You know that you are becoming more centered when the following happens to you and you quickly gather your things up and go on your way as if nothing crazy occurred:

I was riding home tonight on my bicycle, listening to my MP3 player, nice gloves on, and a leather jacket; my usual satchel slung across one shoulder and riding along my right hip. I had a grocery bag of stuff (a black t-shirt, a pair of white socks, a bagel with cream cheese in a plastic baggie, and a 24-oz bottle of spring water *un-opened*). It was swinging from my right handlebar, as I was singing to one of the songs on my MP3 player…maybe Chicago’s “Look Away”, when a very strange and sudden series of events pulled me out of my goofy bliss.

The front tire locked up, and I rose up in the air, powerless to stop from being smashed down to the pavement of the parking lot of this liquor store, nor from sliding across the gravel on my palms and the meat of the underside of my forearms. Luckily, I had several layers of jackets covering those arms, and thick gloves. As all this was happening, I could feel that the front wheel was torquing around to the side and becoming inverted, which was causing the bike to kick out to the side, pulling my feet one way, and my head, the other. Part of me was calmly observing this, and commenting, “Oh, that’s interesting…but I wonder why the front tire stopped in the first place? – Did I hit a rock? I didn’t FEEL a rock. Couldn’t have been a rock, then…”…this inane, insanely calm voice in my head just kept going on and on, as if it were merely watching a fascinating movie. The other part of me was far less collected -“Oh shit, Oh SHIT, what do I do? Slam on the brakes? Cover my face? My hands are still on the handlebars! What if I break my neck? Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!….”

How it’s possible for a person to have two conversations going on in their head, simultaneously in such circumstances, is beyond me; but there I was, and then there I was, plastered on the ground, probably all of three seconds later.

What’s amazing, is how after about 5-10 seconds, after initially thinking the worst, my mind immediately bounced back, surveyed the damage – no broken bones, some scrapes, but nothing too severe, and the bike seemed ok. When I got up, the MP3 player had slipped from my pocket and was lit up while dangling near the ground, being supported just by the strength of the ear buds still crammed in my ears and the slender cables attached to them. I carefully put that MP3 player back in my pocket – a different song was playing now, “Big Baller, Shot Caller”, and I was jamming out to the lyrics and dancing a bit as I gathered my stuff together.

The plastic bag was completely torn to shreds and I immediately spotted the culprit….those pair of socks had somehow wedged themselves on either side of the brakes on my front tire. The bag must have swung forward, got sucked in and then the socks must have gotten grabbed by the forward-moving tire, and then the two together, become like brakes, themselves, when those socks pinched down between the top of the fork and the tire.

I noticed that it only took me about 7 seconds to come up with a solution as to how to carry the rest of my stuff back home: I snatched the t-shirt, stuffed the rest of those things in between the layers of fabric, (front and back of shirt) like a pocket; then tied the short sleeves twice…in an overhand knot; then an underhand one, in order to tie them securely. I wrapped the bottom of the shirt around my hand and let it dangle down off of my right handlebar – this time, though, making sure that it didn’t swing into the path of the tire.

What’s really amazing here, is that this is real-world evidence that my mediation practice has practical benefits when it comes to staying calm and centered in the middle of an unexpected crisis. Now different people may have varying notions as to what a crisis means to them; but for me, it was a sudden, very dangerous problem that created another issue immediately afterward; and I feel that I handled it with a tremendous amount of grace and clear thinking, all things considered.

To me…this is the TRUE power of meditation…giving you space to stay calm and in control of your emotions and thoughts, even when faced with the unexpected and the frightening, and possibly traumatic.

I have been diagnosed with PTSD from both childhood stuff, and from a stint in the United States Marines, as well as, about 5 years living on the streets through each winter. This single event – (the abrupt being thrown from my bike right after I had been nestled warmly in thoughts of easy safety and security) – should have triggered my PTSD; and possibly even should have turned me into a basket case; yet it did not.

Often times when people meditate, they cannot detect the transformation occurring within themselves. They may think that nothing is happening and that this meditation business is a complete waste of time.But if they would stick with it – then, in time they would learn that it might be one of the single most effective methods of reversing lifelong behavior patterns and harmful ways of reacting, and all the extra emotional baggage that comes with going through an ordeal.

