greater rewards are realized over time. In fact, because I have
been meditating consistently for so long, I can’t say for certain how much of my
growth has been a result of the practice or simply wisdom and inner peace
gained from life experience, but I would bet that I wouldn’t have accomplished
half of what I have in life if not for meditation and, more important, would not
be living anywhere near the level of peace, prosperity, and joy that I am blessed
to experience on a daily basis.
From 2000 to 2012, I served as president of the Spiritual Unity Movement,
which offers meditation ceremonies each month at the time of the full moon, as
well as other meditation offerings. I continue to serve on the advisory board and
was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Divinity in 2010 from this organization.
I have also been involved in shamanic and indigenous teachings for more
than thirty years and lead nontraditional sweat lodge ceremonies at my home
once a month. I have been trained by several elders from different tribes in these
practices, including Cree, Blackfoot, and Lakota. Since 1990, I have offered
retreats in meditation and shamanic practices in various locations in the United
States and Canada.
In offering meditation workshops, classes, and retreats over the past thirty
years, I have developed a system for guiding people into deep meditative states,
which tends to happen quite easily for most people. I use a variety of meditation
techniques comprising ancient practices and specific modalities I have
developed in my own meditation practice. Most participants experience a forty-
minute to an hour-long meditation as lasting for ten to fifteen minutes. I will be
offering the specific techniques I use in teaching meditation throughout the
pages of this book, and I encourage you to go out and experience other classes,
workshops, and group meditations to enhance your experience.
I am honored that you have chosen to read this book and look forward to
meeting you on the inner planes and perhaps even in person sometime soon.
 {1}
WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary’s first definition of meditation is “a discourse

intended to express its author’s reflections or to guide others in contemplation.”1
That definition would make this book a meditation, but that isn’t much help in
describing the subject of this book—the practice of meditation. The second
definition, “the act or process of meditating,”2 is more appropriate for our
subject, but it’s still pretty vague, right? Okay, let’s look at the definition for
“meditating”: “to engage in contemplation or reflection.”3 Now we’re getting
closer.
There may be as many definitions of meditation as there are meditation styles.
I like to define meditation in a general way as any practice or activity that
inspires a deep state of expanded awareness. With this definition, one can
meditate while doing anything and everything. We don’t have to have eyes
closed to be in meditation. Walking meditation is a very common practice in the
Buddhist tradition. In Vedic traditions (based on the ancient Vedic texts of India),
the practice is to chant the name of God in the Sanskrit language throughout
one’s daily activities. While meditation can be done at any time and in any
environment, the most common form and for most people the practice that
inspires the deepest state is sitting meditation, usually with the eyes closed.
A more helpful published definition that validates my broader version is
found in The Free Dictionary: “Meditation is a practice of focus upon a sound,
object, visualization, the breath, movement, or attention itself in order to
increase awareness of the present moment, reduce stress, promote relaxation,
and enhance personal and spiritual growth.”4 I would add to that definition: to
connect with or even surrender oneself into infinite light, love, and peace. To go
beyond one’s personal identification and be absorbed into the One. Sivanada
Saraswati put it this way: “Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts into eternal
awareness or pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without
thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”
One might say that a goal of meditation is to shift identification from the
personal self to the transpersonal self, to use a term from “spiritual” or
“transpersonal” psychology. The essence of who we are beneath the level of
personal identification has been called by many names: soul, Atma, higher self,
Tao within, eternal self, Buddha nature, authentic self, inner wisdom, nonlocal
self, expanded self. Each of these terms represents our infinite, indestructible
nature. It is the part of us, or really the whole of us, that never dies and knows
our past and future. At the level of this identity, we are not separate individuals;
we are all one. Virtually everyone who experiences deep meditation and who has
communicated his or her findings shares this experience of touching their
essence, soul, and true self.
The point of meditation is not simply to sit and enjoy a relaxed or even
altered state for the duration of the meditation, although that alone can be
incentive enough in our busy lives. It is to transform consciousness over time—
to ultimately have the awareness gained from inward exploration become a
lasting part of daily experience. The intention is to maintain as much as possible
the peace, calm, lightness, and oneness that can be realized throughout the entire
day or days until the next meditation session.
While meditation can be done any time and in any environment, the most
common form, and for most people the practice that inspires the deepest state, is
sitting meditation. It might be helpful to differentiate the two most common
styles of meditation as mindfulness meditation or open monitoring meditation (a
scientific term), and what I will call still-mind meditation, or attention-focused
meditation (to use another scientific term).
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION, which can include Vipassana, Zen, and
other related Buddhist forms, is geared toward awareness in the present moment.
We simply notice and observe whatever we are experiencing without judgment.
We don’t try to get rid of or even transcend thoughts, feelings, noises, sensations,
or awareness. We simply observe these experiences. By becoming the observer,
we gain a perspective beyond that of personal identification. In some cases,
mindfulness meditation may include some of the techniques from still-mind
meditation, such as watching the breath, reciting inner mantras, etc., but in a
classical sense, mindfulness meditation fits the description of focused-attention
meditation.
STILL-MIND MEDITATION, which is associated with various Vedic
practices from the ancient East Indian scriptures, aims to quiet the mind
completely by focusing on one specific thing only, such as the breath, a mantra,
an image, etc. In the yogic traditions, it has been said that if one can still the
mind and go without any thoughts for three minutes or more (in my experience,
it’s not exact timing), one will reach a state of samadhi—pure bliss. Revered
guru and author of more than two hundred books on Vedanta and yoga Swami
Sivananda says, “In samadhi, or superconsciousness, the meditator’s senses,
mind, and intellect cease functioning. Just as the river joins the ocean, the
individual mixes with the Supreme Soul. All limitations and differences
disappear. The meditator attains the highest knowledge and eternal bliss.”
I have experienced extended moments of this state on occasion during my
meditative practices and can attest that it is profound. On other occasions, my
mind cycles in and out of still mind or pure bliss, which can also be profound as
long as I’m not judging my experience as lacking because it isn’t completely still
mind. This is another definition of meditation I find quite useful, not only the act
of being in still mind or deep mindfulness, but the act of moving in and out of
deep, still mind.
If we believe that we are only meditating when we are experiencing still mind
or a deep state of mindfulness, then it’s likely we’ll get frustrated at our inability
to do so. In teaching meditation classes and workshops, I’ve found that
participants often find this expanded definition helpful. Many who have tried
and given up meditation do so because it just seems too hard to let the thoughts
go or even to observe them mindfully. In the “Helpful Hints” section of chapter 3
and in the guided meditations in chapter 4, I present techniques to make deep
mindfulness and still mind easier, even effortless, for most people. If we are
judging ourselves for not doing it right, we will not be in a state conducive to
meditation.
Everyone who has ever meditated has encountered the seemingly never-
ceasing analytical mind, which is often called “monkey mind” for its ability to
jump around from tree to tree or, in this case, from thought to thought, never
stopping. When the Dalai Lama struggles with meditation, his struggle (although
it isn’t called “struggle” when we accept it) is the same as yours and mine. My
encouragement is to recognize that you are meditating as long as you are moving
in and out of still or quiet mind, even if the stillness lasts for just one second. By
giving up judgment and continuing to practice, meditators usually find that the
cycles of stillness will increase and the moments of monkey mind decrease. In
acceptance, the struggle evaporates and simply becomes practice.
The two basic forms of meditation are quite intertwined, as they originate
from the same Vedic sources. The nonjudgmental observation of mindfulness
meditation was in a sense added to the older practices of still-mind meditation as
a result of Buddhist influence. My greatest experiences in meditation are when I
am resting in pure bliss and connecting with Infinite Reality beyond the realm of
thought arrived at through still-mind meditation. But, once again, everyone is
different and will resonate with different styles and specific forms. And you
don’t have to stick to only one practice. One can in fact employ as many
techniques as feel right. Some teachers would argue this point and say it is far
better to find one practice and stick with it, and that too can be a personal
preference.
Ultimately, I employ both of these forms, as do many others. For example, I
use mindfulness to come to a point of pure presence, nonresistance, and
nonjudgment, and then slip into still mind using the still-mind techniques
illustrated below of watching the breath, and most often, silent mantra. As
thoughts come in, observe them and/or invite them in and surrender again into
the stillness until the next thought presents itself. Observe that thought, invite it
in, and once again surrender into the pure bliss of no-thought. Once again, these
are the two most common forms of meditation, but there are many other related
forms described in the two sections below.

HISTORY OF MEDITATION

We have no way of knowing exactly how long meditation was practiced before
there were verifiable records. Some scholars and archaeologists believe
meditation may have been around as early as 5000 BCE. The earliest records of
meditation, called Dhyana, from the Vedanta Hindu traditions, are from around
1500 BCE. These Vedic texts, or Vedas, outline various meditation forms and
basic philosophies that are the hallmark of Hinduism and other Vedic traditions,
including Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and more modern spiritual systems, such
as Theosophy, New Age, New Thought, transpersonal psychology, and medical
applications. In fact, virtually all modern forms of meditation have been
influenced by Vedanta meditation to some degree.
There are four Vedas, all of which discuss various aspects of meditation and
the spiritual life: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. Each Veda is
subclassified into four major text types: the Samhitas (mantras and
benedictions), the Aranyakas (texts on rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices), the
Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices), and the
Upanishads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy, and spiritual knowledge).
Buddhism is predicated on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, known as
Gautama Buddha. Scholars debate the exact origins of Buddhist meditation in its
formalized fashion, although the early followers of the Buddha were certainly
using some form of meditation as part of their practice. Early records of the
various practices and states of meditation in Buddhism are described in the Pali
Canon, which is dated in the first century BCE.
Buddhist meditation encompasses a variety of meditation techniques that aim
to develop sati (mindfulness), samadhi (concentration), abhijna (supramundane
powers), samatha (tranquility), and Vipassana (insight). It is generally accepted
that there are about 350 million Buddhists worldwide today. However, if you
include those who do not identify themselves as Buddhists but practice
mindfulness meditation, that number is much larger.
Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk credited with bringing Chan Buddhism to
China in the fifth or sixth century, which led to the oriental forms of Buddhism,
including Mahayana and Zen. He also began the physical training of the Shaolin
monks in kung fu, which is also considered a form of Buddhism.
Other forms of meditation were developed through Taoism in China and
Buddhism in India and spread to other countries in the Orient. Taoist meditation
focuses on concentration, mindfulness, contemplation, and visualization and is in
many ways intertwined with Buddhist meditation practices. Chinese medicine
and martial arts adapted specific Taoist meditative techniques, including Neidan
(internal alchemy) and Qigong (movement and breathing).
There is evidence that meditation existed in some form in Judaism, as
indicated by the Torah, specifically in Genesis, which is understood to have been
written in the fifth or sixth century BCE, which means that the practices must
have existed earlier than that time.
Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher in Rome, introduced
meditation methods in the first century BCE. There are various traditional forms
of Jewish meditation, including visualization, emotional insight in communitive
prayer, and analysis of philosophical, ethical, and/or mystical concepts. It can
also be combined with unstructured prayer.
Kabbalah, the mystical branch of Judaism, includes a clear and robust
meditative teaching. In the thirteenth century, Abraham Abulafia founded the
school of Prophetic/Ecstatic Kabbalah and wrote meditation manuals using
Hebrew letters and words to achieve ecstatic states.
Another contributor to meditative exploration in the West included Plotinus,
one of the influential Greek philosophers who developed meditative techniques
in the third century. He was clearly a mystic who fully understood the point of
meditation. From personal experience, he believed a person could reach a “blank
state” of no thought where he or she could merge with The One and the
personality could dissolve into the Monad. Plotinus (as well as virtually all post-
Platonic Greek philosophers) was influenced by Plato, who was also a proponent
of deep contemplation.
Meditation in Christianity started to become prevalent in the twelfth century
and even more so in the fourteenth century. In contrast to Eastern meditation
practices, traditional Christian meditation most often engages the mind in
reflecting on biblical passages and prayers, rather than on quieting or even
silencing the mind. The more notable proponents of Christian meditation were
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274); Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556),
founder of the Jesuits; Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), one of the most
celebrated of Christian mystics; Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), a close
friend of Saint Teresa’s; and Saint Padre Pio (1887–1968).
There are less traditional and more mystical expressions of Christian
meditation as well, and in more recent times, Christianity too has been
influenced by Eastern teachings on meditation, so in Christian communities, you
can find many forms of meditation classes. Saint Teresa describes the four stages
of mystical prayer:
1. Meditation or contemplation: This stage involves meditating on the life of
Jesus Christ and engendering one’s love for him. This fits the more traditional
definition of Christian meditation.
2. The Prayer of Quiet: While meditating [in Christian terms] can be taken
upon by your own volition, the prayer of quiet is entered by God’s volition.
Grace is revealed and a degree of union with God is achieved. This stage and
the following two are more aligned with the Eastern and, specifically, Vedic
 definition of meditation although not called meditation by Saint Teresa.
3. Union: Your faculties become completely quiet and your soul is absorbed by
God. Even your body shares in the soul’s joy and delight.
4. Rapture: All your faculties fade away and the Lord gathers up your soul.
Your hearing and thinking are dimmed and you are carried away gently,
joyfully, silently, ecstatically. When Saint Teresa would reach this state, she
was said to levitate and her nun colleagues would literally have to hold her
body down.
After writing the above description of rapture (which in my estimation is
synonymous with the Eastern samadhi) yesterday, this morning’s meditation
went deeper than usual. I am currently teaching a class for the second time based
on the teachings of Saint Teresa and found her descriptions of mystical
experience extremely inspiring.
The Modern Era

The transcendentalists were notable philosophers and writers of the early

nineteenth century, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore
Parker. They were influenced by Eastern thought and practice and proponents of
meditation as a means to higher consciousness. There is a connection between
the transcendentalists and the Unitarian (now called Unitarian Universalist)
movement. Emerson was a Unitarian minister, although he later moved on from
traditional religion as his philosophical explorations evolved. It is likely that the
transcendentalists influenced the use of meditation in Unitarianism, which has
also been influenced by Eastern forms because of the eclectic nature of the
denomination.
The practices of Eastern yoga and meditation were introduced in a dynamic
way to the United States by Swami Vivekananda in the late 1800s. He gave a
short but famous speech representing India and Hinduism at the Parliament of
the World’s Religions on September 11, 1893. After that event he toured
extensively in the United States, sharing meditation and yoga techniques. He
founded the Vedanta Society of New York in 1894.
Emanuel Swedenborg (who inspired the New Church, founded in 1787,
fifteen years after his death), the transcendentalists, and Franz Mesmer (“the
father of hypnosis”) were all influencers of the New Thought movement, not to
be confused with New Age. Phineas Quimby is considered to be the founder of
New Thought. In 1840, he began to use Mesmer’s techniques for healing. New
Thought pioneers included Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (founders of Unity, or
Unity Church, in 1891), Emma Curtis Hopkins (“the teacher of teachers”), Joel
Goldsmith, Emmet Fox, Ernest Holmes (the founder of Religious Science), and,
more recently, Jean Houston, Louise Hay, Terry Cole-Whittaker, Edwene
Gaines, Michael Beckwith (founder of Agape International), Esther and Jerry
Hicks (Abraham Teachings), Ken Gordon (spiritual leader of Centers for
Spiritual Living), and many others who have been strong promoters of
meditation, which continues to be practiced within New Thought communities.
New Thought is eclectic in its philosophical beliefs and practices and has also
been strongly influenced by the mystical traditions of the East as well as
metaphysical interpretations of the Bible.
Theosophy was a prevalent movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
started by Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic. Her epic treatise, The Secret
Doctrine, drew from many of the world’s most ancient scriptures and galvanized
their messages into one comprehensive system. Theosophy influenced the Alice
Bailey teachings (which highly emphasize group meditation and various esoteric
methods), the I AM teachings, and other movements, all of which were
precursors to what became popularized as the New Age movement, and all of
which heavily emphasize meditation as the primary means of personal and
spiritual transformation.
The New Age movement (not to be confused with New Thought) is believed
to have originated in the early 1970s and is a nonorganized (in the sense that
there is no central organization) network of individuals and businesses who
believe we are at a pivotal point in history, embarking on a major, global
paradigm shift based on the progression from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian
Age. The movement was also influenced by notable authors and visionaries,
such as Emanuel Swedenborg, Franz Mesmer, Buckminster Fuller, Marilyn
Ferguson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jane Roberts, David Spangler, Shirley
MacLaine, and many others. In the 1980s, it became a huge fad with hundreds of
thousands in attendance at expos and conventions. It was so popular and
marketable that many entrepreneurs identified their businesses with the
movement for economic advantage and, in most cases, for philosophical
alignment as well. It even birthed the genre of New Age music, with meditative
and relaxing tones as its hallmark. Eventually the fad status led to loss of
credibility and progressively more individuals and businesses disassociated from
the term “New Age.” Even New Age Journal, which was highly successful under
that moniker, changed its name to Body & Soul magazine.
There are still many who identify as New Agers (and even more who are
immersed in the practices and philosophy and may not identify with the name),
and most who do are meditators. There are many similarities between New Age
and New Thought, although there are some strong philosophical differences.
Both emphasize our essential unity, the mystical practice of experiencing the
Divine, and spiritual practice and meditation as a means of personal and
transformational growth and are very accessible today for meditation groups,
classes, and training.
Meditation has also played a role in modern psychology. Carl Jung, William
James, and Roberto Assagioli are considered early influencers of what
eventually became the field of transpersonal psychology (more recently
oftentimes called spiritual psychology) early in the twentieth century. All three
of these celebrated psychologists were open to and proponents of meditation (in
various forms) as a means of psychological healing. James said: “The faculty of
voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again, is the very
root of judgment, character, and will.”
Carl Jung developed a therapeutic intervention called active imagination.
Some meditative purists would not consider this a form of meditation, but using
the wider definition of any practice that leads to an altered and enhanced state of
awareness, active imagination certainly qualifies. In this process, the contents of
the unconscious are objectified as images, a narrative, or personified as
individualized aspects or personalities of the self. The subject allows the rational
mind to become less active as images and feelings emerge to gain clarity and
ultimately heal unconscious elements of the self.
Assagioli, a contemporary of Freud and Jung, developed one of the most
fundamentally spiritual forms of psychology, called “psychosynthesis,” which
emphasizes the synthesis of all aspects of personality, including the transpersonal
or higher unconscious and the lower unconscious or shadow self. To this end,
visualization, meditation, and extensions of active imagination are employed.
Assagioli was also a mystic who studied Theosophy, Eastern philosophy, and the
Alice Bailey teachings. He founded two groups intended to teach meditation and
New Age philosophy. His written work developed specific meditation
techniques, including reflective, receptive, and creative meditation.
In the 1960s, transpersonal psychology, which emerged from humanistic
psychology (founded by Carl Rogers), became a legitimate branch of
psychology that includes spiritual and transcendent aspects of human experience.
Some of the pioneers in this field, all proponents of meditation as a means of
personal and spiritual growth, include Ken Wilber, who created a form of
mindfulness meditation called “integral mindfulness”; Robert Frager, the
founder of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, who integrated Sufism (the
mystical branch of Islam) with psychology; Daniel Goleman, who wrote several
books on Buddhism and emotional intelligence and The Science of Meditation:
How to Change Your Brain, Mind, and Body; Roger Walsh, who integrated
meditation, shamanic practices, and other spiritual practices from many different
traditions into transpersonal psychology; John Welwood, writer of several books
on integrating Western psychology with Eastern wisdom; and Charles Tart, a
prolific writer on human transformation, including a seminal book entitled Mind
Science: Meditation Training for Practical People.
In the 1960s, there was an explosion of interest in meditation fueled by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his system of Transcendental Meditation, or TM.
He taught this system to thousands of individuals through world tours from 1958
to 1965. The well-documented participation of the Beatles and other celebrities
in this technique was a major influence in the popularization of the practice.
Maharishi created many training centers around the world, and by the turn of this
century, millions had been taught this system.
Ram Das, formerly Richard Alpert, along with Timothy Leary and others
were pioneers of psychedelic research and experimentation in the early 1960s for
the purpose of higher consciousness. In 1967, becoming disillusioned with the
limitations of psychotropic drugs, Alpert traveled to India searching for
alternatives to higher consciousness and met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, also
known as Maharishi Mahariji, who gave him the name Ram Das. He returned to
America to share what he had learned through his bestselling book, Be Here
Now, in 1971 and subsequent lecturing, as well as many other bestsellers, all of
which were influential in the expansion of the growing meditation movement in
the United States.
The recent popularity of mindfulness meditation is generally attributed to Jon
Kabat-Zinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In
1979, he founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program to treat the
chronically ill. He combined the practices of yoga and meditation with scientific
research and created a program that is used by medical practitioners, medical
centers, and hospitals to help with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness.
Because meditation has been gradually going mainstream over the past
several decades, today there are many organizations, companies, and
corporations, large and small, who offer meditation training for their employees
to help manage stress and improve performance. The following are well-known
organizations that have meditation training programs: Google, Target, Facebook,
Twitter, eBay, Intel, Nike, LinkedIn, General Mills, Reebok, Yahoo!, Apple,
AOL, HBO, Procter & Gamble, Columbia Business School, Harvard University,
Stanford Graduate School, Drucker School of Management, Michigan’s Ross
School of Business, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and of course, many
others.
Some of the most popular and recent proponents of meditation include the
Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sai Baba, Pema Chödrön, Swami Satchidananda,
Eckhart Tolle, Jack Kornfield, Deepak Chopra, Caroline Myss, Marianne
Williamson, and Michael Singer, to name a few. Deepak Chopra and Oprah
Winfrey have teamed up to periodically offer a widely popular twenty-one-day
meditation series.
There are also countless proponents of meditation for enhanced athletic
performance. Phil Jackson, the most winning coach of all time, taught meditation
techniques to his championship basketball teams. Seattle Seahawks coach Pete
Carroll attributed their Super Bowl win in part to the players meditating. Sri
Chinmoy, a well-known meditation teacher, credited meditation and grace for his
unparalleled success in athleticism. A champion sprinter and decathlete in his
youth, at age fifty-four he took up weightlifting. He went from lifting forty
pounds with one hand to setting world records two years later by lifting one-
handed more than three and a half tons (7,063 ¾ pounds to be exact, equivalent
to six small elephants) a few inches off the support braces that held the weights.
Of his feat, he said: “I give not 99 percent, but 100 percent of credit for my
lifting to my Lord’s compassion. It is his grace alone that is enabling me to be of
inspiration to the world like this.”
Many successful athletes are meditators, some of whom are listed here, along
with well-known meditators in various fields of endeavor: Albert Einstein, Sir
Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Mick Jagger, David Lynch,
Bruce Lee, Tiger Woods, Hugh Jackman, Goldie Hawn, Clint Eastwood,
Harrison Ford, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Michael Jordan,
George Lucas, Jerry Seinfeld, Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Misty
May-Treanor, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Herbie Hancock, William Ford Jr., Sting,
Allen Ginsberg, Cher, Mark Wahlberg, and Sheryl Crow.

