MEDITATION IS EASY

Meditation is easy. You can do it right now, right where you are. It is not mysterious or esoteric. It is your natural birthright as a human being.

Meditation is an age-old practice that quiets the mind and allows our inner spirit to shine through our life more and more. The effects of meditation unfold over time. It is a practice of awareness that increases our focus, our consciousness, and our soul-knowing.

Meditation creates a foundation that lets you know yourself deeply — your true self — the part of you that is eternal. It allows for the full potential of your soul to be expressed in your daily life.

Meditation helps you to become self-realized — to realize who you really are in your deepest essence. In meditation, you arrive at a state of awareness where you consciously recognize the link between your personality and your soul. Meditation aligns these two seemingly separate parts so they are known to be one and act as one. This is called congruency — a conscious bridge between the self and the soul.

The path to self-realization is a choice. It is the ongoing decision to live your life as truthfully and lovingly as possible. Every time you sit to meditate you are choosing to live an awakened life.

Meditation reveals a beauty beyond words. By turning within, we discover a world of knowledge, the bounty of our rich inner knowing. We discover that we are more than what we seem; we are better — far greater — than what we have believed about ourselves.

At our core, we discover we are simply and absolutely the radiance of pure love. Allowing this love to shine more brightly through our life is an inevitable and direct consequence of our meditation practice. We are the directors of our growth; it is always our choice to what degree we want to be receptive to our inner knowing. This inner knowing is always available to us. It does not waver or vary. The flow of our soul is constant. All we have to do is open to it.

YOU ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED

One of the purposes of this book is to show you that you need nothing outside yourself to take your next spiritual step. You already have everything you need.

Your next step is the one that's right in front of you, the one you can take right now. If you let your inner knowing guide you, you can't go wrong. Your next step almost always feels simple, natural, even ordinary. We sometimes expect great changes to happen in our lives instantly, in some dramatic fashion, with a bang, but that rarely happens. More often it is simply putting one foot in front of the other until inevitably some momentous event occurs; it looks like a miracle from the outside, but your personal experience of it most likely feels quite normal and natural. We're always looking for some breathtaking, heart-stopping spiritual event to know we've arrived, when in fact it is most often as ordinary as exhaling.

All it takes is an understanding of a few basic truths: we are far greater beings than we think we are. We have a vast and eternal spirit as well as these physical bodies. Where we are at this moment, how we are, who we are, is perfect as it is. There is no secret recipe; there is no magic formula. It is all as it should be, a perfect and gentle unfolding of your soul. If it feels difficult, it is only because you are out of touch with your true self; you are out of the flow.

When we're out of flow, we're out of sync with our soul. This creates a feeling of separation that in the moment feels real and true. When we feel separate, we are suffering from the painful illusion that we are unworthy in some way. This is a fallacy, perpetuated by our smaller self, or by what is often called the ego. It can throw us off course and confuse our sense of direction.

Meditation is a direct route to inner harmony, balance, and peace. There are many methods that can take you where you want to go, but meditation is by far the quickest and most precise. Its effects are cumulative and lasting. You can stop meditating for years and pick up right where you left off.

When this life is over, you won't take your possessions, your degrees, or your deeds with you, but you will take the consciousness you have built up from your meditation practice. Through your meditation, your consciousness changes and evolves. You become aware of who you really are. The consciousness you build in this lifetime is your ever-increasing legacy.

This consciousness is who you are.

YOU ARE GOOD

Through the process of meditation you discover your true goodness. It may take a while, and you may have to wade through doubts and fears at first, but at some moment you'll discover — there at the core of you, perfectly in place — your authentic, worthy, beautiful self.

Anything that says otherwise is the ego's doubt, and if there's a devil, this is it. It causes us to confuse ourselves and forget who we really are. When we doubt, we empower fear. Doubt is at the heart of any fear-based decision — the decision to not trust, the decision to not be open, the decision to not love. Doubt is the stuff of our insecurity. It is at the core of any act that is less than our best.

Meditation helps you sift through all of this doubt and fear and feel your way home to your true self, to the knowing that you are naturally and inherently good. There are no exceptions. You are not the one exception.

What if you knew that?

What if it weren't even a question?

What if it were a given in your life?

Feel how much this would change how you express yourself in the world.

You are good — not in the sense of being righteous, of being superior to someone else, but in the deeper sense of it all, you are truly, heartfully good.

This is the truth. You are good beyond your wildest imagination. You are good in a way that is immeasurable. You are as worthy as your greatest hero or anyone that you have ever thought of as admirable, inspired, or blessed.

You are that.

Meditation is a journey that unifies the mind and the heart. Meditation uncovers the layers of belief, limitation, and doubt to quietly reveal the pure and simple heart that is always there.

I like to do things in the most direct way I can, as the crow flies, fast and true. Meditation is the most direct route home I know. It is a process, a discipline, an art, and a practice that will teach you to trust yourself, to come home within yourself, to know who you are, to be who you are, authentic and free and unlimited. Meditation will give you nothing new, but it will give you yourself.

RIGHT WHERE YOU...