My first exposure to meditation was when Master Lenchus, in our Shotokan Karate class, had us kneel, and bow our heads down until our foreheads touched the floor, and close our eyes while he prayed something in reverence to the four elements, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. This seemed a very odd thing to do, but it’s what I remember. When I was younger, I couldn’t figure out why he would make such a fuss about this particular practice. I mean, I was here to learn how to fight, right? How the heck was closing my eyes and breathing in and out and not moving a muscle gonna keep me from getting my ass kicked in high school? I just didn’t get it. And I wouldn’t….for years to come. But what Master Lenchus taught us by example in that dojo, planted a seed in my young heart, and a question in my young mind….”What’s all this meditation stuff really about?”

Over a period of years and years, I kept coming back to that one question over and over again, until, one day, I decided to try it. And even though, in the beginning, I started and stopped and started, and kept up that pattern for years – I eventually gained the self-discipline to stick with the practice and, today, it is an integral part of almost every day for me.

Today, I have a very deep and meaningful meditation, which helps relax my body and mind, re-energize my spirit and heart, and bring great focus and clarity to my goals in life. But the most miraculous thing I can say that this meditation practice has given me, is a re-wiring of the neural pathways in my brain and my body, and a short-circuit of the past fight-or-flight reactionary impulses which have consistently led to doing the wrong thing and bringing strife and misery into my life over and over again.

I feel that I have gained great understanding, wisdom, discernment, empathy and a sense of detached non-judgment of others.

And so it is with great gratitude, I say this:

“Thank you, Master Lenchus, for taking the time each and every day that we went to that dojo – and instructing us to slow down, be silent, and be still, in order to show us how to meditate. You showed by example and by consistency, that this was very important to you, and should be for us. I don’t know where I would be, or what kind of man I might have become, had I not met you.”

This is an article I came up with when I didn’t want to write; AND it CAME from writing something really silly. I was in a bad mood, with low energy; but I knew that I needed to write something, because I had set a promise to myself that every day I would write SOMETHING. Here follows that silly bit of writing, which over a period of two days…(about twenty to thirty minutes each day), produced the main article:

I don’t want to write right now. It doesn’t feel ‘right’; but that’s my anxiety. That’s me playing a trick on me to keep me from becoming free. It’s like the 5 – Tibetan Yoga that I didn’t want to do. Maybe I felt that I didn’t have the energy to be authentic to gain anything from the experience. Maybe I felt that to be me was not enough at that present moment and I wanted to avoid the discovery of not being enough, typed out in black and white.

And Here is the writing that followed from the stream of consciousness, above:

I’ve got this mantra…just created it today that goes like this: “My Anxiety is just an energy not easily defined. Yet I will transform that energy, in time, into the energy of my desire.”

We all come against ourselves. This is the true test: Not what one does to us, or what the world does to us. The true test is what we do to ourselves. When one comes against one’s self, they have a choice…to push on, or to retreat. Coming against one’s self, is actually pushing against what is NOT one’s self – pushing that aside to discover what IS one’s self.

I am pushing against the non-creative, non-writer, perception of myself. I’m pushing against the perfectionist who is too scared to move ahead, for fear of making some irreconcilable mistake. I’m pushing against entrenched beliefs, structured into entire paradigms, which control every waking decision I make. It is hard to do this, because it takes venturing forth in unknown territory where ANYTHING might happen. That can be frightening; but it can also be exhilarating. It also takes a bit of faith – that you will be ok, even if something goes wrong.

We grow up in this world, and here in the United States, anyway, we are shipped off to Kindergarten, then Grade School, Middle School, and finally High School, before going off to a college, University, or a trade school. This is the traditional model. And along the way, it is drummed into us all through this process, that mistakes are bad, collaborating with other people is bad (when it comes to tests and quizzes – which by my standards, in the real world…equate to projects) and it is extremely important to memorize or store up a bunch of facts and figures.

The APPLICATION of that knowledge doesn’t seem as important, as the accumulation of it (to our institutions of learning). And then, creativity is discouraged when those teaching us ask, “Well, what is the right answer?” Often times, in life, there are a number of right answers; and most times, that answer depends on who is asking and what their perspective is. So, we are taught to get very good at guessing what someone else thinks is the right answer, but not what WE think those right answers might be. We are taught to move away from trusting ourselves; and instead, are penalized if we don’t put that faith in someone else.

