The 7 Words That Changed My Practice Forever
In the last episode of the series Seeds of Awakening I talked about the concept of mahavakyas - words that hit you like dynamite and dramatically shift your perspective.
In this episode, I want to share a personal experience, but to explain it, I need to take you back a bit.
I began meditating in 1970, in a style based on effortlessness and the idea that the mind would spontaneously reveal its deeper nature.
I held to this approach for many, many years. Then one day, some 26 years later!, I'm sitting in meditation and suddenly my heart ignites. Not my physical heart but my spiritual heart. It was as if it started glowing and I sat in such bliss, as a pulsating feeling of wholeness and completeness and connection with the Divine pervaded me.
When I came out of meditation, my mind was spinning: ‘What was that? Will it happen again? How can I live in that place all the time?"
All I wanted to do was get back into that zone.
But my next meditations did not offer a repeat of this wonderful experience. I'd sit and wait, and nothing. Just ordinary quiet and calm.
That memory stayed with me and became the catalyst for intensifying my inner search, which eventually led me to seek Shaktipat - the gift of the awakened Kundalini, and led me to the doorstep of the Siddha Lineage.
As my meditations continued, I'd occasionally again touch that glowing heart expansion place in the depths of meditation, but maybe only every 6 months or so.
Then one night I had a dream — but not an ordinary one. It was one of those luminous dreams that stay with you. In fact, it's been over 25 years, and I can still see and hear and feel it in vivid detail.
In the dream I am called to the bedside of the great Siddha master Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri. Though incredibly dynamic, he often spent long hours on his simple cot in deep states of samadhi. And in this dream I went to him and he transmitted to me 7 words - my mahavakya - that shifted everything for me.
He said "It doesn't just happen. you create it."
I still get goosebumps as I share this with you.
When I woke up and reflected upon the dream, I immediately knew what he meant, what he was pointing out to me.
For years, I had been passively waiting for the deeper layers of the Self to reveal themselves to me. This was actually what I had been taught was the correct approach to take.
Now Bhagawan Nityananda was telling me - No, you have to go after it. You have to take a shovel and start digging deeper if you want that buried treasure. It does not just happen.
That was my turning point. I shifted my approach and became an active explorer.
Then a few years later, I had the great good fortune to meet Mark Griffin, whose profound insights into the mechanics of meditation gave me the keys I needed to become not only an active explorer, but an expert one.
He often said something like 'meditation is an act of will. It is an expression of skillful means.' Other times he said something like 'He who floats down river, goes down drain.'
And then there was that moment in a talk he was giving to our group in 2007, where he actually said the 7 words - he was speaking to everyone but looking at me, and he said: I doesn't just happen, you create it.
You could practically see the exclamation points jump out of my brain. There he was, giving voice to Nityananda's personal message to me that I had received in a dream about ten years before.
So how have these 7 words shaped my spiritual path?
They showed me that meditation’s treasures are revealed through active attention, focus, will, and method. And yes, it's no longer a random thing when I sit to meditate 'will I touch those pockets of bliss and silence today?'
Now, every time I sit to meditate, I internally follow the methods of skillful means and the inner worlds open up.
You'll encounter this theme of intentional inner exploration, as a thread that implicitly runs through each course I teach in my school, Stop The Mind Meditation, and it's the central principle that inspired me to create a sequential and structured curriculum of training.
This shift of approach - from passive observer to active explorer - made such a difference to me that I am now driven by a passion: How can I help people learn the techniques to consistently get the results we all crave, to reliably open the cave of the heart every time we sit, to touch the silence of the mind and the peace that is beyond description, to tap that inner place of bliss that has nothing to do with any mere emotion.
PRACTICUM
Each episode of this series, I hope to leave you with a practice, such as this discussion so naturally suggests:
Take a moment of self-reflection and look at your practice: When you sit down to meditate, do you expect great experiences to simply arrive?
I invite you to subscribe to the Seeds of Awakening podcast or newsletter for future episodes — and explore the meditation programs at Stop the Mind Meditation.
I invite you to subscribe to the podcast Seeds of Awakening or subscribe to my newsletter to get these episodes in print , and come take a look at the meditation program I offer.
Archival photograph of Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri.
Used respectfully for the purposes of educational and spiritual study.
If you are the copyright holder, please contact me and I will gladly update attribution.
