Category: Inner peace

Infinity

“The infinite nature of your being exists beyond name and form. Any definition that you place on infinity becomes a limitation.”—Panache Desai

During my week on retreat in Costa Rica with Panache Desai (see last blog post “The Silence Within”), transformation occurred at many levels. Yes, it was about accessing the silence within each of us, but it was also about living from that place of spaciousness and calm no matter what the circumstances in our lives are. For me, it was also about facing a lifelong fear of infinity/eternity.

Panache always tells us that we are infinite beings with infinite potential, that we are expanding infinitely, part of a universe that is also expanding infinitely. It’s amazing how often he uses the word infinite! And I love what he says, while at the same time being terrified of infinity—how cosmically ironic is that? Clearly, synchronicity led me to this human being, this avatar who embodies a Divine presence, for a reason. So I decided that this week would be a good time to take a look at that fear of infinity so deeply embedded in me. I signed up for one of the hour-long personal breakthrough sessions that he offered mid-week.

On the morning of my appointment, I walked to the meeting room, and Jan, Panache’s wife, who works with him, met me at the door. She sat to my right, holding a calm, supportive space, and Panache sat across from me, eyes half-closed, clearly in a deep meditative state. He told me that all layers of fear were going to be peeled away first. We then sat in silence, and I began to cry as I felt the inner shredding occur. After several minutes, I told him that the core fear for me was infinity/eternity. He asked what I was afraid of, and I said I couldn’t really say, just that I had had a terror of “the world going on forever and ever” since early childhood. He said, “Okay, we’re going to go there, experience it.”

Initially, I felt overwhelming pain and sorrow, tears streaming down my face, as I released a lifetime of struggling to avoid that powerful terror. He told me that it was moving up and out my crown chakra, and he saw it as a fear of embodying my own infinite power as a soul on Earth. The next step was to dissolve the density of old stories, beliefs, experiences, emotions, and separation. I experienced all sorts of shifting energy inside: heat rushes, heaviness, lightness, shakiness, brain expanding. Then, slowly, all emotion drained away, and I felt…empty…my body insubstantial. And along with the emptiness was a stillness, calm, peace…almost a comforting energy. When I described this to Panache, he said, “That’s infinity. It’s inside you. It’s who you are.” The final step was to anchor this within me. I could feel my whole system being recalibrated as my body was rebooted “from self-defense to relaxation.”

Afterward, as I walked slowly back to my room, instead of my usual desire to write in my journal after an experience, I only felt a wish to lie down and rest in the inner peace. My personality-self seemed very distant. I rested and slept a bit and then just remained in silence for the afternoon. At dinner, even as I took part in group conversations, there was still a core of silence within me.

Flying home and returning to my daily life, I watched myself not reacting to things that might have triggered a judgment or fear before. There seemed to be a neutral allowing, something like “witness consciousness,” emanating from that still space inside. As the days and weeks passed, I would sometimes be swept up in the emotions and experiences of my life, but if I took time to breathe deeply and focus on “allowing and receiving,” that feeling of infinite peace at my center was restored. I could feel the emotions and let them pass through me, knowing it was just part of being human. And, for the first time ever, I was able to look forward to the rest of my life and beyond, into infinity, and feel excitement undiluted by fear. Truly miraculous.

(See http://panachedesai.com/ for gatherings and webcasts with Panache Desai.)

The Silence Within

“Silence is an internal state of being where life is met with no resistance. All is embraced as part of the greater journey.”—Panache Desai

I recently returned from a weeklong retreat in Costa Rica, where spiritual catalyst Panache Desai guided us through the process of accessing and anchoring inner silence. In choosing this retreat, I was strongly drawn to the idea of experiencing extended inner silence. Exterior silence, especially in nature, has long been a refuge for me because my mind tends to be very busy, even though I have practiced both yoga and meditation for many years. I treasure the times of silent spaciousness that I have experienced, but I’ve always hoped for a deeper immersion….

Initially, in addition to periods of silent meditation, Panache had us work together to express and release emotional blocks and triggers. In small groups of two or three, and then in the larger group of sixteen, we processed whatever was keeping us stuck in resistance to the flow of life through us. “At any given moment, you are either in complete acceptance of what is or in resistance to what is,” according to Panache. “That creates your experience. Letting go and allowing opens the flow of energy.” Sounds good, but how exactly does that happen?

Well, with Panache, it is never really about words or language, though what he says is both inspiring and heart-opening. It is the experience of vibrational transformation, however, that creates radical inner/outer shifts in people. The profound, loving energy of Spirit, or the Divine, that Panache embodies—through his voice, his touch, his presence—transforms individuals at the deepest levels. If you’re around him, you’re gonna get shifted, guaranteed. And the shift opens the door to your own divinity and authenticity. He sees himself as a “catalyst,” not a guru or teacher. As the week progressed, we meditated for increasingly longer periods of time, either in complete silence or with music in the background. And each day, the inner journeys and group interactions were deeper and more powerful, the effects spilling over into all parts of our lives.