SPECIFIC TYPES OF MEDITATION

There are many types and styles of meditation. I will list some of the more
common ones and offer simple definitions, but the complete list is far longer.
When I offer meditation classes and workshops, I guide meditations using many
of the styles I list here. Everyone is unique, and one technique or style may work
effectively for one person and not at all for another. The Meditation Sampler
guided meditation in chapter 4, “Meditation Practice,” is a replica of the format I
use in my trainings. Try various styles until you find one that resonates. Over
time you may add other elements or styles to your meditation.
My daily practice, having evolved over forty-two years, includes several
different techniques I have used over the years, including the Color Cycle,
mentioned in the introduction of this book; visualizing a place in nature in my
mind and planning my day with the various aspects of myself (called
“subpersonalities” in spiritual psychology); focusing my attention on three
specific symbols in the area of the third eye, the point between and slightly
above the brows; and dissolving into quiet mind for fifteen to twenty minutes or
more. I also incorporate chanting and/or inner mantras and recite a World Prayer
called “The Great Invocation” (a prayer of ancient origin published in the Alice
Baily teachings); and finally I finish by offering distance energy healing for
people I know who have requested prayer or healing as well as for close family
and friends. That’s a lot of elements, right? Others who practice techniques like
silent mantra, which was popularized by Transcendental Meditation, have but
one primary technique—repeating an inner mantra. Whether you ultimately
practice one technique or many, you can experiment with some of the styles
below to find what works best for you.
Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation originated in the Buddhist tradition. Mindfulness is a

primary principle in Buddhist teachings and is believed to lead to enlightenment.
There are many forms of Buddhist meditation, and all of them are predicated on
mindfulness.
The primary component of mindfulness meditation is to simply notice what
you notice. In contradistinction to mantra, chanting, and breathing techniques
designed to quiet the mind (and used in some forms of mindfulness meditation),
in mindfulness meditation, the mind is used to increase awareness and be fully
present in the moment without judgment.
While sitting in mindfulness meditation (as opposed to walking or other
activities), you become aware of whatever presents itself. If you notice a tension
in your body, you simply observe that sensation without judgment or resistance.
In some practices, you could breathe into the tension, not to make it go away, but
to fully embrace it. Of course, once we give up resistance to anything, it tends to
dissipate. Resistance magnifies discomfort, embracing dissipates. This is one of
many examples of how meditation is a metaphor for life.
When a feeling is noticed, it is simply observed without judgment or
resistance. When a thought comes into play, it is watched without judgment or
resistance. If a thought about a feeling or thought emerges from the observation,
that too becomes the subject of watching.
I was practicing this form recently, and some interesting realizations occurred.
It was during a silent meditation augmented by the sweet sound of an acoustic
guitar being played by the leader. As the meditation progressed, I noticed that
when I was lost in my thoughts, or simply not aware that my mind was drifting
off on some journey of thinking, I would be only aware of those thoughts as they
unfolded. When I observed my thoughts, I would also be aware of the sound of
the guitar, the others in the room, the sound of someone writing, other sounds,
virtually the entire experience—mindfulness.
Then I decided to observe the consciousness observing my thoughts. I
experienced an even more dynamic expansiveness of awareness and stillness. I
then decided to observe the consciousness observing the consciousness
observing my thoughts. At this point, I went beyond all sense of thought and
observation and into completely still mind without thought at all for long periods
of time. If a thought did come into play, it quickly dissolved into the pure bliss I
was experiencing.
Vipassana, or insight meditation, is a form of mindfulness meditation and is
present in virtually all Buddhist practices. This form has become quite prevalent
in recent decades through the Vipassana movement, popularized by Mahasi
Sayadaw. There are many schools and independent teachers of this form that
usually offer ten- or thirty-day retreats. Modern Vipassana focuses primarily on
scanning the body, sometimes in sections, and observing its functions as a
metaphor for the impermanence of all things physical and leading to insight and,
ultimately, enlightenment.
Zen is another popular form within the scope of mindfulness meditation and
is specific to the Japanese Buddhist tradition. Zen Dhyana (meditation)
specifically uses watching the breath and breath-counting techniques as
described in “Breathing Techniques” in this book. This specific form of sati or
mindfulness also includes observing one’s thoughts.
As in still-mind meditation, mindfulness meditation is not designed only to
inspire the peace that comes during meditation but to sustain the meditation
practice through daily living. On the road to enlightenment, we become more
and more present in the moment and increasingly mindful about the vibration
and qualities of thought, behavior, and speech. Ultimately, we translate our inner
peace into our outer lives.
There is a mindfulness exercise designed to illustrate this dynamic with a
specific physical activity. The traditional exercise is to slowly eat a raisin (or
other type of sweet fruit) and engross yourself completely in the activity.
Observe the color of the fruit as you prepare to take a bite. Smell its fragrance.
Be aware of your mouth opening to take a bite. While biting and slowly
chewing, be fully present to the taste and texture of the fruit as you chew and
swish it around in your mouth. Fully observe the sensation of swallowing.
Perhaps even intuit the organs receiving the fruit and beginning the process of
absorbing its nutrients. One can find this dynamic occurring naturally while
eating at a silent retreat. When the distractions of the world are reduced, we
naturally adapt to a state of mindfulness.
Silent Mantra

Silent mantra existed in different forms before Transcendental Meditation was

developed and promoted by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s. What makes
TM unique as a form of silent mantra is that each participant is given their own
personalized mantra that they take away and can use for the rest of their lives.
You can also practice silent mantra by formulating your own or using
different mantras at various times for myriad purposes. The popular meditation
offered by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra uses a different Sanskrit mantra
each morning for twenty-one days. Hindu and other Vedic traditions use Sanskrit
words in chants, because the language has a high vibration and was developed
purely for communication of spiritual concepts.
A self-formulated mantra can be as simple as “I am light, I am love, I am pure
peace” or perhaps sounding an inner tone like the Om or Aum, both Sanskrit
names for the Divine or First Cause. In the beginning was the word (according to
the Bible), and the word was “Aum” (according to Vedic texts). Personally, I
find a constant inner tone of the “Ah” sound, sung kind of like how you would
imagine the voices of angels, takes me to that deep state of quiet mind far more
effectively than any other technique. Many in my meditation trainings also find
this technique extremely helpful. If you want to try out this practice, you can
find it as part of the Meditation Sampler beginning here.
Breathing Techniques

There are many different breathing techniques that have evolved from ancient
practices designed to quiet the mind and/or facilitate a state of mindfulness. The
most common is watching the breath. The meditator simply watches the breath
as it goes in and out. Most commonly the inhalation is through the nose and
exhalation through the mouth, creating a circle of breathing. Everything in life is
cyclic in nature, so by employing this kind of breathing, we are in harmony with
the natural way of life.
Taken a step further, one can focus on the points between the in breath and
the out breath. These in-between points represent perfect balance and can lead
one to the place of nonduality. Symbolically, they are the points between
receiving and giving, positive and negative, yin and yang, light and dark, death
and life, manifestation and dissolution, feminine and masculine, spirit and
matter, Mother Earth and Father Sky. If you want to try out this kind of
meditation practice, you can find it as part of the Meditation Sampler beginning
here.
There are several deep-breathing meditation techniques that involve counting,
and the counts may vary from system to system. The four-seven-eight method is
quite common. Breathe in through the nose to the count of four, hold the breath
to the count of seven, and breathe out through the mouth to the count of eight.
The counting is done quite slowly, like one count per second. You can also
experiment with finding your own counting rhythm that works best for you or let
go of the counting completely and simply find the rhythm that feels most natural.
If you find yourself getting dizzy, which can happen, stop the deep breathing,
return to normal breathing, and then begin again when you are ready.
When practicing deep breathing techniques of any kind, it is recommended to
do what is called abdominal breathing as opposed to chest breathing. This
involves expanding your abdomen when you breathe, so you are breathing deep
into your lungs. If you feel your chest rising as you breathe, you know your
breath is shallow. The breathing of most people is shallow. For optimal health,
this form of deep breathing can be done at all times, not just while meditating.
Chanting

Virtually every cultural and religious system uses a form of chanting or singing
as a means of spiritual development. Some forms are more vibrant and can
include movement as well, while others are more clearly focused on leading to
an inner, quiet meditative state.
Some of the more prevalent forms of chanting include Vedic Sanskrit, of
which Kirtan is a common practice; Western styles, most notably Gregorian and
Jewish cantillation; and that of aboriginal cultures, such as Native Americans,
First Nations people of Canada, Hawaiian kahunas, Native Africans, Australian
Aboriginals, Central and South American tribes, and many more.
Vedic chanting is based on the ancient Vedic texts and uses the sacred
language of Sanskrit. I find in meditation trainings if no other method is
effective in stilling the mind, then Vedic chanting does the trick for most people.
The Vedic Sanskrit language was created to communicate spiritual concepts and
therefore has a very high frequency of vibration. Any kind of chanting can be
effective, but I find that using specific Sanskrit mantras are most effective for
meditation. The Hare Krishna movement uses Vedic Sanskrit chanting as well.
In group sessions, this form can be quite vibrant and accompanied by fervent
dancing, which can lead one into a trance state. In my early twenties, I lived a
couple of blocks from a Hare Krishna center and loved to take part in their free
vegetarian meals followed by the ceremony.
Kirtan, or Kirtana, is a specific type of Vedic chanting that is usually done in
a group ceremony and is most often a call-and-response style using devotional
names of various Vedic deities. Hindus and other Vedic traditions use the
Sanskrit chants to sing the names of gods while going about daily activities as an
effective means of holding the intention of devotion throughout the day.
Native American and First Nations chanting is used primarily in various
ceremonies of tribal peoples that in recent times are often open to people of
nonnative descent. These ceremonies include sweat lodges (which have become
quite common in the New Age movement, men’s movement, and other modern-
day Western gatherings), powwows, sun dances, and many others. Combined
with drumming, these chants effectively induce an altered state of consciousness,
enhancing the “medicine” of the ceremonies for healing and communion with
Wakan Tanka, which is Lakota for “Great Spirit” or the “Great Mystery,” and all
aspects of nature.
Gregorian chanting is the sacred song of the Roman Catholic Church
developed mainly in the ninth and tenth centuries AD. These chants are most
often sung in church by priests, choirs, and sometimes whole congregations and
were developed to create a sacred state of mind during mass and other
ceremonies. Chanting and song can be found in the earliest expressions of
Christianity.
Jewish cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in
Jewish ceremonies. The cantor is an essential player in the sacred ceremonies,
sometimes considered as essential as the rabbi. These melodic songs also
enhance a state of sacredness in the ceremonies.
Yoga

When people in the West hear the term “yoga,” it most likely will bring up
images of people in various positions for physical strengthening, stretching, and
general health. Hatha yoga focuses on physical development and traditionally
includes a meditative focus. The meditation aspect of the practice may be
emphasized more or less, depending on the particular teacher and whether you
experience it at a yoga studio, gym, or private practice.
Yoga originated in ancient India as early as the sixth century BCE and is a
traditional practice in many Eastern religions, including Jainism, Buddhism,
Hinduism, Sikhism, and other Vedic traditions. Hatha yoga is just one of many
different yogic practices. Some of the other more prevalent forms are:
■ KARMA YOGA is the yoga of action. One purifies all actions in the world
and offers them as gifts to Divine Beings.
■ RAJA YOGA is known as the yoga of knowledge and focuses on controlling
the mind and body and may be combined with hatha yoga to attain
enlightenment and emphasizes meditative practice.
■ BHAKTI YOGA is the yoga of devotion and emphasizes love for all things.
Chanting the names of the Vedic deities as a form of worship and devotion is
the most prevalent practice.
■ JNANA YOGA is considered the most difficult of the yogic paths and is not
undertaken without a certain degree of mastery of the other three paths
discussed. Its ultimate aim is complete unification with God.
■ KRIYA YOGA is a specific yogic practice focused on breathing, developed
by Paramahansa Yogananda as one of many Pranayama (yogic breathing)
techniques.
■ TANTRIC YOGA is known primarily in the West as a system for combining
sexual practices with spiritual intention. Sexual and sensual acts are performed
not purely for pleasure, but as a means to spiritual growth and enlightenment.
Historically, however, tantra is much broader and refers to many forms of
spiritual study and ritualistic practices in the Vedic traditions.
Meditation and Movement

As in the other forms, there are a multitude of ways in which movement and
meditation are combined. Meditation while moving won’t take most people quite
as deep as sitting meditation, yet the benefits are great. On the other hand, I have
had many students tell me that meditation movement works better for them than
sitting meditation. Again, we are all different. Ahead are various common forms
of meditation and movement, including one designed specifically by me.
WALKING MEDITATION is a simple form of meditation and movement.
Thich Nhat Hanh, a renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and many others
have been proponents of this practice in modern times. Springing primarily from
the Buddhist tradition, the protocol is to walk slowly and be mindful of
everything experienced on the walk. It’s especially helpful to practice this form
in a beautiful nature place. While walking, be aware of everything that is
experienced—the sights, sounds, feelings, sensations, breeze on the face—while
observing the thoughts that come up about the entire experience. This practice
can be done in just a few minutes or for hours. If you want to try out walking
meditation, you can find a guideline here.
THE LABYRINTH is a specific form of walking meditation where the
walking meditator enters a mazelike structure. It is only mazelike in the sense
that it has a winding path with breaks that ultimately lead to the center. Unlike a
maze, the labyrinth does not have dead ends to trick and confuse. Images of the
labyrinth have been found in many lands on several continents and are
commonly associated with Greek mythology. The earliest carvings, however,
were found in a petroglyph in India in 2500 BCE. In medieval times, the labyrinth
became a common part of cathedral architecture. The practice of walking the
labyrinth has become popular in recent times, and labyrinths can be found at
Christian sanctuaries of various denominations. The journey involves simply
walking through and around the circles that lead to the center and back out again
slowly and mindfully, inspiring reflection and receptivity to enhanced awareness
of spiritual understanding or revelation.
WHIRLING DERVISH is a term you have probably heard that comes from
Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. It was invented by the world-famous poet
Rumi, whose poems are among the most translated and published of any poet in
the world. In the grief of the mysterious death of his great friend and teacher,
Shams-e-Tabrizi, Rumi found that slowly turning around a pillar would woo him
into a meditative state. This evolved into the dervish practice of spinning around
at great speeds.
The Universal Dances of Peace are also derived from Sufism. They were
introduced in the 1960s by Samuel L. Lewis, who was influenced by Hazrat
Inayat Khan, a Sufi master. They consist of circle dances and chants from all
different cultures and religions for the purpose of meditation and honoring all
paths to God. There is generally a leader who teaches the dances and chants and
musicians playing acoustic guitars, tablas, or other drums and instruments.
TAI CHI is an ancient form of slow martial arts. It is used less for combat
and more often (especially in modern times) for health and well-being. It is an
excellent form of slow-movement meditation modeling the movements of
animals.
QIGONG is also an ancient Chinese practice related to and considered part
of Tai Chi, which is used for healing oneself and is performed as a meditative
form. Qigong practice typically involves moving meditation, coordinating slow-
flowing movement, deep rhythmic breathing, and a calm meditative state of
mind.
THE ATHLETE’S ZONE is a meditative state that is arrived at while
performing sports. A well-documented expression of this phenomena is
commonly called “runner’s high.” While long-distance running, athletes slip into
a meditative state that allows them to increase performance and decrease the
discomfort of the physical strain from the sport. Once the runner’s high is
reached, everything flows easily and effortlessly. It may appear as though
everything around the runner seems to be moving in slow motion. Athletes in
virtually all sports have reported this same experience. Basketball players report
the game slows down; it may seem like the hoop is wider and shots simply
cannot be missed. Tennis players report that the racket feels three times larger
and every shot is landed easily and effortlessly.
ZEN TENNIS is a practice I developed as a tennis pro in my early twenties.
In most cases, the zone is something that occurs spontaneously. I developed a
system for accessing this state purposely, which sprang from my own experience
playing tennis, which I honed and taught to others and can be applied to any
sport or experience. I include the instructions for this form in chapter 4,
“Meditation Practice.” If you want to try out this practice, you can find a
guideline here.
Drumming

Drumming is perhaps the oldest method for reaching meditative states. Since
ancient times, tribal peoples sat in circles or around the fire making noise with
sticks and stones and later crafted drums with wood frames and animal skins.
Today, drum circles are a common form of music and can easily lead one into a
meditative, if not mystical or trancelike, state. Some drum circles are
spontaneous, where people gather and start drumming; others may be skillfully
directed specifically for the purpose of meditation. Drums are used to augment
other meditative musical forms, such as the tabla in Kirtan and other Middle
Eastern ceremonies, native drums in chanting and tribal ceremonies, and many
other percussion instruments from various cultures for the purpose of enhancing
spiritual experience and various religious rites.
Guided Meditation and Visualization

The previously discussed techniques are designed to help one move into deep
mindfulness and still the mind. Guided meditation stills the mind but not as
potentially deeply as the modalities discussed, because guided meditation
requires a more active mind to follow the guiding. It can be an excellent way to
begin practice, though, and many beginners find it to be more comfortable
because it is easier. Once some success is acquired from guided meditation, one
can move on to more advanced practices, or use them concurrently.
With guided meditation, the guide generally takes the meditator on a journey
to a relaxing, rejuvenating environment, such as a nature place, power spot, or
sacred area, to experience healing and enlightened living. Oftentimes, people
will slip into quiet or still mind during guided meditations and lose all track of
the actual guiding. Some examples of guided meditation I have used include the
following:
■ Finding a beautiful place in nature, such as a field of flowers, waterfall,
mountain peak, or deserted island, that is designed to bring healing and
regeneration. It contains the perfect energy for bringing your being back to
perfect balance and harmony.
■ Traveling through the mountain ranges of Tibet to find an ancient temple deep
in a forest and then entering the temple and sitting in the center of a cylinder of
light.
■ Moving through the jungles of the Amazon to find a clearing where a sacred,
ancient ritual is taking place and you are invited to join.
■ Walking through a crystal valley and venturing into the center of a giant quartz
generator crystal.
■ Finding a natural altar in a sacred nature place and having a conversation with
a wise being.
■ Floating down a river in a one-person boat, dragging your hand lazily in the
water as you drift.
There are several examples of these types of guided meditation you can try out
beginning here.
Group Meditation

Group meditation can be done using any of the styles discussed. Most people
find they are able to go deeper in meditation when meditating in a group,
especially if the group is comprised of some experienced meditators. A field of
consciousness is created, and the collective group consciousness helps to raise
the vibration of everyone involved. You may also find that after meditating in a
group, you can bring the experience back to your individual practice and find
that it inspires a deeper experience on your own. As you begin your individual
meditation, picture the members of the group you are regularly meditating with.
If you have a family, set aside a time each day or even once a week to
meditate together. Imagine everyone—parents, children, grandparents if they are
present—all turning off phones and spending a few moments of peaceful time
together. Young children can meditate as well. In teaching his son of six to
meditate, a friend of mine chose a stuffed rabbit and invited his son to gaze at it.
They call it the “Meditation Bunny.” His child and Meditation Bunny stare at
each other and they both absolutely loved it!
 {2}
BENEFITS OF MEDITATION

As mentioned in the introduction, the full benefits of a regular meditation

practice are subtle and realized over time. The best way to assess what you gain
from meditation is to stop for a period of time after you’ve been practicing for a
while. When I was first publishing Meditation Magazine, I was interviewed on a
local TV show—my first—and was asked the question related to this chapter
title: “What are the benefits of meditation?” The unprepared answer that flowed
through my lips was “It’s easier to describe what happens when I don’t meditate.
I forget the peace, the consistent attention to life purpose, the harmony, the love,
the creativity that I enjoy while meditating consistently. Perhaps we can say that
the practice of meditation is an act of remembering.” Remembering who we
truly are. Meditation is not only a means of becoming a better person, it is a path
back to the source of our basic nature as being one with all things, all nature, an
expression of the Divine.

HEALTH BENEFITS

Since the interest of meditation began to increase in the United States in 1959,
there have been more than 600 studies done at more than 250 universities on the
health benefits. Some of these studies have been discounted by the scientific
community as being biased because of the researchers’ affiliation with a
meditation community, such as the many studies done on TM by researchers
who were part of the TM movement. Other studies have been disregarded
because of poor controls. This does not mean that there aren’t indications of
benefits in these studies; they just aren’t widely accepted by the scientific
community. On the other hand, there are many studies that are not discounted by
bias or poor controls that were rigorous enough to stand the test of scientific
scrutiny and that indicate specific and demonstrative benefits of meditation.
There is scientific evidence that meditation can be beneficial in the following
areas: decreased memory loss, increased brain function and synchronization,
improvement for post-traumatic stress disorder, lower cholesterol, pain
reduction, improved immune function, healing for irritable bowel syndrome,
reduced anxiety, reduced insomnia, decreased risk of stroke and heart disease,
lower blood pressure, improved learning, reductions in depression, improved
intelligence, improved emotional intelligence, quality of life in cancer patients,
improved creativity, higher self-awareness, problem solving, and compassion for
self and others. Next, we will examine several studies that are based on widely
accepted research demonstrating some of the health benefits of meditation.
Prevention of Cognitive Decline

A study conducted at UCLA1 between 2013 and 2015 indicated that Kundalini
yoga not only proved to be effective in the treatment and prevention of cognitive
decline, but was also more successful than standard memory-enhancement
training used specifically for executive functioning and mood resilience.
The study included eighty-one participants divided into two groups. One
group received Kundalini yoga training and the other standard memory-
enhancement training. At twelve weeks and twenty-four weeks, both Kundalini
yoga and memory-enhancement training groups showed significant
improvement in memory; however, only the Kundalini yoga group showed
significant improvement in executive functioning and reduced depressive
symptoms and resilience at week twelve.
Healthy Brain Structure

There has been a high volume of studies indicating that brain structure is
actually altered in positive ways through meditation. Isn’t that amazing? One
such study, led by Massachusetts General Hospital2, showed that particular areas
of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain, were thicker in participants
who were experienced meditators in insight meditation. The twenty participants
in the study averaged nine years of meditation experience and practiced about
six hours per week. The control group of fifteen had no experience with
meditation or yoga.
 They found that the areas of the brain that were thicker and therefore
functioning at a higher level were associated with heart rate, breathing, and the
integration of emotion with thought and reward-based decision making—
essentially one’s capacity for emotional intelligence. They also found that
regions of the brain associated with the integration of emotional and cognitive
processes were thicker and more pronounced in older participants, which
suggests that meditation can reduce the thinning of the cortex and associated
mental decline that occurs with aging.
Pain Reduction

Multiple studies have proven that mindfulness meditation can significantly

reduce pain, even with as little as three twenty-minute daily sessions. One such
brain-related study conducted at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North
Carolina3 actually proved that not only does mindfulness meditation reduce pain,
but, as demonstrated through MRI images, areas of the brain that affect pain are
changed during and after meditation, eliminating any chance that the reduction
in pain found in previous studies is the result of a placebo effect. The study
showed that mindfulness meditation significantly deactivates the thalamus and
periaqueductal gray matter, which facilitate low-level sensory and nerve-related
processing. Particularly interesting is that this study was done with individuals
who had no previous experience with meditation.
Brain and Immune Function Improvement

In a study titled “Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by

Mindfulness Meditation: Psychosomatic Medicine,”4 twenty-five subjects in a
work environment were offered a training program consisting of audio-recorded
guided meditation for one hour per day, six days a week, for a period of eight
weeks. This study was the first to indicate significant increases in left-side
anterior activation of the brain that correspond with reduction of anxiety and
increase in positive emotions. What is of particular significance is at the end of
the eight-week period, subjects were vaccinated with influenza vaccine, and a
significant increase in antibodies to the vaccine were recorded, indicating that
regular meditation significantly strengthens the immune system. All the positive
effects were compared to a control group that did not receive the meditation
training and did not register the positive changes listed above.
 Effective Treatment for Depression

Another study investigating meditation and brain function was introduced in a

scientific paper entitled “Meditate Don’t Medicate: How Medical Imaging
Evidence Supports the Role of Meditation in the Treatment of Depression.”5 In
this study, fifty-one different experiments that indicated changes in brain
structure in meditators were reviewed for the purpose of exploring the
effectiveness of meditation as treatment for depression.
Twelve of the fifty-one studies corroborated the theory that brain structure
associated with depression is positively altered through meditative practice.
Patients with depression are found to have neurotransmitter inhibition or
decreased serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine, all of which are increased
through the brain structures that are improved with meditation. Although the
types of meditation used varied across the studies, the results from all studies
were consistent, regardless of meditation style. One of the conclusions arrived at
was that in a large number of cases, meditation is a superior form of treatment
than medication because of the numerous side effects of the drugs used for
treatment. Of course, in many other cases, medical treatment is appropriate,
necessary, and can perhaps be augmented with meditation.
Stress, Cognitive Function, and Intelligence

A study entitled “Immediate and Long-term Effects of Meditation on Acute

Stress Reactivity, Cognitive Functions, and Intelligence”6 was conducted at the
All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, with thirty-four
healthy male students. The participants took part in a meditation session
immediately after a stress phase, induced by playing a video game, to explore
the immediate effects of meditation on acute-stress reactivity. The research team
also explored the effects of the long-term practice of meditation on stress
reactivity, intelligence, and cognitive functions, measured by standard
intelligence quotient and Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) tests.
In short-term results, galvanic skin response rose significantly during and
after the stress phase and decreased slightly at the beginning of the meditation
phase and significantly as the meditation period progressed. The reaction time,
another measurement of stress, also improved dramatically after the meditation
period. The long-term results after a month of meditation showed a decrease in
galvanic skin response even during the stress phase compared to the testing at
the beginning of the study. The long-term results also demonstrated a significant
increase in IQ and EQ scores, indicating that regular long-term meditation
results in an increase in intelligence and wisdom.
Increased Attention Ability

A study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania7 by neuroscientist Amishi

Jha and Michael Baime (director of Penn’s Program for Mindfulness)
investigated the effectiveness of mindfulness training in improving aspects of
attention, including alerting—producing and maintaining a state of readiness to
process environmental input; orienting—selecting the most relevant information
from various inputs; and executive control function—resolving competing
mental processes. These three aspects add up to one’s capacity for rapid and
accurate responses, or simply paying attention and responding effectively.
The study included three groups. One group consisted of individuals new to
meditation who participated in an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction
course (MBSR). A second group of individuals, experienced in meditation
techniques, participated in a one-month intensive mindfulness retreat. The third
group was a control group whose members had no training in meditation
techniques.
All groups were tested for attention effectiveness at the beginning and end of
the experiment. At the beginning, the experienced meditators participating in the
retreat tested significantly higher in the alerting component of attention
compared with those in the MBSR training and control group. At the end of the
training, the MBSR training group had significantly improved in relation to the
orienting component of attention compared with the retreat and control groups.
The retreat group improved even more significantly in the altering component by
the end of the retreat training. The executive control function of attention
remained relatively the same in all three groups.
The results suggest that meditation mindfulness training may improve
attention by enhancing specific functions of attention. The MBSR course
improved the orientation component, and the retreat group improved in the
alerting component.
Decreased Anxiety

In a study entitled “Effectiveness of a Meditation-Based Stress Reduction

Program in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders,”8 twenty-two participants
diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder participated in a
stress-reduction program based on mindfulness meditation. The study
documented significant reductions in anxiety and depression scores in twenty of
the twenty-one subjects. The number of participants experiencing panic
symptoms was also reduced substantially. The positive results continued to be
measured in a three-month and three-year follow-up. The study concluded that
mindfulness meditation training can effectively reduce symptoms of anxiety and
panic and maintain the reductions with continued practice.

