The Only Thing That Matters (37 page)

“Now focus on your sense of touch, and touch the flower carefully. Touch the flower at the same time as you smell the flower. Ignore all other incoming data except the data about the flower coming from your fingertips and your nose. Now, open your eyes and look closely at the flower. See if you can still smell the flower, now that it is far enough away for you to look at it and touch it. See if you can focus your attention in this way. If you can, you will experience the flower as you may never have experienced it before. You will
know
more about the flower than you ever knew before, at a deeper level. You will never experience it in the same way again. You will realize that you have been
ignoring the flowers
your whole life.”

Then, she said, do the same thing with a tree. Walk over to a tree and consider it. “Look at it closely. Regard it intently. Consider every aspect of it. What does it look like? What are its specific characteristics? What does it feel like? What is its fragrance? What is its size, compared to you? Look at it closely. What does it tell you about Life?”

And she said, “
Experience the tree in its Completeness.
Place you hands upon it and feel it totally. Think of nothing else but your hands. Focus your attention on your hands and consider immensely exactly what you are experiencing there. Tell your mind to experience nothing else, just for that moment. Ignore all other incoming data except the data coming from your hands. Close your eyes, if this helps.

“Now focus on your sense of smell, and smell the tree. Continue touching the tree at the same time as you smell the tree. Ignore all other incoming data except the data about the tree coming from your fingertips and your nose. Now, open your eyes and look closely at the tree. Look up at it, and see if you can climb in consciousness to its top. See if you can still smell the tree, now that it is far enough away for you to look at it. Keep touching it. See if you can focus your attention in this way. If you can, you will experience the tree as you may never have experienced it before. You will
know
more about the tree than you ever knew before, at a deeper level. You will never experience it in the same way again. You will realize that you have been
ignoring the trees
your whole life.

“Now, step away from the tree and lose all physical contact with it. See if you can bring to your mind the experience of the tree as you stand and look at it from farther away. Experience it completely. Do not be surprised if you can smell the tree, even from a distance. Do not be surprised if you can, in a sense, even ‘feel' the tree from where you are. What has happened is that you have
opened yourself
to the vibration of the tree. You are ‘catching the vibe.' See how far back you can step from the tree and still retain ‘contact.' When you lose touch with the experience of the tree, move closer in, move back to it. See if this helps you regain contact.

“This exercise will help you develop your ability to
focus your attention
on whatever you want to
experience at a heightened level
.

“Now, walk. Walk wherever you live. In the country, in the city, it does not matter. Walk slowly, but deliberately. And look around you. Let your eyes fall where they may. As your eyes find something, focus the fullness of your attention upon it. It can be anything. A garbage truck. A stop sign. A crack in the sidewalk, a pebble by the road. Look at it closely, from right where you are. Regard it intently. Consider every aspect of it. What does it look like? What are its specific characteristics? What does it feel like from where you are? What is its fragrance? Can you sense that from where you are? What is its size, compared to you? Look at it closely. What does it tell you about Life?

“Continue your walk. Pick out three things on your walk to consider in this way. This walk should take you at least a half hour. You cannot consider three things fully in less time, at first. Later, you will be able to consider something fully in just a moment, in a nanosecond. But now, you are just practicing.

“This is Walking Meditation, and what you are doing is training your mind to
stop ignoring
everything you are experiencing. You are training your mind to
focus
on a particular aspect of your experience, so that you may experience it completely.”

Practice Walking Meditation in this way for three weeks, the master teacher said, and “you will never experience life the same way again.” Then, take the final step in Walking Meditation. Walk outside—or inside, for that matter. You can actually walk anywhere. From the bedroom to the kitchen will do. There is plenty to see, plenty to touch, plenty to experience. You can spend three hours with the carpet alone—and this time, she said, “Do not pick out any particular part of what you are seeing or encountering. Try to encounter
all of it.
Seek to embrace
all of it.
Attempt to focus on
all of it at the same time
.

“Take in the Big Picture. Close your eyes at first, if this helps. Smell what you are smelling, hear what you are hearing, feel whatever you are ‘feeling' of the space around you. Then open your eyes and add sight. See everything you are seeing, and nothing in particular. See All Of It. Smell All Of It. Feel All Of It. If this begins to overwhelm you, refocus on a Part Of It, so that you do not lose your psychic balance.

“With enough practice, you will soon be able to walk into any space or place and begin to experience All Of It at some level. You will realize then that you have been literally
walking home.
You have heightened your Awareness. You have raised your Consciousness. You have expanded your ability to be Present, fully, in the Moment.

“Now, do this with your eyes closed and while you are sitting down, and you have Silent Mediation. Boom. It is as simple as that.”

With that the master teacher smiled. “Then try this with sex,” she said. “Once you experience sex in this way, you will never want to experience it any other way again. You will realize that, all your life,
you have been ignoring what is really going on.
”

And she laughed.

Stopping Meditation

Next, some words about Stopping Meditation.

This is one of the simplest, yet most powerful, forms of meditation. The reason it is so powerful is that it can be done anywhere, and it takes very little time. Therefore, it is perfect for busy people “on the go.”

Stopping Meditation means just that. It means you stop whatever you are doing for just a moment and pay attention to something about it. You dissect it in that moment, and then look closely at one of its individual pieces.

This is a little bit different from Walking Meditation in that it does not take a half hour or more, as Walking Meditation can take. In Walking Meditation you deliberately take a walk for the deliberate purpose of deliberately focusing on a deliberate experience. In Stopping Meditation you do not use nearly as much time, but you can accomplish the same thing:
focus
.

Stopping Meditation can be used in the midst of a very busy day.
Combined
with Sitting Meditation and Walking Meditation, it can create a powerful Trio of Tools that can dramatically alter your reality and raise your consciousness within a very short period of time. Yet even if used as the only form of meditation, it can be transformative.

