My experience with mediation began what feels to be eons ago.  In this lifetime I expressed it as prayer for most of my life up until about 7 years ago.  Even then my prayer life was robust and seemingly separate from what I considered to be meditation.

I often tell the story of how my mediation practice began with me proclaiming to my children that I was going to go into my room to “meditate” (as if they knew what that was).  All the while I knew I was sneaking off for a nap at about 11:00am while my three children 4, 7, and 9 played quietly.

I lay there quietly with my body heavy on my bed after a partial day that began with an exhausting workout at 4am. My silken lavender eye pillow, to cover my eyes, served to shut out the light so that I could see.  It began as a light entering the top of my head effervescing its way through my every cell. The light descended slowly and methodically through every particle of my being as I observed.  I cannot say how I knew to do this; all I can say is that it felt incredible.  It was liberating, relaxing, and everything that my day would not naturally provide for me.

Very consistently as each day passed I would learn of the interface of wakefulness and sleep. This learning process was how I inadvertently created a naptime for myself.  I looked forward to the interface and even the deep brief rest I was gifted.

As time went on, I became more and more frustrated with my inability to stay awake. But as each day passed this involuntary method would play out in my meditation time.  One day as I lay observing the white effervescing light penetrating my cells and particles with the knowledge of what was coming next, I let go of my expectation to stay awake.  I invited myself into naptime and promised myself time for meditation once I awoke and was rested.  This strategy proved to be profoundly valuable for me.  I napped for 10 minutes falling asleep with my beloved white light and upon waking felt transformed and refreshed, far from the yearning and desire of sleep in the 15 minutes prior.

At that point I was able to follow the light through my body from head to toe and back! It was such an amazing awakening to a new way of life and it certainly brought expansion and ease into my day.

I had yet to really know what I was doing.  I had never studied meditation and did not have any formal introduction into it.  I seemed to come by it naturally.

I truly believe this had much to do with my years of contemplative prayer and my ongoing relationship praying the rosary.  Both of these I enjoyed for as long as I could remember.  I much preferred prayer at home in the solitude of my space than in the church reciting obligatory prayers in communion with others.  There was a depth that I could reach in solitude that was never possible, nor likely the purpose, while in the presence of others at church.  In contemplative prayer I felt as if I was transported to another time space reality and always came back to the present wishing I could have been alive in the presence of Jesus to experience his earthly self.  At that depth it was the closest thing I would get to being there in body.  It was miraculous and magical for me.  In truth my mediation practice began with prayer, in truth they are more the same than different.

As my mediation practice evolved, my thirst for the knowledge behind, in and around it became insatiable.  I began a cursory inquiry into many types of meditation, the where, who, and how it originated.

I delved deeply into Vipasana and it became more home to me than any other form of meditation that I had studied so far.  It was quite challenging for me. The white light drenching my particles and cells evolved to many varied out of body experiences.  This led me to insights that I cannot begin to describe with words.  It took me to worlds and dimensions beyond any place or existence I could ever dream of and even to places I would not want to dream of.  Many times I emerged from mediation in a complete state of wonderment repeating silently only to myself…“you can’t make that shit up!”

Once I began a formal inquiry, the strong holds of academia and programming kicked in. My Virgo self stood heavy in the structure of knowledge embedded in the earth plane.  As soon as I began to study mediation, the magic and wonderment and miraculous nature seemed to wane.  I began to have expectations of myself that I hadn’t before.  It felt a bit more like the obligatory prayers of mass than the time travelling depths of contemplative prayer.  I found myself disappointed and disenchanted.

Onward I pressed quenching my thirst for knowledge and structure.  I felt extremely conflicted and not at all at liberty to meditate “my way”.  I began to make deals with myself and create delusions of why I was studying.

The more I studied Vipasana the more I could see clearly and objectively the delusions and the deals I was making with myself.  I stuck with the process as the good student I trained myself to be in the 7 years post high school education. I let go of the free form meditation with my beautiful white light, which embedded and encoded my system with etheric energy and vibration…. I let go of bliss.