HEALTH DETRIMENTS OF MEDITATION

With all these tremendous health benefits, are there any health liabilities
resulting from meditation? In almost all cases, the answer is no. There are some
rare exceptions that are mentioned in the following statement by the National
Center for Complementary and Integrative Health:

Meditation is considered to be safe for healthy people. There have been

rare reports that meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in people
who have certain psychiatric problems, but this question has not been fully
researched. People with physical limitations may not be able to participate
in certain meditative practices involving physical movement. Individuals
with existing mental or physical health conditions should speak with their
health care providers prior to starting a meditative practice and make their
meditation instructor aware of their condition.

The only caution I would add for relatively emotionally and physically
healthy individuals is to be mindful about not using meditation, or any spiritual
practice for that matter, as a “spiritual bypass.” It is very possible to use
meditation or any spiritual practice inadvertently as a means for emotional
suppression or avoidance of taking authentic action in our lives. It is important to
express, and in some cases cathartically release, emotional wounds and also to
face one’s challenges and take action when needed, in addition to spiritual and
meditation practices. In addition, I propose that an ongoing, consistent practice
will ultimately lead one to a life of mindfulness and the inspiration to be present
and authentic in all ways.
 THE JOY FACTOR AND NONATTACHMENT

I cannot say to exactly what degree of influence meditation alone has contributed
to living a life of joy, but I am certain that it has been highly significant. Other
practices that have led to living in joy nearly every minute of every day include
“radical gratitude,” looking for the magic in every situation and recognizing that
every challenge in life is never against us and always for us. This practice, along
with meditation, ultimately leads to the result of being less attached to outcomes,
which, by the way, is the only way I know of to arrive at deep inner peace.
Nonattachment is not a new idea and was espoused by the Buddha more than
2,300 years ago.
How does meditation contribute to nonattachment? When we go deep into the
meditative state, we can encounter the realm of nonduality. With regular
meditation, this state becomes as real or even more real than the realm of duality
or the physical plane. As the mystics have described through the ages—and is
now corroborated by quantum physics—what we experience in the physical
plane is an illusion based on our physical sense perception—a shadowy
reflection of a truer reality that we can only glimpse in moments of deep
meditation or mystical revelation. We are all pure energy, pure love, and all
connected at the level of essence.
With the repetitive experience of nonduality, meditation helps us to recognize
that no matter what happens on the physical plane, at the level of true reality,
everything is perfect just the way it is. Energy cannot be destroyed—it only
changes. Everything is infinite, including the essence of who we really are.
When we look at our challenges from a larger, wider perspective, one aligned
with true reality, we recognize that everything is unfolding for the purpose of our
evolving consciousness, both individually and collectively, which leads to an
ever-expanding experience of nonattachment, deep inner peace, and joyful
living. Chapter 5, “Supporting Spiritual Practices,” offers expanded information
about radical gratitude, the joy factor, nonattachment, and other practices that
lead to an ever-increasing life of peace, joy, and love.

INNER PEACE

Perhaps the most commonly sought-after benefit from meditation over time is
inner peace. To quote Eckhart Tolle, “You find peace not by rearranging the
circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
Meditation is the clearest and most effective way of achieving this result.
Inner peace means remaining emotionally calm inside, even when events of
the world are chaotic and challenging. So how does meditation contribute to
such a state? With consistent and continued practice, the deep peace that can be
experienced in meditation familiarizes us with this state. The more we
experience it inwardly during our quiet time, the more we are inspired and
motivated to experience it in our lives throughout our daily activities.
In a way, meditation grooms us for what is truly important in life. As we
attune ourselves to the inner experiences of deep peace, unconditional love,
radiant light, and oneness, there is an increased desire to live life from the
presence of these qualities. This doesn’t mean such a practice will always be
easy. We can affirm an intention to be at peace, continually practice it, and still
get thrown off-center when challenges emerge. The practice previously
mentioned of looking for the magic in every experience can help this, which can
lead to nonjudgment and, ultimately, to enlightenment.

SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Most meditation practices, especially those from Eastern philosophy, and New
Age and New Thought in the West, emphasize that we are not separate from
Infinite Source, God, Higher Power, Tao, Spirit, or whatever name one wants to
give to It. In fact, I find complete agreement even with atheists on this matter.
When I ask an atheist if he or she believes there is a creative force in the
universe, the answer I most always receive is yes. This is our point of agreement.
A spiritual or religious person will agree that God is a Creative Force. At a basic
level then, we are all talking about the same thing. Meditation can lead one to
deeper spiritual or even mystical experience regardless of one’s religious
affiliation or whether one even considers the state of oneness as spiritual.
From the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, pantheism is the expression of
God immanent—God existing equally in all creation. It seems interesting to me
that there are so many religious arguments about what God is. If God is infinite
and all things, then there is no description of God that is not true. As I point out
in The Magic of the Soul, the only time we get off track is when we try to
delineate what God isn’t, since God, or whatever name we ascribe, is everything.
Every religion is either based in mysticism, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and
Hinduism to a large extent, or has a mystical branch, like Kabbalah in Judaism,
Gnosticism in Christianity, and Sufism in Islam. The mystical philosophical
systems all say essentially the same thing: God is in everything, and the only
way to experience God fully is through deep introspection, meditation, and
mystical experience.
I interviewed Swami Satchidananda for Meditation Magazine in 1987. He
was quite involved in interfaith work in addition to his role as a world-famous
teacher of meditation and Hinduism. In the article I entitled “The Many Roads
Home,” he said this: “Once I was at the Vatican talking to a cardinal who
questioned me, ‘How can there be many paths to the same goal, God?’ I said,
‘Sir, you are living in Rome, so you of all people should understand. All roads
lead to Rome! If Rome itself can have so many roads, why do we think that our
home will have only one road?’ So, we have to accept others’ approaches to
God.”9 The deeper one goes in one’s spiritual path through meditation, prayer, or
other spiritual practice, the less the focus tends to be on differences and mental
constructs of God, and the more the heart understanding and experience of God
unfolds as a presence of pure energy, light, love, and creative expression.
If everything that exists is an expression of God, then we must be as well.
Meditation leads us to this ultimate realization. I acknowledge, of course, some
philosophies that embrace meditation may believe in an anthropomorphic God
and others, such as Buddhism, may not believe in a supreme being at all. Yet
there is a realization of Buddha consciousness that a Buddhist is moving toward.
In Christianity, there is one God, but also the Holy Spirit (in most Christian
denominations), an aspect of the one God potentially manifest in humankind and
nature. Atheists may achieve a deeper understanding of purpose and unity as
human beings. To me and most who have advanced down the meditative path to
mystical experience, it’s all the same, just different names, like the song written
by Daniel Nahmod, “One Power.”10 The chorus of the song sums it up perfectly:

Call it God, call it Spirit

Call it Jesus, call it Lord
Call it Buddha, Ba’ha’ulla
Angel’s Wings or Heaven’s Door
But whatever name you give it
It’s all One Power, can’t you see?
It’s the power of the love in you and me.
 ENLIGHTENMENT

Many meditation practices, especially in Eastern traditions, hold the promise of

enlightenment. One definition I like on this subject is the following: “The
enlightened being is one who sees enlightenment (or at the very least, the
potential of enlightenment) everywhere he or she looks.” If I look at a situation,
an individual, the world, and see mostly problems, then I am living in the realm
of problems and most likely worry a good deal of my time. If I recognize that the
situation, individual, and the world is on a journey of enlightenment and that
everyone and everything is in the perfect place on that journey, then I am living
in the realm of solution. Then I am at peace. Then I have a greater ability to
create positive change. The level of peace we feel inside is perfectly
proportionate to our ability to manifest what we want to see.
I believe that enlightenment, like everything else in life, is relative. One
person may seem enlightened to some, and that same person may consider others
more enlightened than him- or herself. Many who have been considered
enlightened have had situations that would demonstrate otherwise. In my
estimation and experience, anyone who is in physical form continues to have
some degree of human challenge or relative imperfection. Embracing challenge
and imperfection leads to higher levels of inner peace, joy, love, and
enlightenment.
For an article in Meditation Magazine, I had the opportunity to interview Pir
Vilayat Inayat Khan, the leader of the Sufi movement in the West at the time
(and the son of the Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan), who was in my opinion one
of the most enlightened beings I’ve ever met. Understanding that Sufism is an
integrated spiritual philosophy, I asked him about how we deal with human
emotion. Paraphrasing, his answer was essentially that anger is healthy as long
as it is harnessed in a way that creates positive change. As far as pain and
suffering, it’s okay to have pain and to suffer, and one can still be happy (I would
call it joyful) at the same time. And fear is also healthy: “If not for fear, we’d be
doing more stupid things than we’re doing now.”11
Enlightenment, like every path or goal, is not about the destination but the
journey. We are all enlightened as far as the truth of who we really are. We are
all on a journey to realizing our essential truth, and wherever we are on that
journey is absolutely the perfect place to be. When we go deep into meditation,
quiet the mind, dissolve duality, experience the infinite joy, love, bliss, and
oneness of all life, we are enlightened in that moment. You can stop reading for a
moment, go into this state, and then for this moment … you are enlightened. Try
it now, or jump to Meditation Practice, chapter 4. Or keep reading and wait for
another moment—whatever brings you the most joy, my beloved reader.
In the moments and periods of time I have experienced what I would call
enlightenment, I have found that being enlightened is not about being devoid of
human emotions and experiences, such as pain, fear, or even righteous anger. It’s
really about how we perceive and/or frame our human experience.
When I can see the beauty in my own pain or the pain of another, then I am
enlightened. In fact, when I embrace my pain and go deep into it, what I find is
my deepest love. I couldn’t feel pain if there wasn’t something or someone I love
at the heart of it. When people share with me that they have lost a loved one,
spouse, mother, or father, I will usually say something like, “I know the sadness
you feel, the tears you are crying, are a beautiful testimony to your love for this
individual.” This, of course, does not take away the pain, but it helps the
individual to focus not just on the pain, but more fully on the love. The only way
pain heals is to be introduced to love.
When I see the beauty in my fear or the fear of another, I am enlightened.
When I embrace my fear and go deep into it, what I find is my deepest
sensitivity and compassion. In assisting people in embracing and loving their
own fear, I have found that what is then integrated are the common aspects of the
inner child: sensitivity, playfulness, and creativity.
When I see the beauty in my anger or the anger of another, I am enlightened.
When I embrace my anger and go deep into it, what I find are my deepest values.
Anger is most often the result of the experience of some value not being
honored. Naturally, these emotions may not appear as their deeper expressions if
we don’t go deep. When we resist or judge them, they remain unconscious and
play out in ways that are uncomfortable or damaging. When we go deep, when
we are mindful, when we love and accept them, we uncover the beauty.
As a practice toward enlightenment, we can ask, “What is the magic in any
situation? What is the greater freedom, joy, or love that wants to emerge from a
situation?” And when I find it difficult to do so because I am in an experience of
pain, fear, anger, or any uncomfortable feeling, I can ask, “What is the magic,
joy, love, and power within my feelings?”
 {3}
GETTING STARTED

You can meditate nearly anywhere, but most people who meditate like to find a
comfortable spot in their home, or outside when the weather is nice, where it is
quiet with pleasant surroundings. Many create an altar with various items that
invoke a sense of calm or spiritual presence that they can gaze at before they
close their eyes for meditation or continue to gaze at if it is an opened-eye
meditation. Meditating in the same spot on a daily basis accumulatively builds
up a frequency of energy that helps to deepen the meditative practice over time.

MEDITATION TOOLS

As far as meditation tools, some suggestions are listed here, and you can find
specific examples and where to find them in the resources section:
■ Incense (frankincense and sandalwood are my favorites, and patchouli is quite
nice as well), sage, sweetgrass, palo santo (a sweet-smelling wood with
reported healing properties from the Amazon), essential oils, or other
fragrances can be used to stimulate a calming olfactory experience. You can
find incense in various forms, including sticks, oils, gums, resins, cones, and
powders. There are also various products for burning them, including holders
for sticks, pots for resins, gums, holders and plates for cones, and burners for
oils.
■ Candles can be lit and gazed at before, after, and/or during the session. You
can find candles with most scents that are available in incense form, or
unscented if you prefer. Burning one or more candles at a time can be done as
 personal preference dictates.
■ Soft meditation or New Age music, nature sounds, or guided meditation apps
can augment the meditative experience. Insight Timer is a phone/computer app
that has thousands of guided meditations and musical selections. Please see
additional suggestions in the resources section under “products.” Another
effective auditory stimulus is to ring a bell (Tibetan bowls work well for this),
and as the sound trails off, drift into meditation and allow the fading sound to
pull your consciousness outward with it, expanding into peace and bliss.
■ Mind machines that provide goggles and headphones to transmit light and
sound signals have been available for decades to help produce alpha and theta
brain waves. These machines can be especially helpful for beginners.
■ Mandalas can be gazed into as a visual stimulus that can lead one into altered
states of consciousness. You can find original mandala art, prints, and tapestries
to beautify your home that can also be used as meditation tools.
■ Crystals and other minerals are believed to radiate specific energies for healing
and mood enhancement. These as well as many others are recommended to
support your meditation experience: clear quartz, amethyst, rose quartz, citrine,
black tourmaline, carnelian, and aventurine. Fountains can add calming
ambiance to your meditative space. You can find beautiful tabletop fountains
for your altar or any space near your meditation spot.

POSTURE

Sitting cross-legged in lotus position on the floor, a mat, or a cushion is a classic

Eastern position, but certainly not required. Many in the Western world prefer to
sit in a chair for greater comfort with sitting meditation. There is no right or
wrong position, but it is highly recommended to sit with a straight back so that
the energy can flow easily up the spine, balancing the chakras—the seven energy
centers within our energy body that move from the bottom of the spine to the top
of the head.
Lying down is an option and is obviously advantageous if one is using
meditation in preparation for relaxation or sleep. If you want to achieve a poised
yet present state without lots of racing thoughts and without falling asleep, then
sitting erect is advised. Depending on the chair I’m sitting in, I like to sit with
my back away from the backrest or at least have a pillow behind my lower back
so my spine is easily in a straight position with my head supported by my neck
rather than resting on a headrest. One benefit to this posture is if you do start to
fall asleep, your body will let you know when your head falls forward and
automatically bounces back to protect your neck.
What is most important is to be comfortable. If you are meditating for a
longer period of time, like twenty minutes or more, feel free to move your head
to stretch your neck or other part of your body as well. If we can meditate while
walking, dancing, or playing a sport, surely we can stay in meditation while
moving the body to maintain comfort. There are those who teach remaining
perfectly still as an important component to meditation and that the meditator
eventually can transcend any and all discomfort, no matter how long they remain
in one position. In my experience, it is far better to be comfortable.
I attended a group meditation meeting in my early twenties in a room with
very creaky wooden chairs. It was a completely silent meditation with no
guiding whatsoever, which I do prefer and enjoy. At first there were a few
creaking sounds from the chairs, then more, until the room was filled with
creaking chair noises. The leader proclaimed in a gruff voice, “If we cannot be
still, then we cannot meditate.” Not my type of meditation—too rigid!
What to do with the hands? The simplest and probably most common hand
position is palms facing up and resting on the thighs. Hands down is fine, too. It
is recommended that legs and hands not be crossed to remain open physically,
which is symbolic of being open emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Beginning with the conventional wisdom is a good idea to fully experience the
benefits that have been time-tested, but ultimately, I recommend you find your
own comfort zone and create your own conventional wisdom based on your
experience.
A traditional pose involves palms up, with forefinger and thumb pressed
lightly together. This mudra, or sacred hand position, is symbolic. The index
finger is symbolic of our personal will. We use it to point things out or point at a
person (even though it has been deemed “impolite”) when we want to get an
important idea across. Our thumb is symbolic of universal will. Thumbs-up
means “good job, something positive is happening.” So symbolically, we are
bringing together personal will with universal will. We also create a circuit of
energy by creating a circle with our finger and thumb in this position.
 HELPFUL HINTS

■ Prepare your space so it is calm and tranquil. It is recommended that you

normally meditate in the same spot in your home to easily and comfortably slip
into your meditative journey.
■ Turn off your phone.
■ Tell others in your environment that you are having quiet time and to please
not disturb.
■ Make sure the temperature is comfortable.
■ Be sure and visit the bathroom if applicable before beginning so your physical
comfort will be maintained.
■ Some people find it helpful to keep a journal close by. If you have pressing
thoughts come up in meditation and don’t want to forget them, you can open
your eyes, write them down, and return to meditation with a freer mind.
■ Set a timer if you have a prescribed amount of time that you want to meditate,
so you don’t have to be checking or thinking about the time.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

