Meditation

“Meditation is not learning to do. It is learning to be. It’s learning to be yourself, to enter into the gift of your own  being.”  — John Main, founder of Christian meditation, from A Call to the Fullness of Life

The other week my sister Berta requested that I write an article on meditation. She is the president of Yoga Manila and is thrilled that she is finally getting into something my mother and father had been doing for decades. So this one is for her.

I got into meditation at the age of 18. I had an experience where I was in a room where chanting was going on and I felt something divine... 

Tears started streaming down my cheeks. My heart was touched.

I can remember biking every day from Pili Avenue in Forbes Park  (where I spent much of my childhood) to the San Antonio church at the age of eight or nine and would sit in the church. I was looking for something — something divine. Eventually I got bored with what seemed to me empty rituals. I got really busy and happy with an active social life but that longing for something divine stayed deep in my innermost soul.

One fateful day in Boston, something deep inside reawakened and it’s safe to say my life was changed irrevocably.

I have been home almost 20 years now and I have a different meditation ritual from what I used to do then. But the necessity of having to anchor myself in a non-material space remains more firmly entrenched then ever.

I really cannot face a day without meditation. My repeated experience is that my day gets screwed up big-time if I don’t connect to a higher  space at the beginning of the day. Starting the day properly enables me to face life’s many ever-increasing challenges. In fact, ending the day properly with a short meditation just before sleeping enables me to sleep much more peacefully.

The other week in Singapore I met Deepak Chopra. In his talk his main message was that emotional disturbances, if not addressed, finally end up in physical illness. This has been scientifically proven. He said that meditation is a key strategic way toward physical health. I couldn’t agree more.

It’s spirituality that is enabling me to connect the dots — and gifting me with the vision, energy and strength to clean the Pasig River. Actually, meditation connects me to a space of joy, and strength. I feel really happy making things happen, seeing the story unfold.

There are many kinds of meditation. My father was into Zen meditation. He loved the simplicity and discipline of it. This is what my sister is getting into. Sister Sonia was the Zen meditation guru of both my parents. My mother eventually got into Christian meditation. They also use a mantra, and it follows the same principle of getting to know the divine at a deeper, more experiential level. Now she just does her own thing, which she discovered when she was all alone in San Francisco. She discovered an inner sound — which felt to her like the Sound of God — and she just follows it to bring her to a deeper space. I also hear this sound when I meditate. It’s like a high-pitched sound... very beautiful. My mother has a Christian meditation group that has been meeting at her house religiously for over 10 years now. I practice the Clairvision style of meditation, which starts with an awakening of the Third Eye. This is not a hocus-pocus thing, but simply a portal to spiritual worlds.

So one has to find the “technology” that works best for him/her. The goal is to know the divine. Not intellectually, not from the mind — but in the realm of experience, of silence. It is, without the slightest doubt, our final destination. In my experience, it is also the way to live life fully — an exercise that develops the higher part of ourselves that can commune with the divine.

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If you are interested in Zen meditation, Yoga Manila holds sessions weekly on Saturdays, at Makati Studio on Saturdays, 9 a.m.; Alabang Studio, Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.; and Ortigas Studio, Saturdays, 3 p.m.

This one-hour class will be conducted by Bahay Dalangin Sangha. There will be one sitting of 25 minutes followed by a short discussion. Please bring a yoga mat and a pillow to sit on.

For more information visit www.yogamanila.com. To learn about Clairvision meditation you can e-mail me at regina_lopez@abs-cbn.com.