I learned of attachment and detachment, I learned more about delusions, hindrances, and obscurations.  I taught myself, many time through grappling matches, to be the observer.  There were days that my memory wandered back to the days of bliss.  To the days of liberation and freedom to step in, jump in, fall in to the time machine, to fly off into the ethers on my magic carpet and experience all sorts of magnificent adventures.  Many times I longed for those days and grieved their passing.

Some days were more challenging than others as I strove for mastering Vipasana.  Stepping into my pattern of yearning to master a subject, I once again became an official student at The University of Theology.  I enrolled in the Certified Meditation Instructor program. The Virgo in me craved the structure and admittedly the certificate of mastery for teaching meditation.  I also craved the accountability that a program can bring about. It took me over a year to complete what could have been done in at least 6 months time as the conflict in me continued.  I was called to meditate daily and write daily.  I dutifully did so…unless I didn’t.  I wrote essays and papers and read books that were required.

In the end, I got an A+.  Really, an A+! True story, no joke! The little Virgo in me tingled with joy! I felt like I had slayed the dragon. This was a song of irony as I had been deemed a master of teaching this thing called detachment, yet I so clearly was attached!

Shaking my head and washing my hands of the process that I had forced myself to complete I walked away and felt with certainty that I would go immediately back to my white light and time travel.  I couldn’t wait to get on my magic carpet.  Good-bye observing, hello participation! I was elated with excitement. I was going to pick up right where I had left off. The first chance I got, I settled myself into meditation.  It was going to be my kind of mediation. Meditation, which fostered liberation and freedom, allowed latitude, depth, and expansion with a multitude of points and places of interest.  I was free!

My world crashed down when I began to meditate “my way” and nothing happened.  I saw nothing, I went nowhere, and I felt nothing.  I was blank.  I felt completely distraught.  I continued my daily practice of sitting, pouting, and rolling my eyes at how exhaustingly bored I was with out any action in the ethers.  Much to my great surprise and dismay it was impossible for me to fall asleep.

In the midst of all of this, there was something quite interesting happening in my daily life.  My senses had come alive and I noticed all of it. I observe it all.  I allowed myself to be completely and painfully honest objectively listening to my thoughts, emotions, fears, feeling and sensations.  I became acutely aware of the difference between my feelings and those of others.  This was astounding and breathtaking.

About the time I initially delved into my rogue like meditation I had started a two year course of mentorship with an incredibly talented and knowledgeable energy intuitive who helped awaken my intuitive gifts.  She taught me what intuition was and how to consciously connect with it.  She taught me about fear, how to recognize it and ways to move through it.  She taught me about joy and that it truly is our birthright to experience it, to live in it.  She taught me how to tap into my knowingness of beyond the physical into the energetics of beings.  In essence she taught me how to feel.

As I looked back to those two years, I took quite a didactic approach to all that I was being taught.  I was yet again thinking instead of feeling. The foreboding information was lost on me without consistent willingness and consent to actually experience it and feel it. It was problematic and concerning to me that I could not sustain the knowingness. I was completely clueless at the time as to why.

After truly committing to my Vipasana practice for that year it took to get my teaching certificate, I unknowingly transitioned into an existence of exactly what my teacher was trying to relay to me.  I had become willing to feel and sense and know as the acute and curious observer instead of stepping into every emotion and feeling that happened to drift by whether it was my own or another’s.  Through Vipasana I found how my intuition works and how I am able to access knowingness beyond the physical.  I transformed my life through Vipasana and opened the doors necessary for me to be able to time travel and ride my magic carpet. No longer was it necessary for me to lie down and cover my eyes and shut out the light so that I could see.  The Vipasana practice that I grappled with, repeatedly debated with, cursed and ultimately slayed, was responsible for my expansion.  Not just IN mediation, but IN every moment of my existence.  It was I as the detached observer that was necessary in order to truthfully expand into the fullness of my gifts.

I believe this process could have been easier.  IT could have been lighter and more full of love and kindness to myself.  IT could have been shorter.  It could have been happier.  There could have been less grappling, less bloodshed, less tears.

What it couldn’t have been is more perfect. In the end, I didn’t need to slay the dragon. The truth is the dragon was never really slayed. The dragon was split open and once exposed, revealed the gems.

Blessed BE! ~ And so it is!

XO Elizabeth