Expect it to be easy. Meditation in many ways is a metaphor for life. If we

expect everything to be easy, whatever task ahead of us will most definitely be
easier than if we expect it to be difficult. In my twenties, I was very tied into the
expectation that projects or goals would be difficult, especially if I did not yet
know the how of it. I had an epiphany and recognized how much struggle I had
created as a result of my belief. From then on, anytime I noticed myself
expecting something to be difficult (and it was the discomfort of the thought that
became the cue), I would simply turn it around and expect the task or goal to be
an absolute breeze. I never looked back and life has continued to get easier and
easier over the past forty years.
Why is it the most difficult thing to do as a human being is … nothing, being
still and quiet of mind … when all that’s really required is surrender? Meditation
could also be defined as “a process of surrender—surrendering the control of the
personal self or ego and control of the analytical mind to a higher expression and
vibration of energy.” There are times when I may be experiencing some degree
of stress in my life, and as I go into meditation, I consider it such a relief to
surrender any concerns of the personality and simply let it all go to experience
the “other self”—the timeless higher, freer expression of myself as pure peace,
love, light, and bliss. Gangaji, a North American spiritual teacher, says, “Be still.
It takes no effort to be still; it is utterly simple. When your mind is still, you have
no name, you have no past, you have no relationships, you have no country, you
have no spiritual attainment, you have no lack of spiritual attainment. There is
just the presence of beingness with itself.”
What makes anything difficult? Isn’t it simply that we are not accomplishing
the task at the level that we want to? Certainly, there is value to striving for
excellence, but if we judge that we are failing if we don’t reach our goal, then
life will be filled with much disappointment. I recently asked a client if they
were the only person in the world who played guitar, how they would judge their
skill level. You’d be the best! If it’s all about the journey, as we hear over and
over, then let’s chuck the judgment and have fun with whatever we are doing and
at whatever level of skill we are doing it while we stretch for higher levels of
excellence in a nonjudgmental and joyful way.
And what happens when we can truly let go of control? Only then can we be
totally free. In retreats I have offered in various locations in California, including
Catalina Island, and Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, I usually include a trust
fall. When you are standing on a table or a rock with seven or more people
behind you encouraging you to let go and trust to fall backward into their arms,
fear inevitably comes up—not rational fear, of course. Intellectually, I know my
friends will catch me. It’s the emotional fear of letting go of control that creates
the hesitancy. I’ve had people stand there for ten minutes or more before finally
letting go. I always experience a huge rush when I let go and fall backward.
This morning in my meditation, I noticed the correlation between that trust-
fall rush and letting go of the control of the mind and ego during deep
meditation. What I experience is a profound expansiveness. Once I let go
completely, I am no longer me. I become one with all that is, not only
conceptually, but energetically. My entire “beingness” is no longer contained
within the personality named Patrick Harbula. I am no longer any-thing; I have
become everything. During a recent meditation training in Edmonton, Canada,
someone said to me they experienced nothing and continued to say, “When you
realize nothing, you have everything.”
 The inner peace that comes from meditation and continues to expand over
time is the motivating factor for continuing to practice for those who can
appreciate the importance of this profound benefit. Tibetan Buddhist monk
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says, “When we understand clearly that inner peace is the
real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience
progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous
enthusiasm to practice.”
Make it fun. There was a time in my life when I practiced meditation as a
discipline. What has evolved for me in the area of meditative practice, as well as
virtually every other aspect of living, is to meditate for the joy of it rather than as
a discipline or because I think I have to or should. From my ongoing experience,
I find that whatever I do for the joy of doing it is always more beneficial than
forcing myself to participate in that same activity. How I define joy, by the way,
is not the opposite of sadness—that’s happiness, which is a quality more aligned
with the personal self. Joy to me is a pervasive spiritual quality that can be
present, even in moments of pain, loss, or sadness and is synonymous with deep
inner peace and connection.
The spiritual joy of which I am writing is also a lasting joy. It’s not simply
being happy and certainly not about instant gratification. By virtue of being a
spiritual or soul quality, it is by nature long-term. To determine if what I am
choosing to do for spiritual joy is effective, I can ask, “How will I feel a month
from now if I choose to participate in a particular activity or go in a particular
direction?” The answer becomes a compass for joyful living, and, by the way,
the most powerful demonstration of self-love we can offer ourselves is to do
what brings us joy.
In relation to meditation, what this means is rather than thinking, “I must sit
down and meditate today and then another six days this week,” I can ask myself,
“Will sitting down today and another six days this week bring me lasting joy?
Looking back a month or two from now, will it bring me more joy to meditate or
not to meditate today?” Perhaps the answer will be that four or five days will
bring more joy, because there will be more spaciousness around the practice.
Sometimes the answer may be that it will not bring me the most joy today,
because I’ve got a ton of things to do, and it will put more stress on myself to
spend twenty minutes meditating than if I attend to the things that I want to
accomplish. Of course, in this case, I could modify the question to “Will it bring
me more lasting joy if I meditate for three minutes today than if I don’t at all?”
Perhaps one could argue that such a practice is a form of discipline and that
we’re just talking semantics. My encouragement, however, is to find a way to
make your practice light. If it feels forced, you’re probably not going to continue
your practice very long, and your benefits will not be as great. If you find that
every day you’re too busy, then that’s an indication that a major shift may be in
order. Is it bringing you lasting joy to be so busy that you don’t have time to take
part in the activities that will bring you lasting joy, balance, and wholeness?
Make it consistent. It is far better to have a shorter consistent practice than
more sporadic longer sessions of practice. For example, meditating ten minutes
per day, five days a week will bring more noticeable and lasting results than
meditating once a week for two hours, even though two hours is more than
double the total amount of time spent meditating per week.
When I was in my early twenties, I had a lot of negative, unhealed emotions
and energy, which led me to the study and practice of transpersonal psychology
in my later twenties. The techniques from transpersonal psychology had a
profound effect on my healing and integration. Before I found those techniques,
many of which are meditative in nature, I used more traditional meditation to
heal. Because the negativity was so strong and persistent, I would meditate three
or more times each day, simply surrendering to light and love. This practice was
an excellent beginning solution to my ongoing healing and integration.
Commit to your practice. Make your commitment inviting and exceedable
(my word). This is the formula I use with clients and students that applies to all
types of action steps, including meditation. I make a distinction between goals
and actions. If you want to meditate twenty minutes per day, seven days a week,
make that your goal. Your action step, which you commit to at 100 percent (you
may not always achieve 100 percent, but that is the intention), could be to
meditate a minimum of ten minutes per day, four days per week. Then, if you do
twenty minutes for some of those days and/or five or six days a week, you are
exceeding your commitment. How much better will it feel to exceed your
intention than to just meet it or fall short? When most people make a
commitment to every day, once they miss the first day, they feel like they have
failed and often give up completely shortly afterward.
On the other hand, there can be a benefit to an everyday commitment for any
amount of time (say, for twenty-one days, for example) if you are able to follow
through or even if you do miss a day or more. If you don’t complete the
commitment, don’t judge yourself. Instead, start over and recommit to your
intention. Even if you never complete the twenty-one days, you will more than
likely end up meditating more than you would with a four-day-a-week practice.
Just make sure that whatever the commitment, you are continuing to do your
practice for the joy of doing it rather than because you feel you have to or
should.
Get support. Avail yourself to meditation groups, classes, and/or a
meditation coach. It helps to meditate in groups, especially if they have
experienced meditators. You can find classes and coaches or trainers from many
different sources and styles in the meditation resources section at the end of this
book.
Get a meditation buddy. Find a friend who will be an accountability partner
with you. You can check in daily or weekly by phone, text, email, messaging,
etc. You can support each other in your practices and share what is working as
far as meditation styles and forms as well as your challenges.
Surrender to a higher power. Here’s a tip that I find really helps make
meditation easy: as you are meditating, focus on the benefits of nonthinking. We
have all of our waking consciousness to use our mind in active or even
overactive ways. I find that I can allow my dissatisfaction or discontent with the
constant buzzing of monkey mind to inspire me to just give it up and surrender.
To take this a step further in effortlessness, surrender the busy mind to a
higher power. Rather than trying to be at peace, consider allowing a benevolent
higher power—spiritual guides, masters, inner guru, a specific enlightened
being, the Buddha, the Christ, angels, Spirit, and/or God—to guide you into pure
bliss, peace, love, and light. Allow Spirit to take you on a journey that may go to
places in consciousness that you don’t even know exist.
Expect that you will go deeper. Recently I tried a new meditation practice.
By the way, another tip for becoming a meditator is to write a book on it. This
project is bringing me incredible joy and has definitely upped my intention to go
deeper in meditation. This new technique is to expect and intend that as I go into
still mind, I will progressively go deeper and enjoy a more expanded
consciousness with each passing second.
What I often find is that when I get to still mind and I am completely free of
control, my thoughts sneak in through the open door. What starts with a simple
thought like “I can share this experience in my writing today” trails off into
thinking about writing the next section of the book, then off to thinking about
how I can use this technique in my next class. Then I realize I’m thinking again,
invite the thought in without any resistance, and again affirm that with each
passing second, I will effortlessly go deeper. I like to play with tricking my own
mind as well. I often experiment with assuming that any thoughts coming in are
actually fuel for still mind. As I watch them go by and/or invite them in, they are
actually fueling the deepening.
Invite “distractions” to be part of the bliss. In teaching meditation locally
as well as across the continent in workshops, I have found that the most helpful
hint I offer people is rather than resisting thoughts, feelings, or sensations,
simply invite them into the meditation. A common strategy is to simply watch
these experiences as they arise, and in mindfulness meditation, this is the general
purpose, to simply be more mindful of whatever we are experiencing in the
moment.
For example, one can watch the thoughts as they go by, like watching the
boxcars on a train go by. What I find even more helpful is to let the thoughts,
feelings, or sensations become part of the meditation. In doing so, they tend to
dissolve into the blissful experience. I assume that any thought coming into play
is doing so because it wants to become part of the bliss. It wants to become
enlightened; it wants to meditate with me. Again, as a perfect metaphor for life,
whatever we resist persists and, in fact, magnifies. Anything we embrace and
accept subsides and ultimately transforms and integrates.
This applies to feelings and sensations as well. If we resist a particular feeling
that we don’t like whether in meditation or not, it will continue to bug us. By
inviting the feeling into the bliss and welcoming it, it will easily dissolve into the
meditative experience. In life, this is true as well. In working with individuals as
a coach, one of the most important exercises I offer is to help people love and
accept every aspect of themselves. We cannot love ourselves any more than we
love the parts of ourselves that we love the least. My simple metaphor for this is
to imagine that any feeling or behavior that you may judge as negative is a
young child that you are responsible for and is showing up as that particular
behavior or feeling. I often hear teachers say that we have to embrace our
shadow (the unhealed aspect of self) and in the next sentence say we have to get
over our fears so we can accomplish our goals.
If you told a fearful child “I have to get over you, or set you aside,” how
would it feel for the child and how would the child likely react? He or she would
become more fearful and perhaps even throw a tantrum. Every part of us and
every unhealed emotion and limiting thought is simply trying to get acceptance
and love. By loving these aspects of self, they become healed and we become
integrated and whole.
The same is true for physical discomforts or pain. When we resist pain and
judge it as bad or negative, it persists and magnifies. When we embrace and love
our physical discomforts, they relax and become less painful and ultimately
improve, because love is the most powerful healing force there is. In a
microcosmic way, this dynamic all works out in the meditative process, by
loving, accepting, and embracing whatever comes into awareness.
The same is true for noises or sounds in meditation. Our experience is
determined to a large degree by what we name things. During a meditation
workshop in Calgary, Canada, at the home of a good friend, one person came out
of a fifty-minute meditation and announced that the “ticking of that clock was
disturbing my peace.” Another participant described the ticking as “a steady
metronome bringing me deeper and deeper.” Everything is to us what we name it
to be.
During another class I was teaching on meditation, I addressed the strategy of
using “distracting” sounds as a call to go deeper. The next day, I had the
opportunity to practice what I preach in a big way—as usual, I sat down to
meditate in my meditation chair to the right of my altar when I heard the loudest
sustained noise I’d ever heard in my home. We were doing some remodeling,
and the workers were drilling through pipes in the bathroom adjacent to the
master bedroom in which I was sitting. Rather than judge the sound as a
distraction, I used it as a calling to go deeper. It was one of the deepest
meditations I’ve ever experienced. The Absolute, which we experience in deep
stillness, is in everything, including the drill, the driller, the sound, the music in
the other room, someone yelling outside, and, of course, every thought, feeling,
and sensation we can possibly have. Once reframed, the “distractions” can
become our allies in the deepening.
Slip into the GAP. Many authors and meditation trainers speak about “the
gap,” the space between thoughts. A good friend of mine, Reverend Steve
Rambo, uses this as an acronym for the God Awareness Place. The point here is
to once again observe the thoughts and then find the gap between them. As we
exercise the meditation muscle, the gap can become wider and the thoughts
fewer and further between. We will practice all the tips above and various
meditation styles in chapter 4: “Meditation Practice.”
Allow whatever is to be. It is important with meditation and any spiritual
practice to be mindful about not using it as a means of escape, what is often
called a “spiritual bypass.” If we meditate, say affirmations, pray, or visualize to
improve our lives or simply feel better, and at the end of it, we still have a knot
in our gut; this is our body and emotions telling us that it needs a deeper or more
cathartic release. Otherwise we may be inadvertently repressing emotions, which
is never a healthy strategy. There are many methods of releasing and healing
uncomfortable feelings, including journaling, crying, screaming (into a pillow if
needed), punching a pillow, working out. In chapter 5, “Supporting Spiritual
Practices,” I outline a practice I developed for ongoing and consistent emotional
release and healing called “shift and release.”
A very simple practice I use when it’s called for is to release emotion at the
beginning of my meditation. If I feel an emotional discomfort and/or tension in
my body, I tune in to it and allow whatever sound that wants to emerge to come
out—sometimes tears or sobbing, shuddering, or even screaming. While this was
a more common strategy earlier in my practice, I find it necessary only rarely, as
years of healing have led me to a place of inner peace, but I still find it valuable
on the rare occasions when discomfort is present.
If I sit down to meditate and my consciousness or psyche is half-filled with
pain, fear, or anger, then it is unlikely that I will be able to go very deep into
meditation. Once I completely void myself of the uncomfortable feelings in a
loving and self-accepting way, then I become an empty vessel that can be filled
100 percent with spiritual light, love, and peace.
Accept and love yourself along your spiritual path. In one of my
workshops I ask this question, and I will ask it now of you, my beloved reader:
“What would your life be like if it were 100 percent free of critical self-
judgment?” Previously, I had said “all judgment” and then remembered self-
judgment is really the only kind of judgment there is. If I’m judging another, it
means that I am projecting something I judge as negative about myself onto
another. I’m sure your answer is something like, “I’d be free, empowered,
joyful.”
I’ve had people tell me that they were actually less self-critical before they
began a spiritual path—when they were “clueless.” Once we are on a spiritual
path, we now have an ideal that we are moving toward, and we tend to judge
ourselves in comparison to that ideal. We forget to notice and appreciate how far
we’ve come. It is just as important, if not more important, to accept yourself as
you are.
 Appreciate and honor exactly where you are on your path. As John
Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote in “All You Need Is Love,” “There’s
nowhere you can be that isn’t where you were meant to be.” And one of my
favorite and truest quotes is from Carl Rogers, the founder of humanistic
psychology: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I
change.” As long as I’m judging myself, I am keeping myself stuck. My baseline
spiritual practice is to accept and love myself as I am in all my humanness, no
matter what.
A question I ask many of my clients is “On a scale of one to ten, how much
do you love yourself?” If it’s less than a ten, then there is room for improvement.
If it’s less than a five, then this is the most important focus of your life. One way
to assess the answer to this question is to ask how loving and encouraging your
inner dialogue is on a regular basis. When you make a mistake, do you hear in
your head something like “You idiot!” Or do you hear “It’s okay, this is part of
being human,” or “I love myself, no matter what”?
While on your meditative and spiritual path, make loving and accepting
yourself no matter what a priority in every situation. Simply put, give yourself a
break—you deserve it! We’re all on a path to ever-increasing expressions of
love, and we are all in our absolutely perfect place on that journey.

WHAT TO EXPECT

It is likely, unless you are already the most enlightened being in history, that you
will experience sensations, feelings, and especially thoughts—sometimes even
racing thoughts—that come up when you begin your meditation practice and, as
a matter of fact, you will continue to experience this to some degree (less as time
goes by) throughout your journey as a meditator. As stated, all this is part of the
process, and it is best not to judge yourself for whatever level of success you are
experiencing. Remember that, like anything else, the more you practice, the
easier it becomes. It is just like exercising a muscle. The more you exercise it,
the stronger it gets, and the stronger your practice will become over time.
Deepak Chopra advises, “Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It
is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there—buried under the fifty
thousand thoughts the average person thinks every day.”
One dynamic that I experienced early in my practice and which has been
reported by many of the students in my trainings is a fear that can come up while
slipping into very deep levels of consciousness. What happens when the mind
becomes completely still is that we can actually lose sense of who we are at the
level of personality. When we begin to merge in consciousness into mystical
states, it can literally feel like we are dying, and our instinct for self-preservation
kicks in and brings us back to personal identification. If this happens for you,
recognize it as a wonderful step in your progress. It means you are quieting the
mind to the point of entering pure bliss and oneness. As you continue to move
into still mind, the fear or self-preservation reflex will gradually subside as a
result of realizing that you didn’t actually die in the moments of shifting
identification from the personal self to the transpersonal or soul self, connected
with all other life in the mystical experience of pure bliss.
On the other side of the consciousness coin from monkey mind is
unconsciousness. You may just fall asleep during meditation. It has been said
that the ideal state of mind for meditation is poised yet alert. I like the word
“present” better than “alert,” though. “Alert” feels a little too intense. Remaining
in a surrendered, peaceful yet present state is really the journey of the meditation
practice and exercising your meditation muscle. If you find yourself dozing off,
don’t be concerned. You will ultimately train your mind to remain present. As
mentioned, sitting up straight will help the training process. Meditating when
you are fresh and rested is also important and is why most people like to
meditate in the morning shortly after arising from sleep. By meditating first
thing in the morning, your mind is also free from distractions that arise from
daily activities. Once I check email or social media, I’ve got a flourishing of new
thoughts to dance around in my meditative space, so I almost always meditate
first thing after brushing my teeth.
Since we’re expecting it to be easy, you may find yourself slipping easily and
effortlessly into deep mindfulness and/or still yet present mind. In this state, you
may have mystical experiences, a feeling or sense of deep connectedness or
oneness with all life. You may go beyond time and space. You may find your
personal identity dissolving into the mystery. You may hear a voice spoken to
you or spoken as you. You may see images: pure white light, radiant golden
light, or other visions that are completely unique to your own experience.
About ten years into my practice, when I would go really deep, the image of a
golden radiant being would spontaneously emerge, and I would be with that
image in a state of stillness. The being looked much like the East Indian god
Ganesh. I don’t know for sure if I had seen the image before, and I certainly
didn’t know anything about Ganesh at the time.
You may receive messages in deep meditation. Some of the thoughts that
come to me in deep mindfulness and slipping in and out of still mind are
profound. This is a good thing and why inviting thoughts in is helpful. A couple
of years ago, I was meditating while camping on Catalina Island in California.
The message that came to me was not a completely new idea, but it was a clearer
understanding of what I already knew: Spirit, God, the Infinite Universe delights
in expressing through every human experience, including love, hatred, creativity,
fear, joy, sadness, hope, anger, compassion, rage, acceptance, discontentment,
caring, abuse, righteousness, oppression, tenderness, violence, peace, and war.
I realize this may not make perfect sense to everyone. What I have
experienced, as have mystics down through the ages, is that at the level of
nonduality, everything is perfect. All human experience leads to the evolution of
consciousness. All human experience leads to a higher expression of love. Even
the most violent act is a call for love.
You may experience no sights or sound but simply feel yourself as one with
all life, as pure radiance, love, and peace. Oftentimes in my meditations during
the past ten years or so, I feel my energy body expanding until I am the energy
of all life. I actually kinesthetically, physically feel myself as one with all that is.
The following is a passage from The Magic of the Soul, written eighteen years
ago, illustrating a profound meditative experience:

Today in my morning meditation, I reached a level of peace so profound I

didn’t want to leave it. I felt that the energy that I am beyond my self-
identity was more real, more solid than how I experience myself in
physical form. I was completely connected—no, more than connected—I
was one in that moment with the energy of all life. Tears streamed down
my face (as they are now while I write these words and re-experience the
sensation) because the experience was filled with such beauty. But they
were not “my” tears. They were the tears of all life flowing through a
particular identification known as Patrick. I experienced my personality, or
the personality of Patrick, as one aspect of that one life, no more or less
important (and just as beautiful) in that moment than the grass it sat on, the
trees surrounding it, or the wind flowing through and around it.1

What I have found in my trainings is that people experience meditation

similar to the way they experience life. A person who processes information
predominantly visually, for example, will have more of a visual experience in
meditation. The person who is more auditory will experience the stillness as a
sound, tone, voice, or humming. The kinesthetic individual will most likely feel
the energy, the peace, the pure love, and the bliss. You may have some degree of
all these experiences.
You may also experience nothing! Perhaps that is the greatest gift of all, to be
lost in the void of complete nonexistence. No matter how you experience
meditation, whether it’s in the chattering of the mind, the cycling in and out of
still mind, or the various ways you slip into mystical awareness, know that what
you are experiencing is perfect for you at this particular time and your
experience will expand and deepen as you continue down this path.
 {4}
MEDITATION PRACTICE

Let’s begin actually meditating. You can use the following meditations to get
started on your meditation path or to add new techniques and styles to your
existing practice. You can read these meditations into your own recording device
and listen to them said in your own voice.
The first session, entitled “Meditation Sampler,” is precisely the format I use
in my meditation workshops. It is a longer form offering many different styles
and techniques in one extended session. I usually lead these for about forty
minutes to an hour or so. Virtually everyone experiences them as feeling much
shorter. At the end, I sometimes ask how long people thought we were in
meditation. The answers usually vary, ranging from ten to twenty minutes.
I used to be hesitant about leading long meditations, especially with newbies.
Then I remembered that I became really good at meditating by participating in
group meditations called “transmission meditation,” which involved sitting with
a group of people in complete silence for about three hours at a time, holding our
attention at the level of the third eye (the point slightly above and at the center of
the brows), and allowing our group to be a transmitter of light, love, and power
as a service to the planet and all sentient beings. Sitting for long periods in
meditation will definitely build the meditation muscle.
In the following Meditation Sampler, I offer a specific style or technique, then
allow silence to practice it. I then introduce another style or technique, allow
more silence, and so on. As I say in my trainings, feel free to completely ignore
a specific technique, or my voice if you are listening, and continue with
whatever technique you find most helpful. Feel free to use all these techniques
together in one long session, or simply use those you like the best individually.
 The last practice in the Meditation Sampler is an invitation to sing a simple
but powerful Sanskrit chant. I find that if no other practice helps to calm and still
the mind, Vedic chanting does the trick for most people. The words are “Ram
Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram Om.” In some Vedic traditions, Ram (pronounced
“rom,” rhyming with “mom”) means “Supreme Being.” Jai (pronounced “jay,”
rhyming with “hay”) means “praise.” Om (pronounced “om,” rhyming with
“home”) has many meanings, including “God” or “First Cause,” and is a most
sacred syllable used at the beginning and/or end of sacred chants, much like
“Amen” is used at the end of a Christian prayer. In singing this song, we are
praising and opening our hearts fully to Supreme Being or Creator in whatever
form we understand It to be. You can also find many examples of simple
Sanskrit chants on YouTube.
The seven meditations, beginning with Color Cycle here, are guided
meditations designed to take you into a deep meditative state. Spend several
minutes in the deep meditation beyond the guiding portion and see if you can
extend that time as your practice continues to evolve.

MEDITATION SAMPLER

Make sure that you are ready to meditate. Remember to:

■ Prepare your space so it is calm and tranquil.
■ Turn off your phone.
■ Tell others in your environment that you are having quiet time and to please
not disturb.
■ Make sure the temperature is comfortable.
■ Before beginning visit the bathroom (if necessary) so your physical comfort
will be maintained.
Take a nice deep breath and let out a big heartfelt sigh. Let’s do that once
more, and this time, let it all go. Continue to breathe deeply, filling your lungs
completely and expelling the breath completely. Feel your pelvic area expanding
with each in breath and contracting with each out breath. With every breath, feel
yourself becoming more and more relaxed, centered, and at peace.…
Now return to normal breathing. In mindfulness meditation, just observe
whatever you notice without judgment or analysis. Just watch. As thoughts,
feelings, or sensations arise, simply observe them. If you get lost in a thought,
then come back to your intention of observation and watch that process. If you
hear sounds, don’t resist them, just observe them. You might even find as you
give up judgment that you see the beauty in whatever you are observing.
Continue to simply observe anything and everything that presents itself to your
awareness.…
(Allow five minutes of silence.)
One Zen technique is to refrain from isolating or resisting sounds and sights if
eyes are open but include everything in the environment. Be aware of any and all
sounds around you—a ticking clock, an air conditioner or heater, traffic, birds, or
other animal sounds outside or around you. Any loud noises also can be
embraced and become part of your meditation. Feel your awareness expanding
to include more and more sounds, and as your awareness expands, sense the
sounds are no longer outside your awareness but contained within. As your
awareness continues to expand, the sounds you are conscious of move closer and
closer to the center of your awareness. Be aware of the busyness and energy
outside the circle of your hearing, your consciousness expanding to include the
activities in your city, state or province, country, the entire planet, and even this
wide range of experience is now at the center of your expansive state. If at any
time during this meditation you hear noises that distract you, you can come back
to this practice and sense them near the center of your expanded awareness.
Continue in this expanded state in silence.
(Allow five minutes of silence.)
With silent mantra, simply choose a word or phrase that speaks to your divine
truth or praises your understanding of divinity. A common Sanskrit mantra is
“Om mani padme hum,” which means “the jewel within the lotus” and
symbolizes the opening of the lotus of the chakras, especially the heart, third
eye, and crown chakras, to expose the jewel at its center. The fully opened lotus
is a symbol of enlightenment. You can also choose an “I am” statement, such as
“I am love, I am light, I am peace. I am That I Am” (identifying as the One
Infinite Presence or God), or simply “I am.” Another possibility is to focus on a
sound or tone sounded internally, like the sacred Om. My favorite is a constant
“ah” sound, sung with the voices of angels. Repeat the word, phrase, or sound
over and over, not focusing on the meaning, but allowing the vibration to carry
you to that sacred place of silence and communion with all life.…
 (Allow five minutes of silence.)
Now breathe in through your nostrils and out through your mouth, creating a
circle of breath.… In Watching-the-Breath Meditation, simply observe your
breath as it travels in through your nose all the way down to the deepest point
and out through your mouth on the exhale. Continue watching your breath. If
thoughts, feelings, or sensations come to your attention, don’t try to ignore or
resist them. Invite them into the experience. Assume that any thought, feeling,
sensation, or sound is coming forth because it wants to be part of the peace, love,
light, and bliss that you are experiencing. Notice how easily these impressions
dissolve into the peace when they are embraced.… (Allow about two minutes of
silence.) Now observe the point between the in breath and out breath … and the
point between the out breath and the in breath. These two points are the places of
perfect balance between the pairs of opposites: the places of perfect balance
between receiving and giving, positive and negative, yin and yang, light and
dark, death and life, manifestation and dissolution, feminine and masculine,
Spirit and matter, Mother Earth and Father Sky, Grandfather Sun and
Grandmother Moon.… Continue to watch your breath and the points of perfect
balance, wholeness, and oneness with all existence.…
(Allow five minutes of silence.)
I invite you to join in this breathing technique called Meditation for Stilling
the Mind1. Take a deep breath and hold it. Release your breath. Feel your
awareness becoming lighter and lighter, lighter than the Earth of your body,
lighter than the element of Earth.… Take another deep breath and hold it.
Release your breath, and feel your awareness becoming still lighter, lighter than
the water of your emotions, and lighter than the element of water. Take another
deep breath and hold it. Release your breath, and feel your awareness becoming
still lighter, lighter than the fires of your mind, and lighter than the element of
fire.… Take another deep breath and hold it. Release your breath and feel your
awareness becoming as light as the air of your soul, as light as the element of air.
… Take another deep breath and hold it. Release your breath and feel your
awareness becoming lighter even than the element of air, as light as the pure love
of Spirit, as light as the Buddhic plane, the Atma, One Supreme Self. Remain in
the pure light of Spirit, and if a sensation, feeling, or thought comes into play,
take a deep breath and hold it, release, and feel your awareness once again
becoming lighter than Earth, water, fire, and air.
(Allow five minutes of silence.)
 I invite you to join in a visualization. Imagine that you are a point of light in
infinite space in all directions. Nothing exists but you as this point of light.…
Now see another point of light far off in the distance. Move your consciousness
from your point of light to the second point of light, looking back at the first.…
Now allow your consciousness to be in both points of light at the same time.…
See a third point of light far off in the distance that creates a triangle between the
now three points of light. Move your consciousness from the first two to the
third point of light, looking back at the first two. Allow your consciousness to be
in all three points of light at the same time.… Now see more points of light
popping into existence inside the sphere of the triangle and outside the sphere as
well. Allow your consciousness to be in all the points of light as they pop into
being. See points of light populating the entire infinite and ever-expanding
universe with each and every point filled with your consciousness, which is
being stretched and expanded infinitely. Now see the points of light saturating
the infinite space to the point that they are all connecting with one another until
there is nothing left but infinite light that is your ever-expanding consciousness.
Remain in the consciousness of ever-expanding light.
(Allow five minutes of silence.)
I invite you to join me in the following chant: “Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram
Om.”

Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.

Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.
Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.

Continue chanting for about five minutes or more.…

Now sing the chant softer.

Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.

Softer still.

Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.

As soft as you can.

 Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.

Whisper the words.

Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.

Now chant silently.

Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om.…

Continue as long as you like, and when you are ready, slowly and gently
bring your awareness back to your surroundings. Feel the light, love, and peace
you have accessed grounded in your body and through you deep down into
Mother Earth. When it’s right for you, bring your awareness back completely,
take a nice deep breath, and open your eyes.
In a word, how do you feel?

DISIDENTIFICATION EXERCISE

Observe your body and sensations. Where do you notice tension?

Breathe deeply into those places. Notice how you can choose to relax your
body. Observe the strength of your body. Recognize its incredible capacity to
heal almost any illness. Do you know that nearly 97 percent of all illness can be
healed by the body’s natural processes? Notice how you can train and condition
your body to do incredible feats if you choose to. Appreciate how your body
responds to love and nurturing. Appreciate the magical construct of your body.
Recognize that you can choose what kind of body you want by how you treat
and condition it.
Affirm that you have a body and sensations and yet you are more than your
body. How do you choose to be in your body?
Observe your feeling nature. Be aware of the different feelings you have
experienced in this day. Notice how intense your emotions can be at times.
Notice how powerful your love can be. Let the love in your heart well up and
overflow out of you in all directions.… Remember times when your feelings
overwhelmed you. Think of times when you were able to direct your emotions
skillfully. Recognize that you can choose how you wish to feel. Appreciate the
magic in your feeling.
Affirm that you have feelings, yet you are more than your feelings. How do
you choose to live your feelings?
Observe your thought nature. Appreciate how incredible the power of your
mind is, how you can process and store large amounts of information, how you
can think abstractly, how quickly your mind can shift from one thought to
another, how it never stops even when you want it to, and how you can organize
thoughts into belief systems. Be aware of the untapped regions of your mind.
What exists in these regions? Recognize that no matter how strong your beliefs
may be, you can choose to change them. You can choose how you want to think
and the quality of the thoughts you entertain. How could you use your mind in
more magical ways? How often does your mind wander in fantasy? Run wild in
obsessive worry? How would you like your mind to be? How often is your mind
still, open to receiving inspiration from above? How often is it engaged in
creative expression? Be thankful for the magical qualities of thought and affirm
that you have the ability to direct your mind and choose your beliefs.
Affirm that you have thoughts, yet you are more than your thoughts. How do
you choose to use your thoughts?
Now ask yourself: If you are more than your body, mind, and emotions, who
are you? Who is the observer, the one who chooses how to express your
personality in this world? Identify with the center of yourself. Allow yourself to
gently slip into the silence of the holy place that is your innermost soul.

MINDFULNESS BODY SCAN

The body scan meditation is usually done lying down on your back with palms
up, but it can be done in any position, such as sitting in a chair or lying back on a
recliner.
Once you are in position, observe your breathing. Watch the breath going in
and out, breathing all the way in, filling your lungs, and feeling your abdomen
expanding with each inhalation. Expel all the breath on the exhalation. Continue
to breathe deeply and observe. Notice if there is any tension in your body;
without judging, just notice and observe.
Now become aware of your feet. Appreciate how your feet have served you in
helping you to get around, all the places your feet have taken you. Feel the
sensation of your feet on the floor. Notice if there is tension or tightness in the
muscles of your feet. Be aware of each toe on each foot. Notice the condition of
each one. Be aware of the entire surface of the skin on your feet, as well as the
insides of your feet, the veins and blood, the nerves, muscles, cells. As you
breathe in, feel your breath going into your feet and toes. Notice if your feet are
relaxing, loosening.
Allow your awareness to move up to your ankles. Are your ankles relaxed or
is there some degree of tension? Be aware of the entire circumference of your
ankles, the top, the bottom, and the sides, the skin, muscles, bones, and nerves
within, the large Achilles tendon just above the heel. Breathe into your ankles
and notice if they become even more relaxed.
Raise your attention to your calves. Become aware of the large muscles in the
backs of your calves. Are they tense or relaxed? Once again observing without
judgment, just watch. Observe the entire circumference of your calf, as well as
the skin, muscles, tendons, blood flowing through your veins, bones, tibia, and
fibula. Breathe into your calves and notice if they become even more relaxed.
Allow your awareness to move up to your knees. Is there any tension or pain
within these precious joints that allow you to move, walk, and run? Appreciate
how important your knees are for ease of movement. Observe the bones and
many muscles and tendons in and around your knees. Breathe into your knees
and notice if they become even more relaxed.
Raise your attention to your thighs. Notice if there is tightness in the large
muscles of your thighs, the hamstring muscles and quadriceps. Observe these
large muscles, the tendons, and the femur, the largest and strongest bone of your
body. Breathe into your thighs and notice if they become even more relaxed.
Raise your attention to your hips, buttocks, and pelvic areas. Notice with
complete nonjudgment if there is any tension or discomfort anywhere in these
areas. Be aware of the large hip bones, the base of your spine, the organs within
your abdomen, your genitals, the large muscles of your buttocks, the veins,
tendons, and cellular activity. Appreciate how all these areas have served you
throughout your life. Breathe into your hip areas and notice if they become even
more relaxed.
Become aware of your lower back and stomach. Notice if there is any
discomfort or tension in these areas, without judgment, just loving regard.
Observe the many organs, muscles, intestines, and your spine in this area.
Appreciate the intricacies of the functions of all these organs, muscles, and
vertebrae and how they have served you. Breathe into your stomach and lower
back and notice if they become even more relaxed and at ease.
Raise your awareness to your chest and upper back. Notice if there is any
discomfort in these areas. Be aware of the beating of your heart and how it fuels
your entire system with life-giving blood, how it acts as a metaphor for your
love. Observe the organs in these areas, the muscles in your chest and upper
back, your spine, rib cage, lungs, and all the intricate supporting systems.
Breathe into your chest and upper back and notice if they become even more
relaxed.
Be aware of your hands and fingers. Is there any tension in your hands? Look
at each finger individually. Observe both sides of your hands, front and back,
outside and in, the skin, the muscles, veins, tiny tendons. Appreciate how they
have helped you in receiving and giving throughout your life. Be aware of any
tension or discomfort in your hands, fingers, and wrists. Observe the many small
bones and tiny muscles, tendons, and veins. Breathe into your hands, fingers,
and wrists and notice if they become even more relaxed.
Be aware of your wrists without judgment, only loving regard. Observe the
entire circumference of your wrists, the skin, muscles, veins, arteries, tiny
tendons. Are these precious joints flexible to help in giving and receiving? Be
aware of any tension or discomfort in your wrists. Observe the many small bones
and tiny muscles, tendons, and veins. Breathe into your wrists and notice if they
become even more relaxed.
Be aware of your forearms and elbows. Notice any tension or discomfort, and
if it exists, embrace it with love. Be aware of the muscles, skin, veins, bones, and
tendons in this region. Give thanks for the flexibility of your elbows that assists
you in moving your arms. Breathe into your forearms and elbows and notice if
they become even more relaxed.
Be aware of your upper arms, the strong muscles, biceps and lats (latissimus
dorsi), and how these parts of your arms have allowed you to lift, move, push,
and carry. Be aware of any tension or discomfort in your upper arms. Observe
the skin, tendons, veins, and tissue in your upper arms. Breathe into them and
notice if they become even more relaxed.
Become aware of your shoulders. Notice any tension or discomfort in this
strong area of your body. Notice if there is any burden you have been carrying
on your shoulders. Observe the bones, muscles, veins, tendons, and skin in and
around your shoulders. Breathe into your shoulders and notice if they melt into
deeper relaxation.
 Raise your attention to your neck. Notice any tension or discomfort there
without judging it but accepting and embracing it with love. Observe all the tiny
muscles in your neck and how they move with such synchronized fluidity.
Appreciate how your neck has served you in your ability to turn and observe
your surroundings, to look over your shoulder and see the past or any danger that
may be following you. Observe the skin, tiny bones, and vertebrae, the veins and
large arteries, the inside of your throat, the hair on the back of your neck.
Raise your attention to your head and face. Notice if there is any tension in
any area of the command center of your body. Be aware of all the special talents
possessed in this miracle of anatomy: your ability to see wondrous sights with
your eyes, hear the whispering of your beloved with your ears, smell fragrant
scents, speak your needs and your wisdom, taste and eat with your mouth.
Observe all the intricate functions within your head and face. Scan your chin, the
muscles in your face, the inside of your mouth, your tongue, teeth, and gums,
your cheeks, nose inside and out, the skin on your face, your ears inside and out,
the many components of your hearing apparatus, the tiny muscles in and around
your eyes and in your forehead, your scalp and hair. Observe your brain and its
connection and moderation of your entire nervous system. Observe all the major
areas of the brain—brain stem, cerebellum, cerebrum. Observe the folds of gray
matter. Observe the vibrancy of this electrical masterpiece. Breathe deeply into
your head and face and notice if it becomes even more relaxed.
Now be aware of your entire body and notice how it all functions together as
a whole. Observe your energy body; perhaps you can see it as light and color.
See your chakras and intersections of energy lines moving up your spine and to
the top of your head. Notice the vibrancy of your energy body, your aura, which
radiates many feet beyond your physical body. Breathe into your body and
energy body and notice if it becomes even more relaxed and vibrant.
Take as much time as you like in appreciating the magnificence of your body.
When it is right for you, take a few deep breaths and return your attention to
your surroundings, and when you are ready, open your eyes.

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION

Choose a specific passage in a sacred text or prayer of your choosing. Read the
passage several times, ten or more. Reflect on the meaning of the words as you
read. After the first several readings, allow the words to sink in at a deeper level
than through analysis. Allow them to penetrate your intuitive mind, perhaps even
becoming one with the deeper higher meaning of the phrasing. It is often
recommended to memorize the passage as you recite it both audibly and
inaudibly.
Each time you read the passage, emphasize different words and/or phrases in
the passage. You many choose a much longer passage, but here is a short
example:
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
You can also emphasize and reflect on specific sections of the message:
Be still and know that I am …
Be still and know …
Be still …
Be …
Once you have meditated on the words of the passage, close your eyes and
allow impressions, images, and feelings to emerge relative to the sacred passage.
Remain in this receptive state for as long as it brings you joy to do so.… When
you are ready, bring your awareness back to the present movement, and when it
is right for you, open your eyes. Now reflect on ways you can apply the
understanding you have received to your daily life.

WALKING MEDITATION

You can practice walking meditation virtually anytime you are walking. You
don’t have to set a specific time for it, and it is also quite enjoyable and useful to
carve out specific walking meditation time. You can do this indoors or out, but
outdoors in nature is especially enjoyable. The labyrinth is a specific type of
walking meditation where the walking meditator winds through a circular
mazelike path to the center and back again. You can find labyrinths at various
locations at www.labyrinthlocator.com. You can set a specific intention for your
walking meditation or simply allow the revealing of whatever insight is most
appropriate for you at the time of your meditation. Following is a guided
walking meditation that can be done indoors, outdoors, in a labyrinth, or simply
walking down the street:
Remember the message in this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh as you begin: “The
mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.
With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”
Begin by standing at the beginning of your walking path. Plant your feet
firmly on the ground and let your hands rest comfortably at your sides. Become
aware of your physical sensations. What do you notice about your body in
standing position? Without judgment, just observe. What do you observe about
your feeling nature and thought process at this moment in time? Become aware
of your surroundings. What do you notice about this place and the sights in and
around it?
Begin walking slowly and deliberately with ease and grace, not in a
manufactured way, but in a way that feels natural to your inner presence. You
can walk in a sacred way as though you were walking on holy ground or to a
sacred site. This is not a metaphor. Any time we are walking on Mother Earth,
we are on sacred ground. Walk as though you are kissing the Earth with your
feet. With each step, feel the sensations of lifting your foot off the Earth. Feel the
movements of all the muscles in your body involved in the act of walking.
Continue also to be aware of your feelings and thoughts, observing, accepting,
and honoring everything you notice.
Be aware of your environment as you move along your path. Notice the
intricacies and details of everything you see. You may notice your mind begin to
wander, just as it does in seated meditation. Once you notice, observe the
thoughts with the same wonder that you observe the beauty and intricacies of
your surroundings. Honor your thoughts. Invite them to join you on your walk
and observe the beauty of the experience. Whether you are walking back and
forth in a shorter area or to one destination and back again, feel your oneness
with all life as you observe and honor everything you see and experience.
 ZEN TENNIS EXERCISE2

You can adapt this exercise to any sport or activity. Just focus on the most central
aspect of the task and allow the awareness to gradually move outward until it
envelopes the total experience of what you are doing. Most people find this
process easy and get into the zone quite effortlessly.
When I had success in tennis lessons with this technique, students would
begin to apply all the techniques I had been teaching them without thinking
about it. Once I sensed a student was in the zone, I wouldn’t say anything. No
instruction is needed at that point. There is a time for structured learning and a
time for surrendering, so the structured learning can manifest in a nonstructured
experience in the ever-present now. Some people don’t achieve a complete
meditative state, but the mere act of watching the ball and being more aware of
the tennis experience increases their ability in the moment.
I no longer teach tennis, but I do still play competitively in United States
Tennis Association league play. To this day, when I enter the zone, I always play
better. Earlier in my career, I would be entering the zone to a large degree in
order to win the match, which is not as effective for the meditative state as
having no agenda at all other than the joy of being present in the experience.
Now I play against my own attachment to winning. When I am fully in the zone,
I am completely nonattached. When I am nonattached, I easily and effortlessly
enter the meditative zone and ultimately play better and with a greater degree of
joy, regardless of the outcome.
Begin by being aware of your body as you are playing. Notice your breathing
and the movements of your body. Watch the ball closely as it leaves your
opponent’s racket. Watch it intently as it comes over the net. Listen closely to the
sound of the ball hitting your opponent’s racket as well as your own. Watch the
rotation of the ball as it comes up and bounces all the way to your strings. (This
will improve your performance if you only go this far. Most people don’t watch
the ball hit their strings.) Watch the ball leave your racket, then focus your
attention on your opponent’s racket to anticipate the ball coming off its strings
once again.
Continue to do this until it becomes natural. Now expand your awareness to
include watching not only the ball with complete attention but also the area
around the ball. See the lines or cracks on the court as the ball comes up to your
strings. See the details of the net as the ball crosses it, but don’t decrease your
focus on the ball.
When serving, bounce the ball on the ground as you prepare, and watch the
ball closely as it hits the ground and comes up to your hand. Observe the writing
on the ball, the fuzz, the rotation. As you toss the ball into the air, be aware of
the sky without decreasing your focus on the ball. When receiving, closely watch
your opponent tossing the ball into the air and the ball coming off the strings of
their racket, over the net, and to your racket strings.
Gradually, continue to expand your awareness of your environment to include
the clothing of your opponent, the fence around the court, the sights and sounds
around the court, birds flying, dogs barking, children playing. Notice the scents
in the air, the aroma of flowers or other plant life. Allow yourself to be
completely one with the total experience in the moment. Easily and effortlessly
slip into the zone of pure joy.

CANDLE MEDITATION

There’s not too much to describe for this one. In addition to candles, you can
gaze at an object. When out in nature, choose a spot off in the distance, such as a
tree or an area on a mountain, and gaze at it. The candle flame is especially
conducive to the meditative state because of its hypnotic nature.
Ideally, this meditation can be done at night or in as dark a room as possible,
so the light from the candle is more pronounced. Find a comfortable spot and
place and light a candle that is on a surface at eye level, or on the floor several
feet from you, so you don’t have to tilt your head too far forward.
Gaze at the candle, allowing it to capture your full attention and imagination.
Notice how easily your gaze brings you into the light. You may even feel like
you are becoming one with the flame. As with other meditation forms, you will
most likely have thoughts come into play. Invite them into the candle meditation.
Invite the thoughts into the light, into your now sacred relationship with the
candle flame. Continue gazing into the candle for as long as it brings you joy and
peace.…
Complete the exercise with reflection on your light and how you want to
share it with the world. Below is a poem I wrote about thirty-three years ago that
relates to the candle meditation and to all the meditation practices in this book:
 The Fires of My Mind

The fires of my mind are not meant to be wisped about

by the winds of the will of others.
Nor are they to be consumed by the flames of social thinking.
Nor are they to be doused by the waters of emotional turbulence.
They remain but a single flame held steady in the light of my soul.
Flickering only in harmony with divine purpose.
Lighting the way.3

COLOR CYCLE

This exercise can be used as a meditation by itself or as an entrance into any of

the meditations discussed. The act of snapping your fingers and switching from
one color to the next creates a body-mind connection. Feel free to experiment
with snapping your fingers or not to see which works best for you. Once you
reach the state of “white,” you can go into another meditative practice or do
healing work, all within the center of your mind.
Take a deep breath and hold it to a slow count of four or longer.… Release
your breath, snap your fingers, and be in red. Completely surround yourself in
the vibrant color of red. If you’re not very visual, just imagine what it would feel
like to be surrounded by the bright color of red. You can also imagine a bright
red apple and then see and feel that color all around you. Feel yourself becoming
one with the vibration of red.
Take another deep breath and hold it to the same slow count of four.…
Release your breath, snap your fingers, and be in orange. See and feel yourself
surrounded by the warm, comforting color of orange. Feel yourself becoming
one with the vibration of orange.
Take another deep breath and hold it.… Release your breath, snap your
fingers, and be in yellow. See and feel yourself completely surrounded in the
warm, calming color of yellow. Feel mellow yellow all around you. Feel yourself
becoming one with the vibration of yellow.
Take another deep breath, hold it, tighten your jaw muscles, raise your eyes to
the top of your head.… Release your breath, relax your facial muscles, snap your
fingers, and be in the healing color of green. Feel a tingling sensation at the top
of your head, then moving down through your entire body, bringing a wave of
relaxation and healing. You have now reached a point of complete physical
relaxation as you become one with the healing vibration of green.
Take another deep breath and hold it.… Release your breath, snap your
fingers, and be in the tranquil color of blue. Feel your emotional nature
becoming calmer and calmer until you reach a point of complete emotional
tranquility, like a completely motionless blue woodland pool, with a surface as
smooth as glass. You have now reached a point of complete emotional peace as
you become one with the vibration of blue.
Take another deep breath and hold it.… Release your breath, snap your
fingers, and be in the peaceful color of indigo (the color of the sky at dawn). Feel
all your mental processes slowing down. Slower and slower and slower, until
you reach a point of complete mental stillness, like an indigo flame held steady
in the light of your soul as you become one with the vibration of indigo.
Take another deep breath and hold it.… Release your breath, snap your
fingers, and be in the magical color of violet. Feel yourself aligned with your
own inner magnificence as you become one with the vibration of violet.
Take another deep breath and hold it.… Release your breath, snap your
fingers, and be in white, at the very center of your mind, the center of infinite
mind. This is the place where all things are possible. Continue to simply be in
white and this state of oneness for as long as you like or move into another
meditative form.… When you are ready, bring your awareness back, feeling
better than ever before.

MOUNTAINTOP MEDITATION4

Breathe deeply, filling your lungs with air all the way down to your abdomen.
Exhale completely. With each breath, feel yourself becoming more relaxed, at
peace, and aligned with your highest potential—dwelling in love. Imagine that
you are standing on a mountaintop at dawn. The sun has not yet appeared in the
East, but its soft glow is peeking above the horizon. The air is cool and crisp, yet
completely comfortable, and there is magic in the air. You are in harmony with
your surroundings. You can hear the animal life in the bushes and trees around
you. You feel connected with everything in your environment: the four-legged,
the crawlers, flyers in the sky, swimmers in the river below, the plant people, the
stone people, the mountain itself, Mother Earth, and Father Sky.
The first ray of the sun appears on the horizon and streams toward you,
landing right in your heart. Something magical is happening. Your body
becomes lighter and lighter, and you begin to lift off of the mountaintop. You
realize that you are no longer in physical form. Your consciousness is contained
within a bubble of thin moisture. You lift off the Earth into the night sky. As you
rise higher and higher, your awareness contained in the bubble becomes lighter
and lighter and the walls of the bubble get thinner and thinner. Your awareness
includes more and more space as the bubble expands faster than it is rising. It
envelops the mountaintop, then the entire mountain, the valleys below, other
mountain ranges, land masses, and bodies of water. The entire Earth is now
within the bubble of your consciousness, getting smaller and smaller as you
expand. Continuing to expand, your bubble envelops nearby planets, the sun
from which that first magical ray streamed forth, the entire solar system, the
Milky Way, other galaxies, the universe, other universes. The bubble of your
awareness is so stretched that it becomes unstable, in a good way. Finally, the
walls of the bubble become so thin, they can no longer contain your
consciousness and ever so gently dissolve with a silent pop, and your awareness
is released to stretch through the infinite universe. Allow your awareness to be
… limitless … unbounded by mental constraints … free … just being … one
with all.…
Take as much time as you like in this state of pure bliss, and whenever you
are ready, slowly and gently bring your awareness back to your environment.
Become aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace, love, and light that
you have experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins, beating in your heart,
sinking deep into your cells, grounding into Mother Earth through your feet.
When it’s right for you, bring your awareness all the way back, take a deep
breath, and open your eyes.

