Close your eyes and picture, in the depths of your heart, a most beautiful child, four or five years old – more beautiful, far more beautiful, more radiant than any child you have ever seen.
This child does not speak, but only smiles, smiles through its eyes and with its whole being. To see this child is to be enveloped in a wave of smile, to become a thrill of pure smile.
This child is breathing, blissful divinity – beauty incarnate, purity incarnate, simplicity, sweetness, charm and innocence incarnate, perfect beyond imagination. You simply cannot take your eyes off him or her. Your heart is all love, concern and affection; you are drawn only to protect, support and attend to this child. All you long for is for the child to be happy, pure and free. In the child’s smile is your complete joy and fulfilment.
This child is your soul.
After some time, somehow you become distracted and find yourself thinking of some mundane thing.
The child’s smile is gone.
The child is gone.
Shattered, you cry, you lament, you are all anguish and remorse …
Silently, slowly, from a clearing mist, your divine child reappears, its stern face peering straight into you.
Never again will you neglect your divine child.
Just as we feed our body every day in response to the body’s hunger, so we must feed our divine soul-child every day with our heart’s love and concern. To feed our soul, we only need to love, admire and adore it with all our heart. This requires a clear mind and sure focus: in other words, it requires meditation. Meditation invokes our soul by clearing space in our consciousness, allowing our soul in silent stillness to shine and smile through our heart, mind and life.
If you have attained ultimate perfection, you do not need to change. If you are completely happy, you do not need to change. If you are already fulfilling your potential and your life’s highest purpose, you do not need to change.
Yet who can say that he or she is already utterly perfect, happy and fulfilled?
No-one.
If we are not yet absolutely happy and fulfilled, and we aspire to be so, then something in us must change. Change is the indispensable agent of progress.
As humans we at once desperately need change, and yet we fear and resist that very change which is necessary for our greater happiness and fuller perfection.
These two contradictory forces – the yearning for, and fear of change – are natural and inherent tendencies in us all.
Fear of change arises from our established, finite consciousness, to which change poses a threat. Our present ego fears that change will see its supremacy threatened or worse, extinguished altogether.
The yearning for change comes from our spiritual heart, aspiring for the infinite light, bliss and freedom of our soul. Our heart senses and knows that to attain to the infinite, demands that we first transcend the boundaries and bondage of the finite, embodied in our thoughts and desires, notions, prejudices and fixed ideas.
This process involves a fundamental realignment of our perception of our selves: from our present notion that we are a finite, material being with some spiritual tendencies, to the realisation that we are first and foremost a spiritual being, a soul, inhabiting and experiencing but not defined by a finite world and life.
Expansion of our consciousness by recognising, challenging and ultimately transcending the mind’s limitations – which is the very purpose of meditation – is the only way to effect lasting change, within and without.
Close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting on a beach.
You are alone. It is a perfect day. The beach stretches as far as your eye can see in either direction. Feel the sun’s warmth on your skin, the faint sea breeze on your cheek, taste a little salt in the air. Gaze out to the horizon, where the mighty ocean meets the vast sky and folds into the infinite.
Make your breathing deep, controlled and steady, focusing all your attention on your breath, counting slowly with each inhalation and exhalation.
After some time you notice that the waves are gently rolling in and subsiding in perfect rhythm with your breathing. As you breathe in, the wave rolls in to shore: as you exhale, the water retreats to the bosom of the sea. Your breathing and the ocean’s breathing – embodied in the motion of the waves – have become one. The sea is breathing in and through you.
You notice that your breath is actually controlling the movements of the waves: as you breathe in and the wave rolls in to shore, if you hold your breath for a moment, the water pauses and waits for your outgoing breath before returning to the sea.
You and the ocean are one.
Look into your heart and see and feel that you have become the ocean’s depths. No matter what is happening on the surface – wind, waves, even a storm – your depths are vast, silent, profound peace, the source of immense power.
After some time absorbed in the peace of your inner depths, you notice that the sun has started to sink. It is time for you to depart. With a happy heart, collect your things, rise, bid a fond farewell to the sea and turn for home…
As the dinosaurs of yore, our ego now proudly roams and rules the world…
… and as the dinosaurs found their days were numbered, so the time of the ego’s reign is now well and truly up.
Consciousness is constantly evolving, within us and around us.
