I Find My Soul

Deliberately connecting with the unconscious is like having a dream but without needing to have our ego consciousness go offline (go to sleep or “space out” in a daydream) in order for us to experience it. We can’t make this connection happen but we can do various things to facilitate the link. My egoic desire to always be in control, to always do, was a huge obstacle to my learning to experience my own inner Self.

First let me describe some of my earliest attempts many years ago at contacting my unconscious through meditation, though I didn’t understand then that’s what I was doing. I just knew that meditation was supposed to “be good for you.” My clumsy attempts were at least helpful in allowing me to relax in a way I normally couldn’t, even when I was asleep. For those few minutes I wasn’t in pain. They didn’t, however, provide anything I might term an adventurous occurrence.

As an inexperienced and ignorant beginning meditator I always attempted to direct my experience. Since I wasn’t even sure what that experience "should" be, I was stumbling over myself most of the time. Guided group visualizations had always given me considerable difficulty as I tried to force the images.  These experiences were disappointing to me, especially after listening to the results described by others. I never saw anything. I decided that guided visualization was not for me. I was not a “seer.”

However, I figured that at the very least, if I used a form of meditation that didn’t call for visualization, I could spend 20 minutes or so in a calm state. I’d read somewhere that 20 minutes of meditation is worth a few hours of restorative sleep and I so needed that. My meditations mostly consisted of a sort of “disappearing act,” where I wasn’t completely conscious of my surroundings yet it wasn’t really the kind of unconsciousness that we associate with sleep. I just “went away.” Somehow I always “came back” just before the timer was about to go off, so I knew I wasn’t simply sleeping upright on my cushion.

Whatever I was doing was soothing and relaxing, but it was hardly the kind of experiences I’d heard of happening in meditation. But this was my meditation “practice” when I began to meditate after my morning runs. I’d put on some appropriate music and sit on my zafu cushion in the gray light of early dawn and “go away.” I had no real idea of how to meditate or what to expect.

The first time I finally gave up trying to direct my experience is still fresh in my mind. At this time, all those years ago, I was on sick leave prior to eventual retirement. Even though I could no longer make my morning runs, I still felt led to meditate. I was sitting on my zafu with my legs folded, eyes closed, relaxing meditation music playing softly in the background. Even in this my mind was active so I was busy-busy working to keep my attention trained on the blackness of the "nothing" behind my eyelids. It was hard work. My thoughts always wanted to go somewhere else.

Even so, there persistently and annoyingly appeared at the outer corner of my closed left eye, out of the dark, this little purple/violet sort of flame that kept trying to enter my visual field, like a small cat softly bumping your hand to get your attention. Bump, bump. I kept ignoring it, pushing it back as a distraction, a nuisance. Bump, bump. Finally, exasperated, I thought, “What is this?”

So I consciously decided to “let it happen,” just to get it out of the way. This little violet flame actually vaulted into the darkness behind my eyelids, doing handsprings like an acrobat, to center stage, where it then stood flickering in triumph. The sense was of an expression of totally joyful and exultant release. If it had had a human shape it would have been standing with arms akimbo and chest swelled large. It reminded me of Mighty Mouse, proudly singing, “Here I come to save the day!”

I was amazed and nearly laughed out loud at the brio of this tiny vision. What was this stuff? How could colors have emotion, personality? As I fully gave my attention to it, it metamorphosed into a sort of light and color show of mushrooming clouds, a kaleidoscope-like display in which I became totally engrossed. I sort of melted into it, became a part of it. Then I “came back” at the end of my usual 20 minutes, more relaxed than usual. Hmmm.

A few days afterward I was shocked to read this passage in Friendship With God, An Uncommon Dialogue, by Neale Donald Walsch:

“Now, the first time you do this, or the tenth time, or maybe the hundredth or the thousandth time you do this, you may see what will look like a flickering blue flame, or a dancing light. It may appear in flashes at first, then steady itself in your sight. Stay with it. Move into it. If you feel your Self merging with it, let that happen.

“If that happens, nothing more will have to be said to you.

“What is this blue flame, this dancing light?

“It is you. It is the center of your soul. It is that which surrounds you, moves through you, is you. Say hello to your soul. You’ve just found it, at last. You’ve just experienced it, at last.

“If you merge with it, if you become One with it, you will know a sublime fullness of joy that you will call bliss…. After that, nothing else will matter, nothing will ever be the same again, ... .”

This so perfectly described my experience that I was stunned. The only difference was the color of the flame.

I never saw the purple flame as such again but now there was always the mushrooming clouds that seemed to be its legacy. And for quite some time the clouds were enough.

But there was much more to come.

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