No wonder, when trying new things, we are afraid to commit any energy or much of our time to it. I mean, what if we get it WRONG?! That’s the worst thing that could happen, according to what our schools have been teaching us. So, if we don’t have a ready-made set of rules for success or getting the right answer…a lot of us will steer away from anything that might smack of not being in that particular familiar style of textbook-multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank; but-only-choose-one scenario that we’ve all become so accustomed to. It takes real courage to break out of that and become our own voice, our own seekers, and, ultimately, our own masters!

Oh, at times, we will need a mentor or a teacher; but their job is only to share with us a possible way; not to try to cram their whole theory into our heads.

Search for any of the great teachers in life; and you will find something perhaps startling…they all tend to ask many more questions while teaching, than facts. It takes way more intelligence for a person to be led through a particular path of inquiry, and to make their own connections and ‘aha!-s’; than it does to simply remember some facts and figures. And, it makes the learning become personal and ingrained, because the insights which the student comes to, is arrived at through the drawing from their own, unique life experiences. I’m fairly certain, that to learn, one must have some kind of an established framework. If the teacher simply hands over the answer, how likely is it that the student will work to pull together connections from their past knowledge in order to make new connections?

So go out there and be bold; and try new things. You might be surprised to see who you could really become!

(The names have been changed to protect my friends’ rights to privacy. Additionally, I have avoided giving too much detail, which might identify my friends, in case someone they know reads this blog.)

This was an email I sent my dad tonight, who has Multiple Sclerosis. He’s been bed-ridden for a year or more; and his last email says that the disease has progressed to the point where he is now waiting for a nursing home to open up and take him. When I was just a boy, he was my best friend. As I grew older, our relationship grew more and more strained, until we stopped communicating all together for a very long time. Just recently, after speaking with my close friend about his extremely caustic relationship with his mother – I began giving him advice. Of course, if you are willing to give advice, you should be willing to take it…if it applies. It did. I needed to attempt to heal the relationship between my father and I, somehow.

He is going to pass away at some point, and I didn’t want that to happen before I had a chance to say how I really felt about him and what impact he had on my life. In the past I had focused so much on my own pain and misery, that I could not really see what was going on. I spewed hatred and bitterness everywhere I went. I hated myself. I hated my father. I hated my mother. I hated the world; and I didn’t trust anyone. The miracle is – how did I ever manage to become removed from all of that and begin my healing?

Something greater than me has stepped in. I am sure of it. And so, in the spirit of generosity and appreciation, I say with a very warm heart, Thank you, whoever or whatever has watched over me all of these years. I know that you were there; even if I couldn’t feel you at times. You have guided me, protected me and brought me to this place and time of forgiveness for myself and for those who I felt did me harm when I was younger. If there is a God; then this bit of song which I love to sing applies, here, I think:~Our God is an Awesome God- He Reins… from the Heavens Above, with Wisdom, Power and Love – Our God is an Awesome God!~

To Dad:Remember when I was at one of the foster homes; and you recorded two cassette tapes of songs on my birthday? You would spend a few seconds to introduce the next song coming up.I really appreciated that.

I think I wore those tapes out, playing them over and over and over again. Each time I did, I thought about coming home again. It got me through some really tough times. Thank you.

My friend Sam went through some very traumatic stuff with his mom when he was just a kid. She nearly killed him several times, driving drunk. He literally, had to, as a kid, grab the steering wheel out of her hand, so they wouldn’t drive into a concrete divider on the highway; and shake her awake.

When he tells me this stuff, I let him talk for a bit, because he needs to speak about it. He needs to acknowledge it. But after a time, I begin to steer him toward what he wants to get out of his relationship with his mom, now. Now is all we really have. And I hate to see him waste his, now, on bitterness, so I have repeatedly asked him to focus on the things that were good between him and his mother. Over the course of a few weeks, he has increasingly been able to do so; and what started out as hate, and anger and all the why’s of why she did this to him as a little kid; and why can’t she just admit some of it…..he’s starting to feel the love he felt and has wanted to feel for so long, for her.