The ego has been a compelling and indispensable force in the evolution and progress of humanity, inspiring many of our most glorious achievements as well as our worst excesses, blunders and crimes. The ego’s thirst for greatness and dominion has in part fuelled our quest for knowledge, skills and understanding as well as for conquest, power and wealth. Our ego has given us scientific and technological advancement as well as war, famine, exploitation and destruction. Ego has carried us to peaks of glory and pits of misery.
Our ego limits and defines us within its own small boundaries. Yet our hearts and souls, our true selves, can never be confined by any boundary. As we go further and deeper in meditation, our consciousness expands into vast, timeless tracts where the ego is as useful as a pencil in the sky. The limiting ego presents as more and more of an obstruction, a barrier limiting and stymying our further progress and expansion. Like the chrysalis of a butterfly or the tail of a frog, the ego, having fulfilled its role, is now a decaying, suffocating burden in need of being discarded or transformed utterly.
The ego promised happiness, and instead fed us fear, separation, suffering and treachery.
Our real happiness-treasure is within our hearts, patiently awaiting our call. Stubbornly blocking the way is ego.
It is high time for ego to see the writing on the wall.
O ego, step aside gracefully, or go the way of the dinosaur.
Meditation solves all our problems, inner and outer. Ultimately, meditation solves the Problem of problems – the Problem of existence itself.
Is God an infinite expanse of nothingness, a void? An all-knowing, all-seeing ultra-universal consciousness? An idealised person? A supreme dispassionate judge of our actions and inactions? A cosmic game? A dance of life and death? An eternal symphony of joy and suffering? A book? A theory? A vast energy field? The ultimate architect or dramatist? The spinner of the wheel of karma, or the wheel itself? Eternal Peace? Immortal Love? Supernal Bliss? Infinite Light? Aum?
All – or none – of the above?
How to resolve this Problem of problems?
Most of us spend most of our lives conveniently avoiding the problem – let alone seriously contemplating an answer. It is manifestly so far beyond our capacity to know and to understand, we either accept a simplistic label or belief, or else we choose to ignore it altogether.
… except it is the one problem which never ever goes away.
It is indeed, the only problem which really needs to be resolved: for once this question is answered, all questions are answered.
The universe around us is incomprehensibly vast; and the inner universe, vaster still. Connecting both, is our own consciousness. Here is the key.
To know or understand something large, we start with a small part of it. To analyse the water of a lake, we will take some test-tube samples, test them, and from the results, extrapolate conclusions about the water of the whole lake.
To know or understand God, the same method applies. Let us start with a sample. How about the only sample that is always readily available to us: ourselves?
You have become the flame. You are inundated with the flame’s light, purity, simplicity, beauty and delight. Because you have become the flame, and a flame has no mind, therefore you have no mind. Because you have no mind, thoughts and distractions find no foothold in you. As a moth is singed upon entering the flame, so any thought or distraction which dares to approach, is instantly dematerialised.
This flame does not burn, harm or destroy: only it illumines, purifies and transforms. All within us that was limited, finite, imperfect, uncertain, weak – all is gone, as only the flame prevails, mounting ever higher, beyond thought, beyond time, beyond space. As the flame has grown all-pervasive, the very concept of ego and self-awareness has evaporated.
This flame represents the light of our soul: eternally perfect and pure, divine, all-seeing, all-loving, all-knowing, all-illumining, infinite and immortal.
After some time, allow your flame to start to diminish in size – though retaining the same brilliance and intensity. Just as you would turn down the wick of a lamp, so your flame slowly reduces and gradually returns to the tiny flame you started with, steadfast in the very depths of your heart.
Now slowly open your eyes and behold the candle flame before you. With a broadening smile of amazement, you recognise that this candle flame is a mirror image, a reflection of your own heart’s inner flame.
In silence, offer your heart’s gratitude to the candle flame, for reinspiring you to dive deep within in search of your own inner flame; for rekindling the flame of aspiration within you, your inner yearning to climb higher, ever higher in search of eternal truth, light and bliss; and for reminding and reintroducing you to the all-illumining reality of your soul’s light.
Imagine your breath forms a bridge between your heart and the flame. Across this bridge, you and the flame offer yourselves unreservedly to each other. The flame is offering you its light, simplicity, purity and delight: you are breathing in and absorbing all these qualities as you inhale. In return, as you exhale you are offering to the flame all your heart’s love, concern, appreciation and gratitude.
Any thoughts or distractions which appear, you will breathe out and into the flame, where they disappear.
This flame is your entire world. Only the flame exists.