POWER ANIMAL

Breathe deeply, filling your lungs with air all the way down to your abdomen.
Exhale completely. With each breath, feel yourself becoming more relaxed, at
peace, aligned with your highest potential, in love and light. Imagine that you are
in a nature place, a place that is relaxing and peaceful. It could be a mountaintop,
a meadow filled with wildflowers, near a waterfall, the beach. Use all your
senses to appreciate your beautiful surroundings. Touch the plant life. Smell the
sweet aromas in the air. Observe the various colors all around you. Take your
time and enjoy every second of your experience.…
Now look around for a place that is your personal power spot—a place where
the energy has been prepared perfectly just for you. The exact qualities that you
need for your highest healing, revitalization, and perfect balance are supplied in
the energy of this spot. When you find it, sit down in your power spot and take
some time to allow that perfect energy to wash through you—balancing your
being into perfect health and harmony.…
As you are meditating in your power spot, you begin to feel a presence. You
instantly know it is the presence of your power animal. Open your inner eyes
and look into the eyes of your power animal, which is now standing right in front
of you. It could be any kind of animal, one that represents power to you. Look
deeply into your power animal’s eyes—into the soul of this great being.
Acclimate your breath to the same rhythm of your power animal until you are
breathing with it in perfect harmony. Feel your heart beating in rhythm with the
heart of your power animal. Now feel your consciousness moving into the body
of your power animal. Feel the strength and grace in your powerful body looking
at yourself through the eyes of your power animal. What do you see?
Now your animal takes off on a symbolic journey of your life through your
nature place. Be aware of your surroundings. Look for images that may have
symbolic meaning as your power animal chooses the path that will bring you the
most beneficial teaching. How does it feel to travel in the body of your power
animal? How do you face challenges as your power animal? Do you worry about
outcomes or simply respond instinctively? How do you decide what path to
take? Does it require deliberation, or do you know intuitively? Take as much
time as you need to complete your journey.…
When you have completed your journey, go back to where your personality
still sits. Look into your eyes again through the eyes of your power animal. Is
there anything you want to communicate to yourself through the thoughts of
your power animal? Allow your consciousness to move back into your own body
so that you are again looking through your own eyes at your power animal.
Thank your power animal for teaching you about power. Say goodbye to your
power animal and take a final look around at your nature place. Realize that you
can come back to this place anytime you like. You can call on the strength and
wisdom of your power animal at any point in time.
Decide what you would like to take with you from this place back into your
daily life. Take a few moments to decide how you can use this experience in
your life and how you can contribute to the growth of others through your
thoughts, feelings, actions, and words.…
Take as much time as you like in this exploration, and whenever you are
ready, slowly and gently bring your awareness back to your environment.
Become aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace, love, and power that
you have experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins, beating in your heart,
sinking deep into your cells, grounding into Mother Earth through your feet.
When it’s right for you, bring your awareness all the way back, take a deep
breath, and open your eyes.

SUN MEDITATION5

Breathe deeply, filling your lungs with air all the way down to your abdomen.
Exhale completely. With each breath, feel yourself becoming more relaxed, at
peace, aligned with your highest potential, in love and light. Imagine you are
standing on the highest mountaintop and gazing out at the world in all directions.
To the east is the rising sun. You feel its loving warmth on your skin. Drink in
the sunshine with your pores and pay homage to the sun spirit with your mind
and soul. Be aware of a single golden ray streaming forth from the sun and
enveloping you. Feel the sunlight transforming your body as it bathes you
outside and within. Your body becomes lighter as though it is becoming the light
of the ray itself. Your molecular structure changes as you become sunlight. Your
awareness is now traveling through the sunbeam toward the sun. As you
approach the heavenly orb, the light becomes more intense and the life-giving
energy purer. You are not afraid because you are of the same nature as the sun.
As you enter the sun’s atmosphere, your consciousness explodes and becomes
one with the sun. What does it feel like to be the sun, radiating love and life in
all directions? Feel the power as your awareness envelops all that the light from
the sun reaches. Feel the enormity of your consciousness.
Now be aware of your personality back on Earth. As the sun, a symbol of
your soul, observe your personality in its daily activities. What do you see from
this high perspective? What message would you like to communicate to your
earthly self? Communicate it through your light. How do you feel as the sun
when your personality has blocked your light with clouds of doubt or fear? What
is your message to yourself in these times? Communicate that message with your
light. What other messages, encouragement, or qualities do you want to send to
your personal self on Earth?
Allow your awareness to focus on your personality and be aware of that one
golden stream of light that connects you to your body. Allow your awareness to
travel through the beam, bringing the nurturing love of the sun, of your soul,
through the stream to your personality. Say your name over and over as you
approach your body. Bring the love and perspective into your body and feel it in
your heart. Breathe deeply as you fully accept the love and support of your soul
consciousness.…
Take as much time as you like in this state of pure bliss, and whenever you
are ready, slowly and gently bring your awareness back to your environment.
Become aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace, love, and light that
you have experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins, beating in your heart,
sinking deep into your cells, grounding into Mother Earth through your feet.
When it’s right for you, bring your awareness all the way back, take a deep
breath, and open your eyes.

THE TEMPLE

Breathe deeply, filling your lungs with air all the way down to your abdomen.
Exhale completely. With each breath feel yourself becoming more relaxed, at
peace, aligned with your highest potential, in love and light. Imagine that you are
walking through the Himalayas in Tibet. Look around you at all the beautiful
scenery. Use all your senses to explore your environment. Smell the fresh pine
trees and other plant life. Observe the majesty of the snowcapped mountains.
Feel the crisp air on your skin. Sense the magical quality of the energy that fills
you and exists all around you. As you walk along a path through the valley, you
see ahead of you a forest snuggled against the base of the largest mountain.
There is something alluring about the forest, something profound and mystical.
As you move a little closer, you notice there is a faint light coming from deep
within the forest. The closer you get, the brighter the light becomes and you feel
something in you beginning to change. You are going deeper into a state of
heightened awareness. As you approach the forest, you can see the light
streaming through the trees, glistening off the leaves and pine needles. There is a
deer path leading into the forest. Clearly, humans have traveled this path before,
but not for many years. You begin down the path and again feel your awareness
going deeper and becoming lighter and freer. The farther you travel into the
forest, the brighter the streams of light become, making their way through the
dense trees.
Finally, you begin to approach a clearing and can see glimpses of the source
of the light—an ancient temple. Observe the temple closely as you step into the
clearing. Is your temple elaborate and ornate, or is it simple and humble? Begin
to walk into the light streaming from the temple as you approach its door. Place
your hand on the handle and sense what might be inside. Open the door and walk
inside. The interior of the temple is lit with thousands of candle flames, but this
is not the source of the light you have followed from this place. At the center of
the temple is a beam of light reaching up through the ceiling into the heavens
and down through the floor deep into Mother Earth. Approach the beam of light
and again feel yourself moving deeper into that heightened state. You can sense
that the energy in this beam of light contains the qualities that you most need to
balance your being into perfect harmony and optimal health. Step into the beam
of light and kneel or sit in meditation as you receive those qualities. Allow
yourself to let go completely and absorb this perfect energy. Simply receive the
support and love that you deserve.…
Take as much time as you need in this state of receptive freedom and then
reflect on how you can use the energy and qualities you received in your daily
life. How can you increase the quality of your life and those you influence
through your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions? When you have completed
this process, stand and decide what you would like to take back from your
temple. Recognize that you can return to this place any time you wish simply by
willing yourself here.
Whenever you are ready, slowly and gently bring your awareness back to
your environment. Become aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace,
love, and light that you have experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins,
beating in your heart, sinking deep into your cells, grounding into Mother Earth
through your feet. When it’s right for you, bring your awareness all the way
back, take a deep breath, and open your eyes.

WISE BEING

Breathe deeply, filling your lungs with air all the way down to your abdomen.
Exhale completely. With each breath, feel yourself becoming more relaxed, at
peace, aligned with your highest potential, in love and light. Imagine that you are
in a beautiful place in nature. Look around you and explore your surrounding
with all your senses. Touch the plant life. Smell the sweet aromas in the air.
Observe the various colors all around you. Take your time and enjoy every
second of your experience.… Now look far off into the distance. You see a
figure that you can barely make out coming toward you and you know instantly
that this is the form of your wise being—a being that possesses perfect strength,
love, compassion, and wisdom. It could be a spiritual figure, a Buddha or Christ,
a great teacher, someone you know, a mythical figure, or an abstract image
representing wisdom. Walk toward the image as it moves toward you. As you get
closer, you begin to see the image more clearly. Finally, the image is close
enough that you can make out the features. When the image is close enough,
look directly into the eyes of your wise being. Sense the compassion, power, and
wisdom of this holy being. Ask your wise being any question you would like to.
If the answers are not completely clear, ask for clarification. Dialogue with your
wise being on any issue that is relevant in your life at this time.… Ask your wise
being what is necessary for your next step in growth.… Now feel your
consciousness moving into your wise being until you are looking at yourself
through the compassionate eyes of your wise being. How do you view yourself
from this position of compassion and clarity? How does it feel to experience the
qualities of wisdom and compassion? Take some time to appreciate this
sensation. Is there anything you would like to say to yourself with the voice of
your wise being? Now move your consciousness back into your body, taking
with you the peace and wisdom from your wise being. When you are back in
your body, recognize that all the qualities of your wise being are also part of you.
The fact that you can create this being in your imagination illustrates that the
wise being is in you. Thank your wise being for guiding you. Look around at
your nature place and know that you can return here anytime you wish simply by
visualizing it. Take a few moments to decide how you can use this experience in
your life and how you can contribute to the growth of others through your
thoughts, feelings, actions, and words. When you are through, take a deep breath
and open your eyes, feeling better than ever.

THE PATH OF LIGHT

Breathe deeply, filling your lungs with air all the way down to your abdomen.
Exhale completely. With each breath, feel yourself becoming more relaxed, at
peace, aligned with your highest potential, in love and light. Imagine before you
a golden path of light. At the end of the path, off in the distance, is a symbol of
your highest understanding of the Divine, Spirit, the Mystery. It could be a
spiritual or religious being, an abstract image, a golden sphere of pure light.
Slowly walk down the golden path toward this highest symbol of the Divine.
The farther down the path you walk, the more you begin to feel the presence and
energy of this Divine emanation. As you come closer, you feel Its energy
enveloping and infusing your entire being. Your own energy begins to vibrate at
the frequency of this Powerful Presence. As you approach this Divine Presence,
it becomes difficult to distinguish yourself from the pervasive presence of this
Being. You are now as close as you can be, right next to the Presence. You
pause, basking in the light, love, and grace of this Holy Presence. Now step into
the sphere of this Being, and become one with It. You now are the Presence,
radiating love, light, and power in all directions. Remain in the consciousness of
pure light, love, and power—radiating, sustaining all life, being pure bliss. All
life is contained within the sphere of your infinite magnificence.…
Take as much time as you like in this state of pure bliss, and whenever you
are ready, slowly and gently bring your awareness back to your environment.
Become aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace, love, and light that
you have experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins, beating in your heart,
sinking deep into your cells, grounding deep into Mother Earth. When it’s right
for you, bring your awareness all the way back, take a deep breath, and open
your eyes.

SHORT-FORM DAILY MEDITATION

For those who don’t feel they have time to meditate for fifteen, twenty minutes
or more, this meditation can be done in as little as three minutes. It can also be
used by those who normally meditate longer but sometimes have less time. If
you spend only three minutes (or one minute, for that matter) in meditation each
morning, it is infinitely better than not meditating at all.
Once again, make sure that you are ready to meditate:
■ Prepare your space so it is calm and tranquil.
■ Turn off your phone.
■ Tell others in your environment that you are having quiet time and to please
not disturb.
■ Make sure the temperature is comfortable.
■ Visit the bathroom if applicable before beginning so your physical comfort
will be maintained.
■ Make sure your journal is close by if you choose to use one to write down
pressing thoughts that may come up during meditation, so you can write them
down and return to meditation with a freer mind.
■ Set a timer if you have a prescribed amount of time that you want to meditate,
so you don’t have to be checking or thinking about the time.
Begin by taking a deep breath and letting out a nice big heartful sigh.
Continue to breathe deeply.… After a few deep breaths, visualize yourself going
through your daily activities, accomplishing whatever you want to accomplish in
this day. See yourself going about your tasks with focus, freedom, ease, and joy.
What other qualities do you want present during your activities today? Feel them
in your heart and in the hearts of others you will interact with. Visualize yourself
laying down to sleep at the end of the day with a feeling of accomplishment,
gladness, and peace.…
Now take a few moments of silence, observe your thoughts, focus on your
breathing, repeat an inner mantra, chant out loud, or use any other techniques
you’ve practiced or learned through this reading to move into mindfulness
and/or silent mind. As you notice thoughts, sensations, or feelings coming into
play, simply observe them. Invite them into the peace and bliss and return to
your practice of watching your breath, inner mantra, chanting, or any other
practice that takes you deep.…
Take as much time as you like in this state of pure bliss, and whenever you
are ready, slowly and gently bring your awareness back to your environment.
Become aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace, love, and light that
you have experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins, beating in your heart,
sinking deep into your cells, grounding deep into Mother Earth. When it’s right
for you, bring your awareness all the way back, take a deep breath, and open
your eyes.
 LONGER-FORM DAILY MEDITATION

Once again, make sure that you are ready to meditate:

■ Prepare your space so it is calm and tranquil.
■ Turn off your phone.
■ Tell others in your environment that you are having quiet time and to please
not disturb.
■ Make sure the temperature is comfortable.
■ Visit the bathroom if applicable before beginning so your physical comfort
will be maintained.
■ Make sure your journal is close by if you choose to use one to write down
pressing thoughts that may come up during meditation, so you can write them
down and then return to meditation with a freer mind.
■ Set a timer if you have a prescribed amount of time that you want to meditate,
so you don’t have to be checking or thinking about the time.
The following is an example of one form of daily meditation you can use, but
feel free to create your own, mixing and matching from the practices offered in
this book and/or creating your own to add to your meditation journey.
You can begin with the Color Cycle described earlier, moving from each
color of the rainbow to the next and then into white, or one of the many guided
imagery examples, or start with deep breathing, or the body scan, or dive right
into mindfulness or the still-mind techniques of watching the breath, inner
mantra, and chanting. Or begin with the daily intention setting just like in the
Short-Form Daily Meditation, and/or add the following not previously described
practice that is a personal favorite as well:
Begin by taking a deep breath and let out a big heartful sigh. Continue to
breathe deeply. With each breath, feel yourself becoming more relaxed, centered,
aligned, at peace, in love.… Visualize yourself going through your daily
activities accomplishing whatever you want to accomplish in this day. See
yourself doing so with focus, freedom, ease, and joy. What other qualities do you
want present during your activities today? Feel them in your heart and in the
hearts of others you will interact with. Visualize yourself lying down to sleep at
the end of the day with a feeling of accomplishment, gladness, and peace.…
 Now feel your crown chakra (at the top of your head) opening and receiving
pure light and love from Spirit. This light illuminates your entire being. Now
feel your heart chakra opening wide, allowing the love and light to flow and
radiate from it. Feel it pouring out into your environment. If indoors, it fills the
room, then the entire building. The love and light expands outward, spanning the
entire city, bringing with it a healing vibration to everything and everyone it
touches. It continues to expand, stretching across the state or province, the
country, the continent, oceans, land masses, until it spans the entire planet,
creating a blanket of love and light illuminating the entire world.
Now feel your personal identity dissolving into the light and love that has
been flowing through you. Become the light and love. Observe your thoughts,
focus on your breathing, repeat an inner mantra, chant out loud, or use any other
techniques you’ve practiced or learned to move into mindfulness and/or silent
mind. As you notice thoughts, sensations, or feelings coming into play, simply
observe them, invite them into the peace and bliss, and return to your practice of
watching your breath, inner mantra, chanting, or any other practice that takes
you deep. Take as much time in this surrendering meditation as feels right to
you.…
Continue to recognize yourself as an energy of love, light, and healing. Focus
on family members, friends, and/or people who have requested prayer or healing
energy, and direct love and light to them. Or simply say a prayer for them. See
them in their perfected state, whole, healthy, abundant, and peaceful.
Close with a prayer of your choice. The following is an ancient prayer called
“The Great Invocation.” I have modified the language to make it more universal,
gender neutral, and positive:

The Great Invocation (revised)

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of all.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of all
May the coming One appear.
From the center where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of all—
 The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the center which we call the human race
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it heal the realms where darkness dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

Continue to remain in a state of radiant love and light for as long as you wish.
Take as much time as you like in this state of bliss, and whenever you are ready,
slowly and gently bring your awareness back to your environment. Become
aware of your body, grounding the infinite peace, love, and light that you have
experienced. Feel it coursing through your veins, beating in your heart, sinking
deep into your cells, grounding deep into Mother Earth. When it’s right for you,
bring your awareness all the way back, take a deep breath, and open your eyes.
 {5}
SUPPORTING SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

Virtually everyone who embarks on a meditation path and makes it a priority in

their life discovers techniques to augment their meditation practice and keep the
inner peace present as an ongoing experience. This chapter presents several
classical practices, as well as modern techniques and others that I have
developed or modified for my own use and to share with others.

AFFIRMATION

You can create affirmations for anything you want to change about yourself or
your life. Your affirmations are seeds that will grow into new behaviors and
patterns. Moisten the soil with the water of your positive feelings that
corresponds to the seeds of your affirmations. It may take time for the
confidence to come that will inspire new ways of being, just as it takes time for a
plant to take root and grow. Trust and be patient.
Stop reading for a moment and consider what quality you need most in your
life. Create a short phrase that affirms you already possess it. Make it an “I”
statement: “I am powerful.” “I am loving.” “I am wildly abundant.” The
affirmation is the truth because you do possess the quality in your soul or
potential. The affirmation will be like a magnet drawing power into your
subconscious mind and, ultimately, your reality. Repeat the affirmation over and
over. If it will bring you joy to do so, commit to saying the affirmation a
minimum of fifty times a day. Or simply say it a few times as part of your daily
meditation practice. Write notes or signs to yourself containing your affirmation
and place them where you will see them often.
 Every positive thought creates strength, healing, and light for the thinker and
fosters a nurturing effect on all life. Accept yourself the way you are and
recognize that you can take a major step forward in this moment. You can
choose a much more powerful way to use your mind.
You can also use your mind to affirm empowerment for others. When
someone is talking to you about their problems, you can empower them (even if
they are in denial or want to remain stuck in the problem) by refusing to buy into
the problem. You can do this with compassion and, at the same time, affirm in
your mind their ability to solve their problems. Sometimes it is more effective to
do this without communicating it, because the disclosure may meet with
resistance, and the affirmation can have a positive effect even without their
conscious knowledge.

PRAYER

It has been said that prayer is the act of talking to God, and meditation is the act
of listening. It’s always nice to have a two-way conversation. My wife prays and
meditates each morning. Prayer can be part of a meditation practice and, of
course, can be an all-day practice. Prayer can be offered to the One Presence
many call God or to various saints, masters, deities from various religions, or
avatars (divine incarnations), such as Jesus Christ in Christianity and Krishna in
Hinduism and Vedic traditions.
Like meditation, prayer can be done at any time and throughout one’s day. As
a child I remember having an ongoing conversation with God as I understood
God to be at that level of mental development. That reminds me of a question
my first spiritual teacher in adulthood asked once: “Is your concept of God now
the same as it was at five years old? Did God change or did your understanding
evolve?” Our concept of God and everything else naturally evolves as we
evolve. In the Bible it says, “You are created in God’s image.” What is equally
true is that we create our god in our own image. If we believe in a punishing,
vengeful world, we will most likely believe in a punishing, vengeful god. If we
believe that love is the nature of our world, we will most likely create a loving
god.
I suppose I still have conversations with God, although my understanding has
evolved substantially. I also often ask my angels for assistance. I call them
“angels” because I like the image. My clearer understanding, however, is that
there are helping energies and beings on the inner planes around us at all times.
Their primary purpose is to assist humans in the evolution of consciousness and
the expression of love. When I ask for guidance or assistance, they usually ask
me more questions, like “What do you really want?” Their questions help me
become clearer and therefore more effective in attracting what I want.

AFFIRMATIVE PRAYER

Affirmative prayer is different than petitioning prayer. Rather than praying to a

higher power outside of oneself for what we want to experience in life,
affirmative prayer assumes that since we are one with God or a Higher Power,
we don’t need to petition benevolence or grace from a being outside ourselves,
but simply to state that whatever we want is our divine right as expressions of
The One. Our good is already within us. Of course, you can use petitioning
prayer and affirmative prayer concurrently or periodically depending on your
perspective at the time.
The Science of Mind, based on the book by Ernest Holmes, offers a five-step
method to affirmative prayer called “spiritual mind treatment.” Following are
simple examples of the five steps to help guide you. In practice, the steps can be
modified and elaborated upon.
1. Recognition: I recognize there is one Infinite Presence of Light, Love, and
Peace.
2. Unification: I am one with this Infinite Presence. I am a perfect expression of
this Light, Love, Peace, and Abundance.
3. Realization: I recognize that as an expression of the Divine, I already possess
everything that I want and need (state specifically what you want—perfect
health, prosperity, healthy relationships, right livelihood, etc.).
4. Thanksgiving: I give thanks for all the blessings in life and for the
manifestation of this prayer that has already been accomplished in mind,
feeling, and energy.
5. Release: I release this prayer into the field of potential that always says yes. I
let it go completely with trust and faith that it is done. And so it is.
 VISUALIZATION

Visualization can be a part of a meditation practice and can also be done for the
purpose of facilitating a life of greater joy, peace, contentment, and
enlightenment. Whatever it is you most want to create in your life, you can
visualize. There are many sayings that illustrate the power of visualization. This
simple one sums it up nicely: “If you can see it, you can be it.” It is true that for
anything we do well, we first have an image of ourselves doing it, whether we
are conscious of that or not.
It is commonplace in recent times and as a result of research, for top athletes
to use visualization techniques to enhance their performance in sports. In his
book For the Love of the Game, Michael Jordan cites his natural ability to
visualize as a contributing factor in his unprecedented success in basketball: “I
have used visualization techniques for as long as I can remember. I always
visualized my success. It wasn’t until later in my career that I realized the
technique is something that most people have to learn. I had been practicing the
principles naturally my entire life. I visualized how many points I was going to
score, how I was going to score them, how I was going to break down my
opponent.”1
His uncanny natural ability is likely a major reason for his tremendous
success in becoming perhaps the greatest professional basketball player ever and
possibly the greatest professional athlete ever—certainly one of the most
celebrated.
Try using visualization to improve anything you wish to learn or achieve.
Simply close your eyes and imagine yourself performing the task perfectly and
effortlessly. People who are not naturally visual can still be successful using this
technique. If you struggle with seeing the images internally, perhaps you are
more auditory or kinesthetic in the way you process information. In this case, try
adding the sounds that would represent the perfect, effortless accomplishment to
the internal experience. Try feeling what it would be like to accomplish the goal
or activity perfectly and effortlessly. During your visualizations, affirm that you
are performing the task or the accomplishment in the present moment in your
mind. In other words, rather than projecting the image into the future, imagine
that you are experiencing it in the now moment.
Over the years, I have used visualization techniques to improve athletic
performance, prepare speeches, and create joyful and successful experiences in
my daily life. When I prepare for a speech, workshop, or retreat, I close my eyes
and visualize how I want the experience to be for myself and for those in
attendance. I add feeling to the scenario. What feelings do I want myself and my
audiences to experience? I feel those emotions in the moment. I complete by
affirming that what I have visualized and felt has already been manifested in
mind and heart and that showing up in the world of form is a mere form-ality.
Then when I am in the midst of offering my services, I simply let go and let my
vision unfold naturally.
I highly recommend practicing this technique for any important event of your
life: taking a test, interviewing for a job, proposing to your boyfriend or
girlfriend, performing a sport, having a medical procedure. For this last example,
imagine the procedure going perfectly. The doctor or health professional’s
consciousness is in the perfect space to perform masterfully, and his or her hands
are guided by Spirit, highest potential, the hands of God, your higher self, or
whatever terms you prefer.

MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness is not only a meditation technique, it is, in fact, a way of life. Just as
we can aspire to be in a meditative state at any moment in time, we can also be
mindful in any and all circumstances. The more mindful we are, the more peace,
love, and inner joy we can live in and from.
Take a moment to glance up from the page after reading this sentence and
take note of what is around you.… See if you can notice details about your
environment that you would miss if you were not looking in a mindful way.…
Continue to observe your environment mindfully after each sentence, or every
other sentence if you choose, or read to the end of the paragraph and then
practice the following suggestions. Even if you are in a familiar place, I’ll bet
you can notice things you have never noticed before.… Look carefully at the
objects or scenery if you are outside and notice what you notice. “Notice”
sounds both obvious and subtle. See if you can learn something from the objects
you see. Choose one particular object and look as deeply as you can into its
nature. What message does it have to offer you from its way of being?
When you return your awareness to reading these words, see if you are in a
more expanded state of consciousness. See if you are more receptive to the
material that you’re reading. So many spiritual teachings focus on being present
in the moment. We spend much of our mental energy fretting about the past or
worrying about the future. In the words of the title of Ram Dass’s famous book,
Be Here Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the past and focus our
intention on the future. It means we bring them into the present moment while
being present to what’s happening around us as opposed to getting lost in the
past or future.

BE THE OBJECTIVE OBSERVER

Being the observer is a practical way of applying mindfulness. Once again, the
metaphor of what works in meditation works in life. In this practice we simply
observe whatever is happening externally and, most important, inwardly. I can
observe what is happening in general in my life from a nonattached perspective.
If I am in a situation or interacting with someone who is triggering an
uncomfortable feeling for me, such as fear, sadness, pain, anger, or even rage, I
can aspire to observe the situation and my feelings as much as possible, even if I
am reacting in a way I wish I wasn’t. The more proficient we become at being
the objective observer, the more we become aligned with our higher potential
and the more likely we are to respond from a more peaceful and enlightened
presence. And when we are not able to do so, by being the observer, we will
learn more from the situation than if we are completely lost in our reactive
emotion. And we can be the observer in retrospect as well. Look back over your
daily activities, especially those that elicit strong reactions, and review them
without judgment.
Try this now, while you are reading. Be aware of what you are thinking as
you read the words on the page. What are your thoughts about the material you
are reading? Are you taking it in and absorbing it? Are you thinking, “This is the
most enlightened material I’ve ever read”? Are you thinking, “This stuff is pretty
strange,” or “This author doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”? Are you
thinking, “Maybe I should skip this last chapter and go meditate”? Whatever you
are thinking, observe the thoughts.
Be aware of what you are feeling inside as you read the words on the page.
Are you feeling curious, board, angry, enthused, excited, intrigued? Whatever
the feeling, observe it without judgment, and just watch. Are there sounds
around you that you weren’t aware of? See if you can observe the sounds while
you continue to read.
 To take this into a daily practice, for the next seven days and nights, observe
your thoughts, feelings, actions, words, and interactions with others. Don’t
necessarily try to change anything. Just observe. Changes will come naturally
and easily.

RADICAL GRATITUDE

After the publication of my first book, I traveled extensively lecturing about

what I call “radical gratitude.” We’re all aware of the benefits of being grateful
for what we have. Grateful for our blessings and the many joys in our lives—
that’s regular gratitude. Radical gratitude is being grateful for the situations and
experiences in life that challenge us the most. What I found in espousing this
idea eighteen years ago was a lot of “ahas” in the audiences I spoke to. Now
what I find is lots of heads nodding up and down.
Radical gratitude is a concept that has become part of the collective
consciousness. Our most popular and celebrated spiritual teachers and authors
are all saying the same thing in different ways. Byron Katie says to love
everything, every experience, every person, no matter what; Eckhart Tolle
encourages people to give up resistance to what is; Robert Scheinfeld in Busting
Loose from the Money Game (a favorite book of mine that isn’t about money but
consciousness) says, “Appreciate everything”; August Gold and Joel Fotinos in
The Prayer Chest say, “Invite everything, every experience”; and in The Magic
of the Soul, I say, “Look for the magic in everything, every situation, especially
the most challenging ones.”
There is a quote that I love that is attributed to the Buddha that perhaps he
never said. I only know this because when I first saw the quote, I googled it to
make sure I had the wording correct and was directed to a page with a picture of
the Buddha and a caption that read, “I didn’t say that!” The page contained a list
of all the sayings incorrectly attributed to the Buddha. The quote is as follows:
“When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and
laugh at the sky.” Can you feel the peace and power in that?
In my writing and lectures I share about the experience of writing The Magic
of the Soul, how it ultimately became a successful publishing project, and how
the message evolved. I started out writing a book with an emphasis on how to
manifest what you want in life. I felt I was pretty darn good at manifestation. I
had a great job as a director for Sage Publications, a world-renowned social
science publishing house. I had a wonderful marriage of thirteen years. I was in
excellent health and condition, having been a tennis pro in my twenties and a
martial artist in my thirties.
A funny thing happened on the way to the magic of the soul. Everything fell
apart. I became chronically ill with no diagnosis for three years. My marriage of
thirteen years ended, and my great corporate job went away. Everything I had
identified with on a personal or ego-level basis had been stripped away in about
six months. The chronic illness lasted for three years with no progress. I availed
myself of virtually every traditional and alternative healing intervention for three
years with no improvement and with no specific diagnosis. In fact, the symptoms
were increasing. I was bedridden for weeks at a time and was beginning to think
I was approaching the end of this earth-plane existence. All the while I resisted
the experience and the symptoms.
Then what happened is I gave up. Not in an apathetic sense, but in a
surrendering way. I decided that if I was going to die from this, if I was nearing
the end of this life journey, I was going to use the experience of dying to
understand at the deepest level who I am as a sacred being. So guess what
happened? Yes, I began to heal, slowly at first, but that healing did not occur in a
straight line. I would start to feel better and go out and do things that I used to be
able to do, like take a walk, and it would put me back in bed again. Again, I
would resist the symptoms, maybe even more so, because it felt so good to feel
even just a little bit better, and the symptoms would worsen. Then I would
remember, “Oh yes, it was that surrendering thing that had me feeling better.” So
I would surrender again.
It was like my soul was teaching me in the most direct and dynamic way
possible about learning to be in a consistent state of surrender. What would your
life be like in a consistent state of surrender?
The message of the book took a new turn. Rather than merely pointing out
that it is magical to create what we want, the message crafted from my
experience of writing the book (or perhaps the book writing me) became to
appreciate the magic in what we have. And not just those things in life that bring
us happiness, but especially the things that create discomfort or challenge us the
most. As conscious beings, when we look back over our lives, we tend to
recognize that our most challenging times in life are the times we grow the most.
We may even say in retrospect the dark time was a blessing in disguise. But how
do we respond to challenges or discomfort in the moment? We resist it, yes?
What I am suggesting is to appreciate the blessing in the moment. If we can’t see
the blessing, we can at least trust that there is one.
As the practice of radical gratitude or looking for the magic in every
experience has evolved for me, life has become progressively sweeter. There is
rarely any fear, resistance, or attachment to anything. Since I found surrender
and a deeper understanding of the truth and love of which my being consists,
what more could there be to fear? If I know that no matter what occurs for me
(because nothing happens to us and everything happens for us) is for my highest
good, then everything that happens is truly “all good.”
To sum it up, here’s one of my all-time favorite quotes from Pam Grout in E3:
Nine More Energy Experiments That Prove Manifesting Magic and Miracles Is
Your Full-Time Gig: “Once you can say, ‘This is the best thing to happen to me’
about everything that happens in your life, you’ll be aligned with the FP [field of
potential].…”2 “You align with the FP by loving everyone, by seeing the ‘face of
God’ in everything, by feeling happy, by being joyful and grateful for everything
no matter what. Instead of letting the ‘apparent reality’ dictate your feelings, you
line up with the FP, which knows nothing but love, peace, and perfect
contentment.”3

NONATTACHMENT

Another hallmark of Buddhist practice is nonattachment. Interestingly enough,

in my experience, the practice of looking for the magic in every situation or for
the greater freedom, joy, love, etc. that wants to emerge from every challenging
situation naturally leads to nonattachment. If I truly believe that everything is
happening for me and nothing happens to me or is against me, then there is
nothing to fear about the future. This doesn’t mean that I don’t ever have fear
come up in my life, but as a result of these practices, it is maybe 2 percent of the
time, whereas before these practices, even after meditating for twenty years, fear
was present more consistently, occasionally a somewhat intense fear, and more
consistently a subtler sense that something bad may happen, or when things are
going well, “When is the other shoe going to drop?”
What I’ve found is that the only way to true and lasting peace is to be at least
relatively nonattached to outcomes. Being completely nonattached is an ideal.
As stated earlier, the spiritual or meditative path is not about reaching the ideal,
but about being present along the journey. The more nonattached we become, the
more peace we can realize.
Some might say, “But if I’m nonattached to what happens in the world, won’t
I become apathetic? Will I no longer care about the pain and suffering of others
if I believe that everything happens for us?” Actually, my experience is the
opposite. The more at peace I am within myself, the more I want to help others
experience peace. I want to share the inner peace that comes from the knowledge
that everything is for us. Peace that comes from having enough food for proper
nourishment, a home for security and safety, freedom from abuse and
oppression. Interestingly, the degree to which I am nonattached to outcomes is
proportionate to my ability to create positive change. When I am attached, I will
approach challenges from the level of the problem. When I am nonattached, I
will approach challenges from the consciousness of solution.
When we have attachment to any outcome in life, let’s say increased health or
prosperity, there is always some degree of fear, subtle or not, that what we want
to happen won’t or what we don’t want to happen will. We cannot be at peace
when there is attachment and its fuel, fear. When we let go of attachment and
therefore are affirming that everything is okay, that we are okay regardless of
any outcome, then our energy is freed up, and we have even greater power to
create what we might have previously been attached to. The fear puts negative
energy into manifesting what we don’t want and drains our power to create what
we do want. The most powerful consciousness for manifestation of anything is
to be clear about what we want and nonattached to how, when, or even if it
occurs.
So how do we focus on what we want and be nonattached at the same time?
This is obviously a dichotomy. With most, if not all dichotomies of this sort, we
can do a “both/and.” At the level of Spirit, at the level of Truth, there is no
duality, so the both/and brings us into alignment with higher principle.
If it seems like these first three practices have a lot of overlap, it’s because
they really are different ways of approaching the same goal, which is to be
present in each and every moment. It wasn’t until I had some experience with
these first three that I even knew what it meant to be present in the moment. The
more mindful I am, the more I look for the magic in every experience, and the
more nonattached I am, the freer I am in each and every moment to experience
and appreciate the beauty all around me and even the beauty in what others may
label as hideous.
All these practices require an increase in awareness. So how can we increase
our awareness in our daily lives? How can we facilitate consistency in these
states of being? The following practices can help.

SPIRITUAL CUES

A powerful tool I’ve employed and taught for more than twenty-five years
involves using cues to remain conscious of our intentions to be present, mindful,
nonattached, loving, or any other desirable state. There are a couple of different
ways to use this tool. One is to create self-directed cues, such as “Every time I
walk through a doorway, I will come back to my spiritual intention,” or “Every
time I look at the time,” or “Every time I look at my phone for any reason.” For
most people these days, that will be a pretty profoundly consistent reminder. If
you choose this method, you will likely find it useful to switch to different cues
periodically, because we can become immune or insensitive to the cues over
time.
The second way to use this tool—my favorite version—is to set some kind of
reminder, on your phone, a watch, computer, stove timer (I like the last one,
because it causes me to get up and turn it off, so I really have to break the
attention to whatever I happen to be focused on). Set the reminder to go off
every hour (or whatever time frame works for you), unless you have an
appointment, or perhaps you can put your phone on vibrate so the reminder will
be activated silently, even in the midst of your meeting. Each time the alarm
goes off, notice the quality and content of your thoughts. This will give you a
clear picture of the kind of messages you give yourself in various situations. It
will create clarity about how you are using your consciousness and to what
degree you are being mindful, creative, loving, etc.
As you continue this practice, you will most likely begin to anticipate the
alarm and start adjusting your mental outlook before you even hear it. You can
take this practice a step further. Upon the sounding of the alarm, or your
anticipation of it, in addition to observing your mental process, consciously
switch it to one of magical acceptance. Switch it to a state of awe and wonder.
Be present in the moment and affirm that you are manifesting your highest
potential.

SEVEN-DAY MENTAL DIET

Emmet Fox created this practice and wrote a book about it with the same title,
The Seven-Day Mental Diet. The practice is to go one entire week without a
single negative thought. Okay, we all know this is virtually impossible,
especially if you have the occasion to talk to or interact with pretty much
anyone. Once again, the point is not to achieve the ideal, but to create awareness
on the journey toward the ideal. By embarking on the diet, you will become
infinitely more aware of the quality and veracity of your thinking. Once we have
the awareness, we empower ourselves to choose differently.

SHIFT AND RELEASE

I developed this method for the purpose of releasing uncomfortable feelings, like
outbursts, illness, or unconscious negative patterns, in the moment they occur,
rather than suppressing them and having them arise and be expressed in less-
desirable ways in the future. This is also a way to avoid the trap of spiritual
bypass or suppressing emotions while using techniques to transcend or transmute
discomfort.
What normally happens when we get angry, fearful, frustrated, hurt, etc., is
that we instantly judge ourselves in a negative way. We all do this to varying
degrees. Then the negative spiral downward begins. We feel bad and guilty.
Then we rationalize—“Well, I should be angry after what he/she said to me!”
Then this inner conversation ensues for minutes, hours, sometimes even days.
What would your life be like if it were 100 percent free of self-judgment?—
which is the only kind of judgment there is—because if you judge someone else,
you are really just judging a part of yourself you are projecting onto someone
else, yes? This simple process is designed to release judgment in the moment
and take you back to the spiritual intention you have for your life.
The result is that you will continue to have human responses to challenging
situations, but you will only spend seconds or minutes releasing the energy
instead of hours or days—which means you will end up with much longer
periods of time living in love, creativity, freedom, bliss, and positive expectancy.
Here are the steps to this simple process:
Each morning (at least five days per week), set your intention for the day
about what qualities you want to embody, live, and express, such as joy, love,
freedom, clarity, bliss. You can do this as part of an already existing meditative
practice or simply spend a couple of minutes on it even on days that you may not
meditate.
Any time you feel discomfort or tension of any kind that takes you away from
your morning intention, let out any emotional energy that needs to be released—
pain, fear, anger. If you are in a safe enough place, scream it out! If not, create a
cue, like tapping your leg, or simply acknowledge that you are really angry,
scared, or hurt. Then without any negative self-judgment for having the reaction
—after all, it is a natural human response—do the “shift and release.” Place your
hand on your heart and say (silently or audibly) “Release and shift” (or if you
find a phrase that works better for you, feel free to use that—in fact feel free no
matter what). The point is to create as consistent an experience as possible of
positivity, joy, freedom, and bliss.
Use the graph here to chart how many times you were able to shift to a higher
frequency of energy using “release/shift” each day (approximately) and the level
of frequency of the qualities you were intending to live with that you achieved
on a scale of one to ten (ten being highest). By measuring this process, your
attention will be drawn to it, which will create more awareness about it and
ultimately accelerate your results.
Each morning when you create your intention for the day, include the
intention to “raise the frequency” up one degree from where you were the day
before. If you were at a level three yesterday, create an intention for it to be at a
level four today. If it goes up to six, create an intention the next day for it to be at
seven. If it goes down to two, then the following day, intend to raise it back up to
three. All this is done without judgment, of course. And if you do judge yourself
for falling backward on the scale, don’t judge yourself for judging. Give yourself
a clean slate each day and in each moment.

THE JOY FACTOR

A practice that I offer in my Joy Factor workshops and a future book with the
same title is to wake up in the morning, check your schedule, and ask yourself
what will bring you the most joy to do today, and then go and do that. I know—
sounds completely impractical, doesn’t it? While it may sound impractical, in
my experience, also tested with my clients, this may be the most practical thing
you can do for your life.
The understanding that has evolved for me over the course of forty-two years
of meditation and other spiritual practices is that the secret to a fulfilling and
joyful life is living from the inner experience of joy, freedom, and love. When
this is accomplished, everything else comes into alignment and life becomes
progressively easier and more fulfilling.
How I define joy, by the way, is not “the opposite of sadness”—that’s
happiness, which is a personal experience. Joy for me is a pervasive spiritual
quality that can exist even in times of sadness, loss, grief, or anger. True joy for
me is synonymous with deep connectivity and deep peace. After a massive
stroke, my mother had come home to hospice at ninety-three, and we knew she
only had a few days left in physical form. This was certainly not a happy time,
but it was filled with the pervasive joy I’m referring to. We were connected at a
soul level more fully than ever before. We find joy when we give up resistance
to our experiences in life, when we immerse ourselves in whatever experience
life is offering us and allow ourselves to see the beauty in everything. This is
true joy.
If true spiritual joy is not merely the personal experience of happiness, then
certainly it is not instant gratification either. The joy of which I write is always
lasting or long-term. When asking what will bring me the most joy today or in
any decision-making process, I can clarify whether it is long-term joy by asking
how I will feel a month or a year from now, having decided to do what brings me
joy now. The most powerful and effective way to live from an inner experience
of joy is to do what brings us lasting joy on a consistent basis. In fact, the most
powerful demonstration of self-love is to do what brings us joy. By asking what
will bring you joy and doing it, you are demonstrating to your own psyche that
you are deserving of living a life of joy. If you take a day off from work or
cancel appointments because you have assessed that going to relax at the beach
or mountains or a river will bring you the most lasting joy, you have made a
powerful declaration to your own psyche. By continuing to ask what will bring
you the most joy and doing it, you will become reacquainted with the joy for
which you have chosen these activities.
As human beings, we tend to do what will bring us the most joy, but we forget
about the joy for which we are doing them. I might think, “I have to go to this
job I don’t like,” or “I have to raise these teenage kids.” By continuing to ask
what will bring us the most joy, we refocus on the joy for which we are doing
certain activities, what we may have previously called “obligations,” “have-tos,”
or worse, “shoulds.”
 CONCLUSION

Whatever spiritual practice you employ to expand and integrate your meditation
practice, my encouragement to you, my beloved reader, is to do it all with joy
and freedom. Give yourself the gift of inner peace, and forgive and accept
yourself in each and every moment that you are not experiencing that gift. Know
that any and every experience that is inconsistent with how you want to live your
life, when embraced and accepted, will offer you incentive and inspiration to
choose inner peace, freedom, and love more consistently and fully.
Know that you are in your perfect place on your path toward freedom, and
that every step—even the difficult ones—is necessary and perfect. Give yourself
a break, my friend. You deserve it. Be gentle with yourself and you will be
gentle with others. Love yourself no matter what! I was talking with a client
recently about self-love, and the phrasing that came to me was “When I
unconditionally love myself just the way I am, I realize I am not myself. I am, in
fact, The Self. I am, in fact, pure love.” And so are you!
Thank you for allowing me to walk with you a bit down your path of
unfolding love.
In love and joy!
—PATRICK J. HARBULA
 RESOURCES

Please note that some of the links referenced throughout this work may no
longer be active.

Training Centers and Organizations

1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, California, presents daily classes, weekend
discovery adventures, and many other offerings, including Ananda yoga and
Kriya yoga. https://1440.org
Ananda, based on the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, has meditation and
Kriya yoga training centers in many states in the United States and countries
around the world. www.ananda.org
Breathworks offers Mindfulness-Based Pain Management trainings and teachers’
trainings in Manchester and London, England. www.breathworks-mindfulness
.org.uk
Centers for Spiritual Living is an international organization that offers classes in
Science of Mind, New Thought metaphysics, and other spiritual subjects, all
of which include meditation. www.cslcs.org
The Chopra Center is located in Carlsbad, California, and offers meditation
groups and classes (free introductory) and yoga classes, as well as other
services. www.chopra.com
The Christian Meditation Center offers meditation classes, trainings, and retreats
in various locations in New Jersey, as well as online tips, a meditation timer,
and other services. www.christianmeditationcenter.org
Esalen is a retreat center in Big Sur, California, offering classes and workshops
in many different styles of meditation and yoga as well as other holistic and
 self-help subjects. www.esalen.org
Findhorn is a world-famous spiritual center in northern Scotland that offers
weeklong trainings and residential programs in meditation, sacred dance,
yoga, and other holistic subjects. www.findhorn.org
Inner Quest is a metaphysical Christian church in Alpharetta, Georgia, that offers
meditation training, energy healing, and other spiritual subjects. www
.innerquestchurch.org
Insight Meditation and Retreat Center offers insight (mindfulness and Vipassana)
meditation and Buddhist teachings in Redwood City, California. www
.insightmeditationcenter.org
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, also known as the Hare
Krishna movement, founded by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,
offers free classes, ceremonies, and free vegetarian meals in many locations as
well as residential programs. www.iskcon.org and www.krishna.com
The Krishnamurti Foundation of America in Ojai, California, offers meditation
training, retreats, and residential programs based on the teachings of
Krishnamurti. www.kfa.org
The Maharishi Foundation has Transcendental Meditation training centers all
around the world offering programs for meditation training and becoming a
trainer. www.tm.org
Omega is a world-famous organization with centers in Rhinebeck, New York;
New York, New York; and Costa Rica that offers meditation training and
personal and spiritual growth classes and workshops onsite and online. www
.eomega.org
OSHO International Meditation Resort is located in Maharashtra, India, and
offers many different meditation training options for onsite study. www.osho
.com
Sahaja Yoga Meditation offers classes in various areas of Australia based on the
teachings of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi. www.freemeditation.com.au
Sai Baba Ashram has three associated communities in India with affordable but
not at all fancy accommodations for short or long stays and includes daily
meditation and satsang—sitting with a teacher or guru to receive blessings.
www.srisathyasai.org.in
Self-Realization Fellowship was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda and has
meditation and Kriya yoga centers in most U.S. states and many countries
 around the world. www.yogananda-srf.org
Shinzen Young offers residential meditation retreats and conference-call
meditation trainings. www.shinzen.org
SYDA Foundation offers Siddha yoga training, including meditation, chanting,
and yoga based on the teachings of one of the more famous Indian gurus,
Swami Muktananda. There are online courses as well as onsite centers and
ashrams around the world. www.siddhayoga.org
Sri Anandamayi Ma was an Indian teacher who was not as well-known in the
West as some more famous gurus but was considered a saint by the people of
her country, and virtually all the more famous gurus visited her for darshan, or
ceremonial worship, because of her high level of spiritual development. There
are twenty-four ashrams she founded in India that can be visited for retreat and
meditation training. www.anandamayi.org
Unity Centers is a New Thought Christian organization with centers around the
world offering classes in metaphysical study based on the teachings of Myrtle
and Charles Fillmore with a strong emphasis on meditation and Eastern
philosophy. www.unity.org
The Vedanta Society, founded by Swami Vivekananda, has centers and live-in
facilities around the globe and offers meditation training and classes on the
Vedic teachings. All classes are free. www.vedanta.org
Vipassana Meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin offers ten-day
Vipassana trainings in many countries around the world. www.dhamma.org
Yogaville is a yoga training and retreat facility in Buckingham, Virginia, founded
by Swami Satchidananda. It offers meditation training, integral yoga training,
and teacher training as well as retreats and residential programs. www
.yogaville.org
You can also find meditation classes and training programs at various Christian
churches. Search the net for meditation classes, groups, and training, plus your
preferred denomination.