As a man, I have had to make really tough choices:

One of those choices led me to walk away from a girlfriend/friend who kept drinking and drugging, because it was keeping me from being able to stop, myself. I still like her and think about her. I care about her; but I had to do that in order to get my own life straight.

It’s these kinds of choices, I feel, which make the difference between a boy, and a man; or a girl and a woman. When you told me, that I had the makings of being a leader, I couldn’t see it, all those years ago. All I could see was that I was unpopular, felt confused and no girl seemed to want to be with me. I tried to change all the outward stuff, hoping that that would somehow change me and that people would want to be close to me. In time, I saw that changing my outward appearance, was a very SMALL part of changing the conditions in my life; but where I would need to focus most of my attention, would have to be on my character.

I came to this conclusion very slowly and very painfully, when I started looking for a way to avoid being poor; and instead, studied the ways of the wealthy. I gave up, for the most part, reading fantasy and science fiction; and began a steady diet of self-help books. It was a painful process, because the last thing I wanted to really do, was to change myself – that takes courage, conviction, commitment, consistency and discipline – all of which, I was sorely lacking, at the time.

Some of these books would have exercises to do. I wouldn’t do them. The most I would do, was imagine doing the exercise. Yet, I kept coming across these books that told me that if I really wanted to change, then reading the book would not be enough. I would have to take action. Because I had created a habit of reading these kinds of books; I kept coming across this message, until one day, I picked up a pen and piece of paper and tentatively began an exercise in the book I was reading. But as my courage grew and my yearning to change grew stronger, I did more and more of these exercises. – And the course that this has set me upon has been so powerful that it literally changed my life.

So, yes, I am becoming a leader; but I am certain that I could never have done so, had I not been in pain. It was the pain that forced me to take a look at myself, that caused me to have such a burning desire for change and transformation, that I would become intimately acquainted with fear, and what it takes to overcome it – or pain, and what it takes to push through it. How could I ever have hoped to lead people, if I had not gone through my own hell? How could I ever have related? Even if I tried, what advice or real-life problem-solving action could I have taken? If I had tried to rely on some text-book knowledge that I had read out of a field guide for leaders – the most I would have accomplished, was regurgitating what someone else wrote – with no thoughts of my own that had been congealed over time and experience.

Facing failure after failure and learning that that is not the end; has given me the ability to not see myself as a FAILURE, but more as a scientist, who will eventually find what he seeks. I may have gotten people to follow, but as soon as REAL problems arose, my lack of character would have shown through and people would have lost faith in me; and maybe, even, themselves. If I am in a crisis situation in the future…I cannot afford for this to happen. Lives might be at stake; or something greater.

So, looking back on my life, even though the lessons have, at times, been very difficult – I am extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to have gone through them. Most people would never say that – And that is precisely why I will be a leader among leaders.

Most of that has to do with how you brought me up: Your advice. Your quotes like, “If man thinks he can; or a man thinks he can’t – he is generally right”; and “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still”. Your love of knowledge and being more than just average. Your love of the mind and logic. Your multiple interests. Your curiosity and playing with science. Your anger and passion for life. Your jokes and lighter side. Your wanting to teach other people what you had discovered…Your need to think for yourself —- I watched that, and began to incorporate it into my being at an early age. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was being transformed. My little body and mind and heart were going through an alchemical transformation; yet, I was unaware.

So, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for the time when we were watching a football game; and you smelled something burning and grabbed a hot frying pan with your bare hand; had to go to the sliding glass door, slam it open and dump it outside on the deck. You acted without worrying about your fears; got a second or third degree burn for your bravery and selflessness.

Later, while I was in the Marines. My corporal had dove into the water and the other corporal froze when she realized that he was in trouble. I acted without thinking, endangering my own life, getting my glasses knocked off; and having the water pull me down in between the big stones of coral…ripping my my back to shreds and my hands and my feet, after bracing with all my might, so I wouldn’t be sucked under. Even after all that – after having failed to help him and nearly dying, myself, I still went and crawled back over to him and pulled him out of the water. I calmed my mind and noticed that if I used the tide, it would buoy up his body weight and would be able to pull him up onto the rocks, safely.