Now imagine that there is a mirror image of this flame burning in the very depths of your heart – a tiny but beautiful, radiant flame. When you can picture and feel this flame clearly within, then close your eyes and focus all your attention within, absorb yourself in the flame deep inside your heart.
As you focus on this inner flame, so it responds and starts to grow larger. As it grows, all its qualities – its light, purity, simplicity, beauty, effulgence – increase and intensify. As the flame continues to grow, eventually it expands even beyond your physical form, subsuming your whole existence within it. While the flame started as a tiny thing within you, now you are a tiny thing within the flame. It rises up around you and above you, reaching for the infinite.
The source of the flame is the depths of your own heart; a formidable, ceaseless fountain of light flooding your entire being. This light spontaneously illumines every corner of your existence: wherever previously there had been any pockets of darkness – in the form of fear, anxiety, doubt, confusion – these shady areas are completely obliterated and illumined by the effulgence streaming forth from within.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. Place a candle in front of you, at eye level. Light the candle.
We shall use the candle flame as the focal point for our concentration and meditation.
Gaze at the flame with your eyes half-open, half-closed, so that there is little else in your peripheral vision. Sit as close as you like to the flame. If for some reason you need to sit at some distance away, then just imagine that you are very close to the flame. Do not stare at the flame: simply let your eyes rest on the flame. You are not trying to pierce the flame, to describe or analyse it: just allow it to be itself, while appreciating and admiring it.
Imagine the flame is a living being, with its own breath. Breathe in time with the flame: as you breathe in, the flame breathes in; as you breathe out, the flame breathes out. Sharing the same breath, you feel a bond deepening.
Feel that the power of your concentration is coming not from your mind but from your heart. When we concentrate from the mind we use the mind’s capacity, which is analysis and reason. After 5 minutes we start to feel tired. Yet when we concentrate from the heart we use the heart’s capacity, which is love. When we love something, we can concentrate on that thing all day and never become tired. So concentrating from the heart is far more effective.
Love the flame. Feel that you have known this flame all your life – you have been best friends since your earliest childhood. Between you there are no secrets. Smile as you would when meeting your dearest friend, a smile of sure and pure affection.
Magic tricks often rely on distraction: the magician will set up a scenario, then draw our attention away to something else. While we are watching what his left hand is doing, his right hand completes the “trick”, so that when we return our attention to the original scene, the “magic” is complete and we are duly amazed.
So is it with meditation.
Here both the subject and object of the magic act is our conscious awareness. We start with an opening scenario with which we are all too familiar: a morass of stress, tension, restlessness, confusion and dismay.
This mess and stress are kept under guard by our mind’s focus and attention. While we pay them attention, they loom large and inescapable: because they loom large and inescapable, we are more in their thrall.
To dispel such a spell, needs magic.
Meanwhile, in the next room, our vast inner wealth of peace, light and bliss is locked away in the safe of our spiritual heart.
The meditation exercise now performs the role of the magician’s distraction: we are invited to focus all our attention on something, either internal or external. It might be our breathing and counting, a flower, a beautiful scene, soothing music, a mantra or a divine image.
While our focus is thus occupied, our mind-guard is distracted, leaving our tension and stress unobserved and unattended.
While the mind’s back is turned, peace, light and bliss tiptoe in from our spiritual heart next door, silently disarming and dissolving stress, tension and confusion wherever they are found, straightening furniture, opening curtains, establishing order and calm.
By the time we have completed our meditation exercise and return our attention to the original scene of our awareness, the magic act is complete…
Abracadabra! – our consciousness has been transformed.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. Either place the flower in a vase or hold the flower by its stem in front of you.
Gaze at the flower with your eyes half-open, half-closed, so that there is little else in your peripheral vision.
Feel that this flower is the most beautiful, sacred, precious thing in the world, and you have been entrusted to care for and protect it. Love the flower with all your heart. Admire, appreciate and adore its beauty, simplicity, delicacy and fragrance.
Imagine the flower has its own breath, and breathe in time with the flower. While breathing together, breathe in from the flower all its best qualities, which in turn become your own: as you breathe in the flower’s simplicity, your mind and thoughts are simplified and stilled; as you breathe in the flower’s beauty and purity, you feel beauty and purity blossom within your heart, spreading and wafting like the flower’s fragrance, to envelop your whole being.
Concentrate on one petal of the flower: imagine the whole world has been reduced to just this petal.
Now close your eyes and imagine the flower is blossoming inside your own heart, and from there it is expanding to encompass your whole body.