Websites
Dave Potter offers free Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction classes online, all
based on the system developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of
Massachusetts. www.palousemindfulness.com
The Free Mindfulness Project offers free meditations, videos, discussion forums,
 poetry, and other mindfulness meditation resources.
www.freemindfulness.org/download
Labyrinth Locator offers a database of labyrinths throughout the world.
www.labyrinthlocator.com
Meditation Society of Australia offers free online meditation classes, yoga, daily
meditations, and other resources.
www.meditation.org.au/online.asp
Retreat Finder offers a database of retreats around the world, searchable by
meditation style. www.retreatfinder.com/Directory/Meditation.aspx
Mindful seeks to connect the emergent elements in the mindfulness community
and offers simple mindfulness meditation exercises, video conferences, and a
bimonthly magazine entitled Mindful in both print and digital form. www
.mindful.org
Mindfulness Magazine has an online directory for meditation retreats, classes,
and groups. https://directory.mindful.org
Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra provide a twenty-one-day meditation
journey once a year. The twenty-one-day program is free, and each session can
be listened to for five days before it is no longer accessible. The program is
available for purchase at the end of the journey. www.chopracentermeditation
.com
Quiet Kit offers free, easy meditations and instruction for beginners.
www.quietkit.com
Sahaja Yoga offers a free ten-week online meditation course.
www.onlinemeditation.org
Tracks to Relax offers guided sleep meditations for inducing deep and relaxing
sleep. www.trackstorelax.com
University of Metaphysics, founded by Paul Masters, offers meditations and
online metaphysical degrees, including bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral.
www.metaphysics.com
World Community for Christian Meditation contains a database of Christian
meditation groups, classes, and retreats around the world.
www.wccm-usa.org
Yellow Brick Cinema offers videos with relaxing music and compelling visuals
for sleep, study, meditation, and relaxation.
 www.youtube.com/channel/UCwobzUc3z-0PrFpoRxNszXQ

Apps
Aura offers new, personalized, three-minute meditations every day.
Headspace is geared toward beginning meditators, and their free trial includes
ten exercises that can help you learn about meditation and applying it to daily
life.
Insight Timer features more than ten thousand guided meditations from more
than a thousand teachers.
The Mindfulness App includes a five-day guided meditation practice, reminders
for when it’s time to relax, and other offers based on individual meditation
habits.

Products
Biofeedback devices: This site offers an unbiased review of four of the most
popular mind-calming biofeedback devices: www.chopra.com/articles/the-
pros-and-cons-of-4-meditation-gadgets.
Candles: You can find some beautifully colorful candles on Amazon.com by
searching for the following: “Himalayan salt tea light candle holder” (beautiful
and calming) and “HYMOSY Strong Candles” (colorfully decorated). The
following site contains information on using candles for meditation as well as
reviews of specific meditation candle products: www.awakeandmindful.com
/best-candles-for-meditation.
Crystals: Visit this website for information on crystals for meditation and their
specific purposes: www.energymuse.com/blog/meditating-crystals. This site
offers information on finding the right crystal for you, crystal meditations, and
a large selection for purchase:
www.crystalvaults.com.
Cushions, seats, and benches: These two sites have a variety of meditation
cushions, seats, and benches: www.gaiam.com/collections/meditation-seating
and www.samadhicushions.com. You can also find a fair variety on
Amazon.com.
Fountains: You can find lovely fountains on Amazon.com, including this one,
which includes three candles and a beautiful tabletop fountain: search for
“Alpine WCT202.” This one is also very relaxing: search for “Silver Springs
 Relaxation Fountain.” This site offers fountains with Zen Buddhist themes:
www.chopa.com/fountains.html.
Incense: You can find just about every kind of incense and olfactory-enhancing
product on this site: www.incensewarehouse.com. My favorite stick brand is
Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa. I find that there is a higher concentration of the
scent in each stick than in other brands.
Light and sound devices: This site offers information and reviews on various
brands of light and sound devices as well as a discount to purchase them when
clicking through from the site:
www.howtolucid.com/best-mind-machines.
Mandalas: The most beautiful and complete array of mandalas I know of all
from one artist for viewing and purchase can be found at www.mandalavisions
.com. You can find more from a variety of artists to view and purchase at
www.art.com. This site has gorgeous wall hanging tapestry mandalas at a very
reasonable price:
www.royalfurnish.com. You can also view some beautiful animated mandalas on
YouTube, including this one:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux7gSKl0Tgw.
Meditation music: In addition to the thousands of guided meditations and
meditation music in the apps in the Apps section, a few favorite meditation
pieces are: Pachelbel with Nature’s Ocean Sounds by Gary Sill; Whalesong by
Tim Wheater; Music for Healing Mind, Body, and Spirit by Steven Halpern;
Calm Within: Music for Relaxation of Body and Mind by Laura Sullivan. All
these artists have many more offerings and the list of wonderful New Age and
meditation music and artists is virtually endless. You can purchase these
selections on Amazon.com as well as other music-specific sites, such as
www.CDbaby.com. You can also listen free to virtually any music you may be
interested in by searching for the title and artist on YouTube.com, and with
Amazon Prime you can stream the most popular songs. You can also find most
songs on the Pandora app or www.pandora.com.
 FREQUENCY RAISER
Each day place two dots at the intersection of the lines for the measure and day of the month. The first dot
indicates the amount of times you did the release shift process for that day and the second is the rating on a
scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest), the level that you achieved (averaging the day) of the qualities you
intended to live in for that day: joy, bliss, peace, love, freedom, etc. Make copies of this page so you can use
them beyond one month.
 NOTES

1. WHAT IS MEDITATION?
1. Merriam-Webster, s.v. “meditation,” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
/meditation.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. The Free Dictionary, s.v. “meditation,” https://medical-dictionary
.thefreedictionary.com/meditation.
2. BENEFITS OF MEDITATION
1. Helen Lavretsky et al., “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Kundalini Yoga
in Mild Cognitive Impairment,” International Psychogeriatrics 29, no. 4
(April 2017): 557–567, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1041610216002155.
2. World Disease Weekly Editors, “Neuroscience; Meditation Appears to Be
Associated with Structural Changes in the Brain,” World Disease Weekly;
Atlanta 29 (November 2005): 1237.
3. Fadel Zeidan et al., “Mindfulness Meditation-Based Pain Relief Employs
Different Neural Mechanisms than Placebo and Sham Mindfulness
Meditation-Induced Analgesia,” Journal of Neuroscience 35, no. 46
(November 18, 2015): 15307–15325, https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI
.2542-15.2015.
4. Richard J. Davidson et al., “Alterations in Brain and Immune Function
Produced by Mindfulness Meditation,” Psychosomatic Medicine 65, no. 4
(July 2003): 564–570, DOI: 10.1097/01.PSY.0000077505.67574.E3.
5. S. Annells et al., “Meditate Don’t Medicate: How Medical Imaging
Evidence Supports the Role of Meditation in the Treatment of Depression,”
Radiography 22, no. 1 (February 2016): e54–e58, https://doi.org/10.1016/j
.radi.2015.08.002.
6. Yogesh Singh et al., “Immediate and Long-Term Effects of Meditation on
Acute Stress Reactivity, Cognitive Functions, and Intelligence,” Alternative
Therapies in Health and Medicine 18, no. 6 (November/December 2012):
46–53, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd01
/c564fcfb2a1d86b7b6bfa0eaf4a42fdd6cdd.pdf.
7. University of Pennsylvania, “Meditate to Concentrate,” ScienceDaily 26
(June 2007), www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070625193240.htm.
8. Jon Kabat-Zinn et al., “Effectiveness of a Meditation-Based Stress
Reduction Program in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders,” The American
Journal of Psychiatry 149, no. 7 (July 1992): 936–43. DOI:
10.1176/ajp.149.7.936.
9. Patrick Harbula, “The Many Roads Home,” Meditation Magazine 3, no. 3
(Summer 1988).
10. Reprinted with permission from Daniel Nahmod, “One Power.” Words and
Music by Daniel Nahmod, © Nahmod Music Co. (ASCAP).
11. Patrick Harbula, “Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan,” Meditation Magazine 2, no. 2
(Spring 1987).
3. GETTING STARTED
1. Patrick Harbula, The Magic of the Soul: Applying Spiritual Power to Daily
Living (Thousand OaksCA: Peak Publications, 2003).
4. MEDITATION PRACTICE
1. Harbula, The Magic of the Soul. Modified from “Zen Tennis Exercise,” 156.
2. Harbula, The Magic of the Soul. Modified from “The Fires of My Mind,”
156.
3. Harbula, The Magic of the Soul. Modified from “Exercise for Stilling the
Mind,” 122.
4. Harbula, The Magic of the Soul. Modified from “Sun Meditation,” 199.
5. Modified from “The Great Invocation,” Lucis Trust, www.lucistrust.org/the
_great_invocation.
5. SUPPORTING SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
1. Michael Jordan, edited by Mark Vancil, For the Love of the Game: My Story
(New York: Crown Publishers, 2008), 64.
2. Pam Grout, E3: Nine More Energy Experiments that Prove Manifesting
Magic and Miracles Is Your Full-Time Gig (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House,
2014), 122.
3. Ibid, 120.
 INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages
in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search
for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index
are listed below.

abhijna
Abraham Teachings
Abulafia, Abraham
actions vs. goals
active imagination
affirmation
affirmative prayer
Agape International
Alcott, Amos Bronson
Alpert, Richard (Ram Dass)
anger
animal, power
anxiety
Aquarian Age
Aranyakas
Assagioli, Roberto
Atharvaveda
atheists
athletes
athlete’s zone
Atma
attention ability
Aum, Om
Bailey, Alice
Baime, Michael
Barnum, Earl
Beatles
Beckwith, Michael
Be Here Now (Ram Dass)
benefits of meditation
enlightenment
health, see health benefits of meditation
inner peace
joy
nonattachment
spiritual understanding and mystical experience
bhakti yoga
Bible
Blavatsky, Helena
Bodhidharma
Body & Soul
body scan meditation
Brahmanas
brain
breathing
Buddha
Buddhism
Busting Loose from the Money Game (Scheinfeld)
candles
Carroll, Pete
Centers for Spiritual Living
chakras
Chan Buddhism
chanting
“Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om”
children
China
Chinmoy, Sri
Chödrön, Pema
Chopra, Deepak
Christ
Christianity
cognitive function
Cole-Whittaker, Terry
color cycle
control
crystals
cues, spiritual
Dalai Lama
depression
Dhyana
disidentification exercise
distractions
drumming
E3: Nine More Energy Experiments That Prove Manifesting Magic and Miracles Is Your Full-Time Gig
(Grout)
eating
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ)
emotions
anger
fear
shift and release method for
enlightenment
escape
expectations
fear
Ferguson, Marilyn
Fillmore, Charles and Myrtle
“Fires of My Mind, The” (Harbula)
First Nations
For the Love of the Game (Jordan)
Fotinos, Joel
Fox, Emmet
Frager, Robert
frequency raiser
Freud, Sigmund
fruit exercise
Fuller, Buckminster
Fuller, Margaret
Gaines, Edwene
Ganesh
Gangaji
gap, GAP
Genesis
Gnosticism
goals
actions vs.
God
chanting and
God Awareness Place (GAP)
Gold, August
Goldsmith, Joel
Goleman, Daniel
Gordon, Ken
gratitude, radical
“Great Invocation, The”
Gregorian chanting
group meditation
Grout, Pam
guided meditation and visualization
examples of
hands
happiness
Hare Krishna movement
hatha yoga
Hay, Louise
health benefits of meditation
anxiety decrease
attention ability
brain and immune function improvement
depression treatment
healthy brain structure
pain reduction
prevention of cognitive decline
stress, cognitive function, and intelligence
health cautions for meditation
Hedge, Frederic Henry
helpful hints for meditation
Hicks, Esther and Jerry
High Point Foundation
Hinduism
history of meditation
modern era
Holmes, Ernest
Hopkins, Emma Curtis
Houston, Jean
Hubbard, Barbara Marx
humanistic psychology
Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
imagination, active
immune function
Inayat Khan, Hazrat
Inayat Khan, Pir Vilayat
incense
India
inner peace
insight meditation
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
integral mindfulness
intelligence
Islam
Jackson, Phil
James, William
Jesus Christ
Jha, Amishi
jnana yoga
John of the Cross, Saint
Jordan, Michael
joy
Judaism
judging yourself
Jung, Carl
Kabat-Zinn, Jon
Kabbalah
karma yoga
Katie, Byron
Kelsang Gyatso, Geshe
King, Vivian
Kirtan (Kirtana)
Kornfield, Jack
Krishna
kriya yoga
Kundalini yoga
kung fu
labyrinth
Leary, Timothy
Lennon, John
Lewis, Samuel L.
light meditation
Living Purpose Institute
love
for yourself
MacLaine, Shirley
Magic of the Soul, The: Applying Spiritual Power to Daily Living (Harbula)
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Mahayana
mandalas
mantra
McCartney, Paul
meditation
benefits of, see benefits of meditation
breathing in
candle
chanting, see chanting
color cycle
commitment to practice of
consistent practice of
definitions of
as discipline
disidentification
distractions and
drumming
expectations about
meditation
falling asleep during
getting started with
goal of
 going deeper in
group
guided meditation and visualization
guided meditation examples
hand position in
health benefits of, see health benefits of meditation
health cautions for
helpful hints for
history of
insight
longer-form daily
long periods of
mantra
mindfulness
mindfulness body scan
in modern era
in the morning
mountaintop
movement
path of light
place for
posture for
power animal
practice of
resources for
sampler of
scripture
short-form daily
sitting
sounds and
still-mind
sun
support from others in
supporting spiritual practices for, see supporting spiritual practices
temple
tools for
Transcendental Meditation (TM)
transmission
types of
walking
well-known meditators
what to expect in
wise being
yoga, see yoga
Zen Tennis
Meditation Magazine
Mesmer, Franz
mind:
monkey mind
nonthinking
 seven-day mental diet
spiritual mind treatment
still-mind meditation
mindfulness
integral
mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
mindfulness meditation
body scan
mind machines
Mind Probe One
Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People (Tart)
minerals
mudra
monkey mind
mountaintop meditation
movement
music
Myss, Caroline
mystical experience
Nahmod, Daniel
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
Native Americans
Neem Karoli Baba
Neidan
New Age
New Age Journal
New Church
New Thought
Nhat Hanh, Thich
noises and sounds
nonattachment
nonthinking
objective observer
Om
“One Power” (Nahmod)
pain, physical
reduction of
pain and suffering
nonattachment and
see also emotions
Pali Canon
pantheism
Parker, Theodore
Parliament of the World’s Religions
path of light meditation
Philo of Alexandria
Pio, Saint Padre
Piscean Age
Plato
Plotinus
posture
power animal
prayer
affirmative
“The Great Invocation”
mystical, Saint Teresa on four stages of
Prayer Chest, The (Gold and Fotinos)
psychology
psychosynthesis
transpersonal (spiritual)
Qigong
Quimby, Phineas
raja yoga
Rambo, Steve
Ram Dass
“Ram Jai, Jai Ram, Jai Jai, Ram Om”
realization
recognition
Religious Science
resources
Rigveda
Roberts, Jane
Rogers, Carl
Rumi
runner’s high
Sage Publications
Sai Baba
Sai Baba Ashram
samadhi
samatha
Samaveda
Samhitas
Sanskrit
Satchidananda, Swami
Sayadaw, Mahasi
Scheinfeld, Robert
Science of Meditation, The: How to Change Your Brain, Mind, and Body (Goleman and Davidson)
Science of Mind
Science of Mind, The (Holmes)
scripture meditation
Seattle Seahawks
Secret Doctrine, The (Blavatsky)
self
transpersonal
self-judgment
self-preservation reflex
seven-day mental diet
Seven-Day Mental Diet, The (Fox)
shadow
Shaolin monks
shift and release
Sikhism
Singer, Michael
sitting meditation
Sivananda Saraswati
sounds
Spangler, David
spiritual bypass
spiritual cues
spiritual mind treatment
spiritual psychology (transpersonal psychology)
spiritual understanding
Spiritual Unity Movement
still-mind meditation
stress
mindfulness-based stress reduction
suffering, see pain and suffering
sun meditation
Sufism
supporting spiritual practices
affirmation
being the objective observer
joy
mindfulness
nonattachment
prayer, see prayer
radical gratitude
seven-day mental diet
shift and release
spiritual cues
visualization as
surrender
Swedenborg, Emanuel
tai chi
tantric yoga
Tao, Taoism
Tart, Charles
temple meditation
tennis
Zen Tennis
Teresa of Avila, Saint
thanksgiving
radical gratitude
Theosophy
Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Thoreau, Henry David
Tolle, Eckhart
Torah
transcendentalists
Transcendental Meditation (TM)
transpersonal psychology (spiritual psychology)
transpersonal self
trust falls
unconscious mind
unconsciousness
unification
Unitarianism
Unity (Unity Church)
Universal Dances of Peace
Upanishads
Vedanta
Vedanta Society
Vedas
Vedic traditions
Vipassana
visualization and guided meditation
examples of
Vivekananda, Swami
walking meditation
Walsh, Roger
weight-lifting
Welwood, John
whirling dervish
Wilbur, Ken
Williamson, Marianne
Winfrey, Oprah
wise being meditation
Yajurveda
yoga
Kundalini
Zen
Zen Tennis
zone
 ALSO BY PATRICK J. HARBULA

The Magic of the Soul: Applying Spiritual Power to Daily Living

 Praise for Meditation
“Encyclopedic in scope, this useful compendium is not just for newcomers on the spiritual path. Author
Patrick Harbula covers every aspect of meditation from its history to its benefits to the how-tos of more
than two dozen practices. A lifetime of experience with Eastern and Western contemplative traditions
informs these pages, packed with useful tips on choosing a method, what to expect, and establishing a daily
practice. Meditation fundamentals like breathwork, mindfulness, and visualization are explained in clear,
accessible terms.”
—Joan Duncan Oliver, author of Buddhism: An Introduction to the Buddha’s Life, Teachings, and Practice

“Meditation is a very simple process which can be done in many ways. Patrick Harbula provides a guide
that can be read as a basic primer or as a deep dive into all things meditation. This is a book that should be
on every meditator’s bookshelf and be dog-eared, marked up, and well-read.”
—Dr. Jim Lockard, author of Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership

“In Meditation Patrick Harbula offers perhaps the most inclusive explanation and application of meditation
I have ever read. He has taken what is generally perceived as an Eastern practice and made it user-friendly
for the Western mind. This is an exquisite and transparent handbook for anyone who seeks to explore the
countless benefits found in a life grounded in meditation. I encourage you to allow Patrick to be your
personal guide on the journey to the place you never really left—your oneness with Life. He knows—in real
time—from whence he speaks.”
—Dr. Dennis Merritt Jones, bestselling author of The Art of Abundance: Ten Rules for a Prosperous Life
and The Art of Uncertainty: How to Live in the Mystery of Life and Love It

“Patrick Harbula’s presentation of a wide variety of meditation styles and techniques makes this book a
unique presentation on the subject. Particularly insightful is the Helpful Hints section, which offers practical
and cutting-edge strategies for effortlessly stilling the mind. The chapter on Supportive Spiritual Practices
also makes this book a seminal and complete treatment for spiritual growth as well as user-friendly tool for
beginners and seasoned meditators alike.”
—Dr. Ken Gordon, spiritual director of Centers for Spiritual Living

“Patrick Harbula has created a beautiful introduction to the novice meditator. Using gentle humor, personal
stories, and practical suggestions, he guides the reader through complex ideas such as enlightenment,
spiritual bypass, dealing with expectations, and sustaining an enjoyable and meaningful meditation
practice.”
—Dr. Edward Viljoen, author of The Power of Meditation: An Ancient Technique to Access Your Inner
Power

“While explaining the deep, historical roots of meditation, Patrick makes the practice very accessible to the
beginner and highly motivational for the longtime meditator. This is one of the most comprehensive books
on meditation available to us today. Benefits, approaches, and specific practices are skillfully explained in
his approachable personal style, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.”
—Rev. Dr. Maxine Kaye, author of Alive and Ageless: How to Feel Alive and Live Fully Every Day of Your
Life
 About the Author

REVEREND DR. PATRICK J. HARBULA has been a leader and teacher in the human
potential movement, New Thought minister, shaman, meditation trainer, and life
coach for over 30 years and life coach trainer for 20 years. He is the author of
the best-selling book, The Magic of the Soul: Applying Spiritual Power to Daily
Living. He regularly leads shamanic ceremonies including ceremonial sweat
lodges and has trained hundreds of successful life coaches through the Living
Purpose Institute Life Coach Certification Program and trained thousands in the
practices of deep meditation.
Patrick has presented at New Thought centers internationally and continues to be
a key-note speaker at annual New Thought conferences and health and spiritual
expos. Patrick is founder of the Living Purpose Institute, past president of the
Spiritual Unity Movement, founding Executive Editor and Publisher of
Meditation Magazine, and formerly a director for Sage Publications, a world-
renowned social science publisher. He was ordained by the late Dr. Earl Barnum
(an early pioneer in the New Thought Movement) and trained in Spiritual
Psychology under the late Dr. Vivian King. Patrick continues to reach hundreds
of thousands through his writing and media appearances including Dateline,
ABC, NBC, and UPN News, to name a few. The message of his writing,
speaking, workshops, and coaching services is to live from an inner experience
of love, freedom, and joy; love oneself unconditionally; and dive deep into the
wellspring of universal peace, light, and love through meditative practice. You
can sign up for email updates here.
 Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

 CONTENTS

Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. What Is Meditation?
History of Meditation
The Modern Era
Specific Types of Meditation
Mindfulness Meditation
Silent Mantra
Breathing Techniques
Chanting
Yoga
Meditation and Movement
Drumming
Guided Meditation and Visualization
Group Meditation

2. Benefits of Meditation
Health Benefits
Prevention of Cognitive Decline
Healthy Brain Structure
Pain Reduction
Brain and Immune Function Improvement
Effective Treatment for Depression
Stress, Cognitive Function, and Intelligence
Increased Attention Ability
Decreased Anxiety
Health Detriments of Meditation
The Joy Factor and Nonattachment
Inner Peace
 Spiritual Understanding and Mystical Experience
Enlightenment

3. Getting Started
Meditation Tools
Posture
Helpful Hints
What to Expect

4. Meditation Practice
Meditation Sampler
Disidentification Exercise
Mindfulness Body Scan
Scripture Meditation
Walking Meditation
Zen Tennis Exercise
Candle Meditation
Color Cycle
Mountaintop Meditation
Power Animal
Sun Meditation
The Temple
Wise Being
The Path of Light
Short-Form Daily Meditation
Longer-Form Daily Meditation

5. Supporting Spiritual Practices

Affirmation
Prayer
Affirmative Prayer
Visualization
Mindfulness
Be the Objective Observer
Radical Gratitude
Nonattachment
Spiritual Cues
Seven-Day Mental Diet
Shift and Release
The Joy Factor
Conclusion

Resources
Notes
Index
Also by Patrick J. Harbula
Praise for Meditation
About the Author
Copyright
The information in this book is not intended to replace the advice of the reader’s own physician or other
medical professional. You should consult a medical professional in matters relating to health, especially if
you have existing medical conditions, and before starting, stopping, or changing the dose of any medication
you are taking. Individual readers are solely responsible for their own health care decisions. The author and
the publisher do not accept responsibility for any adverse effects individuals may claim to experience,
whether directly or indirectly, from the information contained in this book.

First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Essentials, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

MEDITATION. Copyright © 2019 by Patrick Harbula. All rights reserved. For information, address St.
Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10271.

www.stmartins.com
 Cover by Young Jin Lim

Cover photographs: mandala © CkyBe/Shutterstock.com The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-250-21004-3 (trade paperback) ISBN 978-1-250-23819-1 (ebook) eISBN 9781250238191

Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the
Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at
[email protected].

First Edition: August 2019