These are things I did not share with you; or if I did – not the whole story.

I just want you to know, that I am the kind of man I am, mostly, because of you. Words cannot express all that I feel for you, though in this email, I have tried.

What I’ve found, is that we need to learn to speak the same language and use the same definitions when dealing with another person.

What that requires is a Relationship Language. A what?! A Relationship Language – a language or a set of definitions that both parties agree on beforehand – before they get into their first argument.

What I mean by that, is that any single person has their own definitions of words and combinations of words, and gestures, and what that means to them, based on their past experience, culture, family and what they’ve gone on to learn. But whenever two or more people gather together, issues can arise from the simple fact that each person has their own unique definitions drawn from unique experiences, and often people assume that they know what those definitions are, when they really don’t.

An example of this is when somebody replies defensively, “Hey. It’s simply logic. It’s common sense. Anyone would know that.”; or “What do you mean you don’t understand?! – I’ve been telling you for the past half hour what I mean! How can you honestly stand there and act like you are this dumb!?”

Ouch….Looks like these people need some “Non-Violent Communication” (NVC); or at least a common way to communicate, so that both parties can be relatively sure that they understand one another.

The thing is, people tend to assume that the other person can read their mind. That’s too bad, because a lot of heartache could be avoided, if they would just take the time, sit down, and explain what they really mean by the words that they use.

Take, for example, my friend and I having an argument over the issue of the word, “work”. It’s a simple word, not that long; and when you say, “I’m going to work”, most people know what you mean. But when you refer to work as something other than your job; then things can take on a different meaning. I’ve argued that by labeling something you might like to do, as ‘work’, simply because you’re getting paid for it, it could cause you to have negative feelings associated with what you like to do!

To some, “work” means struggle, effort – ‘blood, sweat and tears’ – ‘by the sweat of your brow shall you toil’, (according to the Genesis, in the Bible). But work could also simply mean the result after you put energy and action into something. What if you really like to dance…stripper, hip hop, whatever; but you get paid to do it. Is it still considered, ‘work’? For some, it would be. For others, it would not. Some people might say it was a hobby that they got paid for. If you are an escort or a Gigolo and you love to have sex…but you get paid for it – Does that constitute, ‘work’? – Well, it wouldn’t for me. But that’s just me. And that’s just my point…everyone has a different definition and a string of definitions for every single word or symbol. Figure out what that is; and you’ll be communicating like you never did before. They’ll say something like, “It’s like you’ve known me my whole life!”, or “I was just going to say that!”, or “Wow, those are some pretty powerful psychic abilities you have there. You read my mind!”

Let’s take another example. – A rather simple one that we’ve all heard: A young salesman comes up to a lady, and says, “Can I help you, MAM?” – Boy! – Did he just stick his foot in his mouth? In her mind, she’s going, “Oh, I look old enough to be called, ‘MAM’, now, do I?” – When this guy may have been raised in the South where it’s well known that boys are taught manners at a very early age; and this is simply a word of respect for him.

One last example here: Remember high school math? Maybe you’re still there learning about the ‘Order of Operations’. Sound familiar? If not, I’ll jog your memory for a moment: The ‘Order of Operations’ can be remembered using an acronym of PEMDAS…Parenthesis, Exponets, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract. – And the reason why students are taught this is because there are times when a person is doing a math problem and they might come up with a different answer, having added, before they multiplied, possibly. There has to be a standard, shared language across the board, so that when people say I did such and such and came up with this result; other people can follow them exactly to get the same result. Imagine the chaos different car industries might go through if they tried to use the results from someone who didn’t know their ‘system’.

The small amount of time that you spend learning what your potential spouse’s Relationship Language – your friends’ or even someone you just met – will pay you back many times over and save you countless arguments and all that time trying to explain yourself while you are both angry or frustrated and not in your ‘right mind’.

I’ve discovered that the worst time to try and be logical with someone is when you are in the thick of a heated argument.Rationality seems to go right out the window; and people get incensed over the stupidest things, when they should be trying to make their relationship stronger. I mean, that’s the whole point, right? – To remain in the relationship and to grow together; not split up because someone felt butt-hurt over a technicality, right?