You have become the flower. Its beauty, delicacy and fragrance are your own.
The flower is complete and perfect in itself. It matters not whether it is appreciated or admired. Its exquisite beauty and fragrance remain the same even if no-one would notice it. Our spiritual heart is the same. Our inner peace and satisfaction are not dependent on any outer circumstance or the approval of anyone else in the world.
Our heart is an ever-blossoming, ever-fresh, ever-beautiful, ever-fragrant perfection-flower.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. This exercise can be done either with your eyes closed or else open and resting on a simple object such as a flower or candle flame.
Focus exclusively on your breathing. Slow your breath and make the flow of breath as calm and controlled as possible. Imagine that someone has placed a tiny thread right in front of your nose: focus on that thread and ensure it is absolutely still and unwavering.
When your breath is calm and controlled, please imagine that what you are breathing in is not air, but joy: pure, unalloyed joy.
This joy is not associated with any particular incident or experience in your life: it is the pure essence of joy, the inner thrill that accompanies the experience. Enter into and expand this inner thrill, allow it to permeate your consciousness.
As you breathe out, exhale the opposite of joy, which is sorrow, sadness, depression: any negative thought or feeling.
Feel this joy, this bliss circulating within you, percolating throughout your whole being, charging every cell of your existence with a current of delight.
Feel this joy welling in waves from your heart, blazing like the sun in all directions, flooding everything and everywhere. Feel pure bliss beaming through your smile, radiating from your eyes, shining within and around your face and your whole being.
If you were to stand outside of yourself and look back at yourself, or gaze into a mirror, you would see the most beautiful, radiant being of bliss.
This bliss, this delight flows unendingly seemingly without a source and knows no boundary, no limit, beyond time and space. Feel that you are first flying in an unhorizoned sky of bliss: then you become that ever-expanding sky.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. Focus exclusively on your breathing. Slow your breath and make the flow of breath through your nostrils as calm and controlled as possible.
When your breath is calm and controlled, please imagine that what you are breathing in from the atmosphere is not air, but power.
As you exhale, breathe out all weakness, insecurity, lethargy and fear.
This power you are breathing is not aggressive or destructive: far from it! This is dynamic, positive power: the power of love, the power to build, to grow, to create, to progress. This power manifests through cosmic energy: the same cosmic energy by which the planets revolve around the sun; by which the flower blossoms; the same power that enables our hearts to pump, our eyes to see and our minds to perceive.
Every living being is sustained and nourished by this power, which – as our life force – flows in, through and around us at every moment.
You are charging your inner battery, plugged directly into the universal power grid. Let this power infuse and saturate your whole being.
Picture this comic energy coursing through your veins like a river of light, flowing freely from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet to the very tips of your fingers, both within and around you, surcharging your whole being with dynamic energy, capacity, inspiration and aspiration.
Feel that with this power within you, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish: there is no task too formidable, no dream too remote. Everything is possible. You are almighty, indomitable, unconquerable.
Now apply this cosmic power to your own meditation: feel it is not your effort, but the vast cosmos which is meditating, experiencing itself in and through you.
If you ask what quality we are most in need of, many will answer: “peace”. Peace is the prize universally lacking and universally desired.
This evening, please take a few minutes to practise the exercise “Breathe and Become Peace” (episodes 25 and 26).
After this exercise, remember back to what you were doing and how you were feeling at some busy moment earlier in the day. Ask yourself this simple question: do I feel calmer, more peaceful now than I was feeling at that time?
If your answer is ‘yes’, then follow up with another question: Where has this additional peace and calm I am now feeling, come from?
The inevitable answer is: ‘from within.’
Indeed – in which case, where was this peace at that time earlier in the day when we were not feeling as calm? If it has come from within, then it must have been within us at that time too, though somehow hidden from our conscious awareness.
If it was there at that time, why were we not feeling and experiencing it then? At that time perhaps we were focussed on other, external things, whereas now we have gone in search of peace, and sure enough, we have found it.
Isn’t it ironic that the one quality which we are most in need of, is actually within us and has been the whole time?
The greatest irony of life: everything we most need to be happy and fulfilled – peace, love, joy, wisdom, satisfaction – we already have within us, in infinite measure.
The problem is, we look everywhere else – all around us – for these things, without looking in the one place where we will actually find them.
Meditate – today and every day – to discover, enjoy and become: our treasure of treasures awaits within.
