I started intentionally meditating in 1970 at the age of 20. I began with the books 'Science of Breath' and 'Light on the Path' authored by the pseudononymous Yogi Ramacharaka. I was drawn to them at the original Adyar Bookshop in Castlereigh Street, Sydney. The old bookshop had an absolutely palpable and for me a seductive, paranormal cold shaft near one of the stacks. I used to stand in it for long stretches and explore its shape and character. A sensitivity to that numinous realm has served me well, without it becoming a mad obsession as it did for my father's mother and many of her generation after the first world war.
I knew those books were right for me as soon as I picked them up. In part because at age 9 or 10 my Dad had employed a physiotherapist to help me breath in recovering from another episode of bronchitis. Looking back on those books 35 years later, I'm impressed by how much their yogic teachings shaped my clinical and meditation practices. Even down to my interest in spiritual healing with the breath and in the science of yoga and medicine.
I was drawn to Theosophy, the teachings of Rudolph Steiner and to the Liberal Catholic Church in Sydney, founded by the theosophist Bishop Leadbeater. I traveled through these and other sane and some challenging meditation and spirituality communities on the way to this agnostic resting place - the epistemology and mindfulness awareness practices of Tibetan Buddhism.
I have observed that meditation is a clear channel to all of mind and body undivided, and thus to the sacredness of life.
Meditation and therapy techniques based on that process, can help to allow this knowing connection. Like any technique they can also be misused to restrict the free flow of awareness, to avoid life and mishandle love. But meditation and therapy together they can empower us to hold unbearable conflicts side by side in our mind without acting, fragmenting or fleeing - just noticing them unfold.
These practices are sometimes taught leaving the body behind and therefore, 'all the mind that makes the body is ignored.' That is a disembodied meditation. We have an almost unlimited capacity to decieve ourselves and go out of mind in the process.
Those who embody love, joy and compassion also teach with just a glance or a gesture as if the very flesh of their being sings. Jelaluddin Rumi's teaching stories from the Mathnawi describe this beautifully.
One of the challenges in meditation and therapy is our willingness to stand fully in our own shoes and connect to ourselves and our world with kindness, no matter what comes up - to be our own best friend. It is a big ask when so many of us would never treat our best friend the way we flog ourselves and over ride our emotional, physical and mental limits.
Try my instructions for tonglen meditation, on being one's own best friend and on forgiveness.
The three principles of Tonglen:
- This pain that I now feel, others feel. I am not alone
- This pain that I and others feel has liberation asleep within it
- If in my allowing this pain to be in me, others can be freed from it then let that be so
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
Dawna Markova
