Divine Within

 

       Lately, in seated meditation, I’ve been hanging out in what I call the Divine Within – a quiet, vast spaciousness inside, where the center of individual being merges with the center of all being.  

 

        Mystics of all traditions speak of this spacious, silent, sacred emptiness, where all is one.  Each tradition teaches ways of journeying there.  Traveling to the deep quiet is natural for us.  We each find our own pathways.

     

       My recent travels begin with the breath.  I inhale universal energy – love, light, mercy, tenderness, compassion, the good stuff – into my heart and gently follow the exhalation downward toward the center.   For me, the center seems somewhere in the lower belly, in an area Qi Gong practitioners call the lower dantian.  Others may sense it elsewhere.

 

       As I move into the quiet, the sensation of breathing fades, along with everything else.  Only the quiet remains – sometimes as a cavernous silence, sometimes as a faint hum – often lasting only for the briefest of moments – often lasting longer. 

 

       Distractions, of course, visit regularly.  Once aware, I gently invite myself back to breath – inhaling the good stuff and exhaling again toward the quiet.  The more I treat myself to sacred silence, the easier it is to keep returning.  Meditation practice is more about returning than it is about staying.

 

       The Divine Within is home to all of us, a place of rest and re-creation, a place of quiet companionship with the universe.  From this perspective, with some practice, meditation becomes less a discipline and more a vacation – a welcome respite from fretting and doing, the delicious experience of simply being.

 

       Treat yourself.