So, do the right thing and think about the words you use and what they mean to you; and when things are going all cozy, start this conversation with your friend, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other…whatever. You’ll be glad you did; I promise!

I’ve always had an idealism to beat the best science fiction writer. In fact, one of my names, Nathanial…in Hebrew, means, “Gift From God”; but also, more importantly, “Dreamer”.

And, I’m definitely that – in spades.

As the years passed, though, and I matured a bit (hopefully not too much! *wink*) – I began to see that dreams were not enough:Actions had to come into those dreams, at some point. It is this ‘mergence of dream and action, which when synergistically understood and applied, gives us all the great things that we see and enjoy, today.

In coming to that understanding, I began to seek a way to combine those two almost seamlessly. This has led me down very odd paths. My “Day Number” in Numerology, Seven (7), says that mine is the day of “Peculiar Interests”.

If one could take a peak into one of my notebooks, where I have listed over a hundred or so interests, they would see some listed that would make them go, “Huh?”, and scratch their heads. I take no offense to this; it only highlights that which I’ve been aware of for some time now, after having spent a considerable amount of time getting to know “thy self” through deeper and deeper layers of the onion: I am a muti-faceted individual – as is every one of us; only I KNOW this because I have spent time finding it out.

What is the main difference between the Leonardo DaVinci’s of the world, and the rest of us? – nothing, save that the Leonardo’s of the world found their calling and weren’t afraid to follow that unique path, no matter where it led them. Most of us are concerned about what our friends, family and society, in general, think of us – that we don’t get to discover who we really are and how much we are really capable of.

But this is not about our uniqueness. I’ll leave that for another day. No, this is about the power we are given to create our own lives, once we install certain empowering habits, tools, and ways of thinking, feeling, acting and being.

– To know and implement changes in our lives on a daily basis….which will give us what we really want. And how many of us even know what those desires and dreams are? Not many, I would hazard. Not many at all.

So, to my way of thinking, it starts by asking that fundamental question, “What do I want out of life? What do I stand for? Who or What Am I?” Once you start asking THOSE kinds of questions, you’ve opened up a sort of secret passageway that now you, and others like you can explore.

“You are a WIZARD, Harry” – to borrow from our beloved, Harry Potter books and movies. And so you are. You have only to find it out for yourself!

Spending five minutes a day, in some kind of reflection or meditation will help you answer those questions, a great deal. Keeping a journal where you can write down thoughts and ideas and questions, will also help you immensely in this ‘hero’s quest’.

Start with that; and when you have knotted those tools into the very fiber of your being, look for others to support you ( and they will be there, I assure you).

Over the years I’ve gathered that there are many, many ways to meditate or do yoga or get centered or find spirit. As many ways as there are – there are people who need to discover a way which works for them, or several, maybe. I offer this discovery for those who might try it and benefit.

The heart is an amazing organ. It is a pump. It controls the oxygen and other nutrients, which flow through the body and bathe the brain. It is electrical by nature, and is, I believe, a missing puzzle piece to the study of Kundalini.

There has always been a debate, (especially when it comes to picking the right person to spend the rest of your life with), on whether it is best to listen to your head or your heart. Both have merit. Both serve a useful function. But it is my hope, that a more balanced view comes to light when one begins to integrate heart and mind.– And since a lot of people use their heads, mostly, to make decisions – I have decided to share this ‘Heart Beat’ meditation as a way to help people swing the balance back to the middle between the heart and the mind, by focusing some good-quality time meditating on our own hearts.

When I was in Woodland Hills, CA, I did a sitting meditation, where I would scoot my butt so that my legs dangled off of the bed and my spine was held in a relaxed position. I would close my eyes and begin to focus on my breath.

In time, my breathing would slow on its own, and I would start to get that warm feeling growing upward through my body. As the breath came in, I noticed that as relaxed as I had become, my upper body would want to rotate in circles, either clockwise or counter-clockwise.

As I became calmer and calmer and began to feel my energy sink toward my center of gravity – or right around my tummy or navel area – I noticed that the outward breath would cause my nose to whistle a little bit. This was a bit startling at first, because I had just become so inwardly drawn and let my thoughts go, that any noise was a surprise. At first, I didn’t even know that it was coming from me!

