This Week’s Quotation:

So how do you welcome what is within you? Creating time and space that welcomes what is within you is a way of acknowledging and honoring that reality. This is the essence of meditation. It is the heart of worship. You honor your own spirit, which is part of the spirit of all, when you give it a place to live and breathe in your awareness. You become a vessel for that spirit, which begins to overflow into the world. You have ceased looking for that experience. You have been willing to be where you are and let your inner reality find you.

Becoming a Sun p. 111

Meditation That Welcomes What Is Within

I promote a practice of meditation that engages the entire human capacity—body, mind, heart, and spirit. I find that a purely mental practice is unfulfilling. I don’t see the purpose in it.

Several years ago, I offered a one-day workshop in Healing Chant in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. At the end of it, a woman came to me and said this.

I’ve been practicing meditation all my life. The longest I have ever been able to experience peace of mind was for 30 seconds. Today I felt it all day!

I was happy for this woman and happy that my workshop had assisted her to have that experience. At the same time, I felt compassion for her that she had waited a lifetime to have it.

I also thought about why—why did she have that experience? And why hadn’t she had much of it before?

It made me think about the Healing Chant workshop, which I’ve conducted around the world. People chant all day. That exercises the voice, which, of course, includes breathing. I invite them to use their thoughts in a way that promotes healing. And I definitely engage their hearts—a compassion for others and an opening to the love within them.

All this leads to a powerful spiritual activation.

I don’t usually tell people it is a meditation. But it is.

I don’t know how the woman who spoke to me had been meditating. But my guess is it was mostly mental without accessing all the other dimensions of human experience.

So what is your meditative practice? A walk in the woods? A hot bath? Yoga? Writing poetry?

Any mode of meaningful meditation has a quality of focus, mentally and emotionally. There is a deep opening and listening. And then, there is a download and a transformative journey as we connect to an inner reality that is the source of our life.

Good to be on that journey with you.

What does it mean to become a sun?

Every human being is already a sun on the inside—a being of intense love and light. The difference is that some people have the vision and courage to become a sun on the outside. This difference is our human destiny.