"What should I do about my meditation practice?" I ask Richard one day, as he's watching me scrub the temple floors. (He's lucky-he works in the kitchen, doesn't even have to show up there until an hour before dinner. But he likes watching me scrub the temple floors. He thinks it's funny.)
"Why do you have to do anything about it, Groceries?"
"Because it stinks."
"Says who?"
"I can't get my mind to sit still."
"Remember what the Guru teaches us-if you sit down with the pure intention to meditate, whatever happens next is none of your business. So why are you judging your experience?"
"Because what's happening in my meditations cannot be the point of this Yoga."
"Groceries, baby-you got no idea what's happening in there."
"I never see visions, I never have transcendent experiences-"
"You wanna see pretty colors? Or you wanna know the truth about yourself? What's your intention?"
"All I seem to do is argue with myself when I try to meditate."
"That's just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what your ego does. It keeps you feeling separate, keeps you with a sense of duality, tries to convince you that you're flawed and broken and alone instead of whole."
"But how does that serve me?"
"It doesn't serve you. Your ego's job isn't to serve you. Its only job is to keep itself in power. And right now, your ego's scared to death cuz it's about to get downsized. You keep up this spiritual path, baby, and that bad boy's days are numbered. Pretty soon your ego will be out of work, and your heart'll be making all the decisions. So your ego's fighting for its life, playing with your mind, trying to assert its authority, trying to keep you cornered off in a holding pen away from the rest of the universe. Don't listen to it."
"How do you not listen to it?"
"Ever try to take a toy away from a toddler? They don't like that, do they? They start kicking and screaming. Best way to take a toy away from a toddler is distract the kid, give him something else to play with. Divert his attention. Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with. Something healthier."
"Like what?"
"Like love, Groceries. Like pure divine love."
45
Going into that meditation cave every day is supposed to be this time of divine communion, but I've been walking in there lately flinching the way my dog used to flinch when she walked into the vet's office (knowing that no matter how friendly everybody might be acting now, this whole thing was going to end with a sharp poke with a medical instrument). But after my last conversation with Richard from Texas, I'm trying a new approach this morning. I sit down to meditate and I say to my mind, "Listen-I understand you're a little frightened. But I promise, I'm not trying to annihilate you. I'm just trying to give you a place to rest. I love you."
The other day a monk told me, "The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go."
I'm trying a different mantra, too. It's one I've had luck with in the past. It's simple, just two syllables:
Ham-sa.
In Sanskrit it means "I am That."
The Yogis say that Ham-sa is the most natural mantra, the one we are all given by God before birth. It is the sound of our own breath. Ham on the inhale, sa on the exhale. (Ham, by the way, is pronounced softly, openly, like hahhhm, not like the meat you put on a sandwich. And sa rhymes with "Ahhhh…") As long as we live, every time we breathe in or out, we are repeating this mantra. I am That. I am divine, I am with God, I am an expression of God, I am not separate, I am not alone, I am not this limited illusion of an individual. I've always found Ham-sa easy and relaxing. Easier to meditate with than Om Namah Shivaya, the-how would you say this-"official" mantra of this Yoga. But I was talking to this monk the other day and he told me to go ahead and use Ham-sa if it helped my meditation. He said, "Meditate on whatever causes a revolution in your mind."
So I'll sit with it here today.
Ham-sa.
I am That.
Thoughts come, but I don't pay much attention to them, other than to say to them in an almost motherly manner, "Oh, I know you jokers… go outside and play now… Mommy's listening to God."
Ham-sa.
I am That.
I fall asleep for a while. (Or whatever. In meditation, you can never really be sure if what you think is sleep is actually sleep; sometimes it's just another level of consciousness.) When I awake, or whatever, I can feel this soft blue electrical energy pulsing through my body, in waves. It's a little alarming, but also amazing. I don't know what to do, so I just speak internally to this energy. I say to it, "I believe in you," and it magnifies, volumizes, in response. It's frighteningly powerful now, like a kidnapping of the senses. It's humming up from the base of my spine. My neck feels like it wants to stretch and twist, so I let it, and then I'm sitting there in the strangest position-perched upright like a good Yogi, but with my left ear pressed hard against my left shoulder. I don't know why my head and neck want to do this, but I'm not going to argue with them; they are insistent. The pounding blue energy keeps pitching through my body, and I can hear a sort of thrumming sound in my ears, and it's so mighty now that I actually can't deal with it anymore. It scares me so much that I say to it, "I'm not ready yet!" and snap open my eyes. It all goes away. I'm back in a room again, back in my surroundings. I look at my watch. I've been here-or somewhere-for almost an hour.
I am panting, literally panting.
46
To understand what that experience was, what happened in there (by which I mean both "in the meditation cave" and "in me") brings up a topic rather esoteric and wild-namely, the subject of kundalini shakti.
Every religion in the world has had a subset of devotees who seek a direct, transcendent experience with God, excusing themselves from fundamentalist scriptural or dogmatic study in order to personally encounter the divine. The interesting thing about these mystics is that, when they describe their experiences, they all end up describing exactly the same occurrence. Generally, their union with God occurs in a meditative state, and is delivered through an energy source that fills the entire body with euphoric, electric light. The Japanese call this energy ki, the Chinese Buddhists call it chi, the Balinese call it taksu, the Christians call it The Holy Spirit, the Kalahari Bushmen call it n/um (their holy men describe it as a snakelike power that ascends the spine and blows a hole in the head through which the gods then enter). The Islamic Sufi poets called that God-energy "The Beloved," and wrote devotional poems to it. The Australian aborigines describe a serpent in the sky that descends into the medicine man and gives him intense, otherworldly powers. In the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah this union with the divine is said to occur through stages of spiritual ascension, with energy that runs up the spine along a series of invisible meridians.