For me, Panache’s directive—to breathe deeply and “allow and receive”—became a miracle mantra. I came to Costa Rica not only with a busy mind but also with a long history of neck pain and migraine headaches that woke me at 3 a.m. During my week there, on four consecutive nights, I awoke at 3 a.m. with the familiar pain. In the past, fear always gripped me, and I often ended up taking strong medication to stop the pain from getting out of control. In Costa Rica, I got up, drank a full bottle of water, stretched, and then sat in silence in the dark, palms open, breathing deeply, just “allowing and receiving.” It took two to three hours, but each night I got rid of the headache. And it did not return during the day. This was beyond anything I had ever imagined myself capable of. Resistance to what is and all the accompanying fear had fallen away—and with them went the pain. I had let go on a very deep level and allowed the energy to flow unimpeded through me.

During group meditations, I relaxed into the silence and breathed long deep breaths of gratitude and peace. My mind, too, was quieter; it was if the mental chatter had been trying desperately to cover up my own resistance and fear. Now, I felt a slowing down and relaxation on an energetic level, allowing experiences to pass through me without judgment or clutching. It was a completely different way of being in the world.

(See http://panachedesai.com/ for gatherings and webcasts with Panache Desai.)

Meditation 24/7

When I was first learning to meditate many years ago at the Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I discovered that the teachings included not only meditation while sitting in a chair or on a cushion but also while walking. It was my first exposure to the idea of meditation off the cushion or mat and out in the world. I took to it immediately. In fact, within my own experience, I widened the idea of walking meditation to include bird watching, which was/is my year-round passion. I found that the focused attention and slow silent walking that were a part of looking for and at birds were very similar to the focus on each breath and each step in walking meditation. Both activities fostered full presence in the moment. Every time I spent a morning or afternoon watching birds, I always felt very much in a meditative state.

This approach to meditation has remained with me through the years. I do consistently continue to meditate indoors while seated, but I also find that “meditation” defines my prevailing state of mind whenever I am outdoors in nature. This is particularly true since I have become a backyard gardener in the past few years. When I am planting or transplanting flowers, my hands in the earth, or just standing quietly watching everything grow, my mind has slowed its busyness, and my thought waves are peaceful, unhurried. I am centered in the present moment and feel one with the flow of life all around me as it slowly grows and moves into flowering. I see myself as part of that flow, that flowering. It is a comforting, inclusive feeling.

For me, then, meditation has become more than a singular activity or practice. It is a way of being in the world that I remind myself of on a daily basis. Just as I focus on the movement of each living breath in the present while in seated meditation, I can take deep breaths to inhale and exhale with gratitude for each moment no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It is all the same practice really. I would guess that most meditators (and yoga practitioners) experience a similar inner and outer connection.

To Do or to Be?

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how to handle the polarity between doing and being that many of us carry inside of us. We’ve been raised in a culture that emphasizes effort, trying, achievement, and success in material terms. The work ethic and the drive to constantly do pervade our society. On the job, unpaid overtime has become routine, and low-paying positions often force people to work at two jobs to make ends meet. Multi-tasking, email, and social media fill up all our “free” time, and friends and family are seen on the fly.

Even outside of mainstream culture, among those who are seeking to change the status quo to something more humane and truly livable, there is a certain push to be active, busy, involved in something. During the current period of major Earth changes, people’s experience of accelerating time also contributes to the frenetic need to keep moving—just to keep up with the hours that are rushing by!

Yet cracks in this compulsive busyness are appearing—possibly because we have run ourselves to the wall with the 24/7 modality. People are turning to things like meditation and yoga because they are quite literally burned out. Often their bodies stop them before their minds do. Headaches, injuries, and dis-ease of all kinds pop up in our lives to show us that all is not well. We are forced to slow down and find a way back to health. When we stop filling our lives with events and activities and instead focus on self-healing, doing takes a backseat to being and allowing.

Regular meditation or yoga practice helps individuals make this mental shift. The breath is of prime importance in both. Students learn to allow the breath to flow in and out without effort, without holding. In some traditions, they learn to watch the breath and just be in the quiet inner stillness. Eventually, with practice, people learn to carry that letting go to their daily lives, allowing events and emotions to pass through them without judgment or clutching, just as the breath does. Doing in this context arises from the quiet, centered space of being, not from polarized trying or effort.

The key, of course, is reaching that balance in a world that is skewed to emphasize just the opposite. But that’s why we’re here. The world is evolving, and we are evolving. We’re living the transition, learning how to embody the new human BE-ing, how to be conscious spirit in physical form, effortlessly flowing with the energy of life.