Meditation is the most powerful means that exists for human transformation.  There are many recipes for effective meditation.  Some come with religious doctrines.  Others do not.  What almost all meditative prescriptions share is the commitment to train, exercise or otherwise effect attention.  More often than not, this begins with learning to sit still.  It begins with learning how to be alone with yourself–your thoughts, sensations, concerns, tensions.  And, eventually, the absence of all of these.

For meditation practice to be fully effective, it should be accomplished twice a day-morning and evening.  It can begin with 15 minute sessions, but be allowed to evolve into longer periods over time.  If you meditate for 15 minutes a day, you’ll get 15 minutes worth of benefit–not nothing–but only a scant introduction to the power and scope of meditative transformation.

When you find yourself desiring longer sessions–an hour, two hours and more–you will confront and overcome deeply imbedded fears and concerns about who you are, about the life you have lived and will live, and about time itself.  You will only overcome the fear of time, mortality and the non-existence of a ‘personal self’ when you look them in the face and recognize them for what they truly are.

These are not simply ‘existential’ concerns.  Our fears, failures, beliefs and expectations are integrated into our muscles, our joints, and into the patterns of thought and behavior that animate the courses of our daily lives.  Only through concerted meditative confrontation, recognition and release can we truly begin to experience lives without stress and suffering.  Lives that begin to abound with effortless joy and relaxation.

If you long for an extraordinary life, if you desire the quality of spiritual, physical and emotional freedom that is the rarest of all experiences, immerse yourself into the healing waters of meditation.

How do you accomplish this?  Integrate three vital, powerful activities into the conduct of your daily life: chant, breathe and meditate.  Commit yourself absolutely to these three activities.  If you do, you will, I promise you, experience profound transformation in just a few years.

Yes, years.  You can’t expect to run a marathon without committed and disciplined training.  You cannot hope to achieve anything great and rare without dedication.

Faith will help you.  For me, my friends, there is a God.  This Goddess is who we each and every one of us already is.  The God/Goddess that we all already are will assist us in our efforts.  We need only practice effectively and faithfully and pray.  Not necessarily on our knees.  (Though there’s nothing wrong with this.)  But in our meditations, during our work days, in the middle of the night when we awaken from sleep.

Our purpose is straightforward.  Disrupt accustomed patterns of thought, of physical stress and tension.

To accomplish the first, we begin to make of our lives an on-going chant.  Here is one that I recommend that you use to begin:

limb–leem–lame–lamb–lawm–luhm–lohm–loom.

This is a chant to awaken and vitalize the root chakra.  It is derived from the muladhara seed syllable, lawng  or lawm.

Begin to chant always and everywhere, without exception.  It’ll take time and effort.  It won’t happen–won’t begin to become easier–for several months.  But trust me, it will get easier, and it will effect a powerful transformation on the ingrained patterns of thought and behavior that you assume are the substance of who you are.

Second, you must begin to breathe deeply.  Whenever and wherever you are, be aware of your breath, take hold of your breath and breathe in slowly and deeply, breathe out slowly and deeply.  Learn to be aware of your breath at all times.

Chant and breathe together.  At the grocery store line, in the bathroom at work.  Before you go to sleep at night and in the minutes before you arise to prepare for the day.

Meditate twice a day.  Set your clock.  Get into a comfortable seated position.  Preferably, on a meditation cushion and pad.  But in a chair, if need be.  Commit yourself not to rise before the alarm sounds.  Make this an indelible habit

Breathe and chant.  Begin with this activity.  Breathe long and deep, use your chant to measure the time.  When your mind wanders, take note, let go of any concern about it, and resume your chant.

Do these three things, pray and in several months you will begin to recognize tremendous changes taking place.

Like an athlete training for excellence in her event, you will first break down familiar habits and patterns.  This may be painful and stressful at times.  Work through it.  Remind yourself that profound transformation is simply a matter of follow through.  Do the work and you will transform.  The Goddess will hear your prayers and give you strength when you need it most.  When you are meditating for an hour for the first time and your body is restless and your mind simply won’t conform to the chant without constant effort, then pray.  Ask that Grace that loves us all for help to go on.  Then go on.

The time will come when your meditative muscles will have been sufficiently broken down and you will feel new strength and power.  Only, it won’t be so much “strong and powerful,” but more like peaceful and fulfilling.  Meditation and spiritual practice will begin to become its own reward.  Like the runner who has grown into his stride and can run easily five miles, ten miles, twenty.  When you sit for your meditation, peace and relaxation will come more quickly, with less effort.  You will begin to explore the real substance of who and what you are.

You will know when your efforts are taking effect when you begin to awaken in the middle of the night chanting.  When you realize that you were chanting in the dream you were just having.

You’ll know transformation is underway when you awaken in the morning, lying on your back, arms at your sides, and realize that you have just experienced the deepest sleep of your life.  You’ve awakened in a body that has so imbibed the habit of releasing tension, that even your sleep time has become immersed in the activity of meditative transformation.

To find abiding joy and relaxation, you must use your entire day to prepare for meditation.  You must meditate to prepare for your days and nights.

Your purpose is to bring all time–waking, sleeping and dreaming–into a single precious Moment.  Yes, you can experience all of your life as ONE SINGLE moment.  That Moment will be still, it will never change.  It will be quiet, it will exist without being broken by a single wave of thought or physical action.  It will be quietly, profoundly joyful.  AND, it will include everything that is happening all around you all the time.

Your life will become a performance of enlightenment.  Enlightenment is what happens NOW.  When you ARE now, you are an actor liberated to perform on the stage of life.