As time went on in my almost daily meditations, I began to pick up on a pattern: In order to settle at a state of mind and relaxation where I would become startled when that nose-whistling thing happened; my breathing would have to slow waaaaay down. Sometimes, even, I would find that my breathing would seem to stop for certain beats.

Beats? – Beats of my heart. As my meditation became deeper and deeper, I would feel this rocking in my body, which, I finally figured out was coming from the beat of my heart!

For those of you who are becoming aware of the power and grace afforded by concentrating on love and the heart center….this could be an extremely rewarding meditation.

I’ve even found a way to artificially tune in to the heart and work backward to deeper levels of meditation:

Exercise. Exercise until your heart rate is up where you can feel your pulse and the beat of your heart and then sit down, close your eyes, and start to breathe slower and slower. Eventually, you will calm down, but because your attention had been on your heart beat, it will continue to do so, tracking that beat as it becomes softer and softer and comes less and less frequently.

Yogis have a similar training, where they cultivate that ringing in the ears some of us hear, and travel to ever softer and quieter tones or sounds. That’s one way among many that they can locate the ever-present tone of the Universe.

I have often thought that the concept of the rate of growth and desire to speed up that growth, could be best illustrated by the analogy of a tiny man or woman in, and at the bottom, of a jar when they are born.

Below, I will attempt to examine this further:

The jar is a metaphor for the set of conditions and circumstances we are born into. The bottom represents the time and place of our entering this world. The small person represents us, as we learn and grow and apply what we know and have learned. The sand or clay represents challenges and opportunities presented to us on a daily or even more frequent basis. The stones simply represent bigger opportunities or challenges. The lip of the jar represents the point in time when we are able to get past our set of circumstances, thought patterns, or habits. The outside of the jar represents the rest of the Universe or almost limitless possibilities waiting for us to grasp once we learn certain lessons and achieve certain applied skills.

So, imagine a man trying to get out of a jar; but the only tools he is given is that of gradual grains of sand or clay being dropped into the jar from above. One would think that it would be much faster if you put a bunch of stones in instead, as stepping stones. That is the solution that seems to come to mind quickest, once we become impatient for things to change in our lives.

In order to do that, though, we have to build from the bottom – up. We have to create with what we were originally given. Take a poker player for a moment – the best ones, I’ve been told, are not necessarily the ones with the best hands; but the ones with the best strategy and know how to read people and circumstances and to even bluff at times.

I know that I’m mixing metaphors, here, but if you stay with me for a bit more, where we’re headed may become more clear…

So, there you are: a tiny man or woman, at the very bottom of the jar (at birth). Life begins tossing in grains of sand or grains of clay. If big boulders dropped on us, they could instantly kill us. Now, imagine that we can let this stuff continue to fall on our heads, and bury us alive; or we can somehow make room and step on those grains,(skillfully spread around and stacked upon one another), once they make it to the bottom of the jar. We begin to do this, and soon, we are standing on a nice foundation that we’ve even managed to smooth out.

Now, let’s say that as time goes on, we decide that we’re no longer satisfied with these itty-bitty grains of clay and want to move faster in our life; so we beg for huge boulders again. Besides, getting smashed in the head, what happens if we have actually been able to build with these boulders or stones and now are leaping merrily up the mountain? What happens if we miss-step and fall all the way back down to where the sand or clay is? – We get battered and bruised along the way down. We may even die while smashing from rock to rock, until we finally cease our descent.

Yet, we haven’t discussed the other dynamic going on, here. Eventually that little person grows into a bigger person, stronger mind, will, imagination, knowledge base, and sets of skills. If we take this into account, as well, then, we see that our rate of success can merge almost seamlessly with our rate of growth. And when I speak of growth; I’m not just referring to going from a child to an adult; but am including the things I mentioned above, as well. Eventually, when you’ve gotten big enough, you will be too large to fall into the cracks of those stones. In essence, your person or soul or life power/personal power will be big enough so that you will actually NEED larger sized grains of sand/clay; or even stones.

1) Please leave a comment or tell your story, or just give an example from your own life, if this resonates with you. All are welcome!

2) AND – if you know how to get rid of the annoying hidden characters which keep showing up at the top of my blog, from Microsoft WORD – help!