Here is how Stopping Meditation works: Decide that six times today (and every day) you will stop whatever you are doing for 10 seconds and look closely and intently at one of its component pieces.

Let's say you are washing the dishes. Stop what you are doing for 10 seconds—just
stop
in the middle of it—and peer deep inside one aspect of what you are doing. Look, perhaps, at the water. See it splashing on the dishes. See if you can count the drops of water on the dish in your hand. Just count the water drops. It is an impossible task, but undertake to do it anyway, just for 10 seconds.

Consider the wonder of the water. Look deeply into it. Peer inside.
Go
inside, in your Consciousness. See what you experience there; see what you find. Just stop for a tiny moment and appreciate that moment in a singular way.

Okay, now the 10 seconds are up. Now pull yourself out of that highly focused reality and back into the larger space of your experience. Don't get “lost” in it. Blink your eyes rapidly, or snap your finger, and literally snap out of it. Then, notice what you experienced for that brief moment.

Now go on with what you were doing. Yet don't be surprised if it takes on a whole new quality.

What you have done is truly appreciate something. To “appreciate” something is to make it larger, to increase it—as property, for instance, appreciates in value. When you use Stopping Meditation, you increase the value of your life. And of life itself. It has been my experience that this inevitably returns me to a place of peace.

In order to remind yourself to do this six times a day you may wish to have a little timer with you, or set your watch to beep. Later, as you get used to doing this, your stopping will come automatically to you. You will do this without having to be reminded.

Walking down the street, you will simply stop for a moment and select a portion of what you are seeing and see it again, in a deeper way. You will know what you already know about that, but you will know it in a deeper way. This is called “knowing again,” or re-cognizing. The purpose of all of your life is simply this: to know again, to recognize, what is true, and Who You Really Are.

There are a thousand ways to do this. Maybe you catch a reflection of yourself in a store window. Maybe you see a bus going by. Perhaps you spy a dog on the street or a pebble at your feet. It does not matter what you focus on for those 10 seconds. Just stop for a tiny moment and appreciate that moment in a singular way.

Experience this while making love. Stop what you are doing for 10 seconds, separate the moment into its component parts, select one part of the moment, and peer deeply into it. Maybe it is the look in your beloved's eyes. Maybe it is a sensation you are feeling—or creating. Just stop for a tiny moment and appreciate that moment in a singular way.

Some people report having regular times when they do this, and making love is one of them. Standing in the shower is another. Eating food is another. Pick up a pea from the plate, or a kernel of corn. Consider it. Appreciate it. Taste it utterly and completely. Your mealtimes will never be the same. Your showers will never be the same. Your lovemaking will never be the same.
You
will never be the same.

This is Stopping Meditation. It takes one minute a day. Sixty seconds, in six individual 10-second installments. Six moments within which you may produce The Holy Experience.

Today, stop what you are doing. Just
stop
. Look deeply into the Moment. If nothing else, just close your eyes and focus on the sound of your own breath. Experience the pure energy of life moving into and through your body. Just for that Moment, listen to yourself breathe. Watch yourself take deeper breaths. Just listening to yourself makes you want to go deeper into the experience—and so you begin to breath more deeply. It is a wonderful thing, an extraordinary thing. Just
stopping
makes you go deeper. Deeper into your experience, deeper into the mind of God.

Recommended Meditation Program

Now here is a meditation program recommended for many people: (1) Walking Meditation in the morning; (2) Stopping Meditation during the day, six times; (3) Sitting Meditation at night.

The purpose of all of these meditations is to create focus. It is about focusing your attention on your experience. The reason for focus: it allows you to be here now. Focusing on Now pulls you out of yesterday and out of tomorrow. You do not exist in those illusions. Your only reality is This Moment, right here, right now.

Peace is found in such awareness. As is love. For peace and love are one and the same, and you become One and The Same when you enter into The Holy Experience.

Practice Stopping Meditation right now. It's simple, and it takes 10 seconds. Right now, just stop. Close your eyes and just …

stop.

Did you do it? That wasn't so hard, was it? Now do that five more times today. Just stop everything for 10 seconds, close your eyes, and breathe easily and slowly and restfully … and just “be with” the Moment, whatever it is offering.

Now, continue your reading here.

The Who Meditation

There is another wonderful meditative technique called
The Who Meditation.
It works like this. Whenever you are experiencing an emotion that you don't want to experience, just say “Who?”

That's right. Just say to yourself, “Who?” Ask yourself, “Who is here right now? Who is this that is having this experience?”

If you are alone, you can even turn this into a little chant. It can be very powerful. Just take a deep breath and, on the exhale, softly but powerfully chant: “Whooooooooo?” Extend the vowel sound until you are out of breath. Then inhale and do it again. Do it three times. You will have slowed your vibration and the Invisible part of you will have a chance to “show up.”

If you are not alone, but with another, or in some public place, you can do this little chant inside your head. Or you can just ask yourself the question I suggested above …

“Who is this that is having this experience?”

You can, of course, identify with any one of the number of “yous” that populate your inner world. There is the Little You and the Big You, the Injured You and the Healed You, the Scared You and the Brave You, the Powerless You and the Powerful You, the Worried You and the Confident You. But the hope is that what will happen, now that you've heard all this, is that when you do the Who Meditation you will chant yourself right into an awareness of your larger self, of your
true
self.

You are not a human being. You are not the person named John Smith or Mary Jones. You are not your Body, you are not your Mind, and you are not your Soul. These are things that You have. The You that has these things—The Totality of You that has
given
your Self these things—is far bigger than any of them, and even all of them put together.