Meditation. When I first tried it, I had no clear idea of what it was far, except that its practice was essential to spiritual power, and I wanted that. I flitted around, experimented. Tried a breath meditation for awhile, and got bored with that. I tried a prayer meditation, based on the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi; at that time, I woke up at 3 in the morning and did a half hour, though most of it was me falling asleep. I tried doing a Seth exercise called “psychological time,” which is essentially trance meditation, but I got no clear details on how to achieve trance. Eventually I gave it up as too difficult and abstract.

I visited India after my freshman year of college, and though I received scant instruction on meditation there, I did get a flavor of a culture that was more grounded in Spirit than American culture. After that summer, I enrolled in Tom Brown’s Standard class, and part of that was learning how to move through the woods in a meditative way.

I went to Teaching Drum with some primitive skills experience, and some random ideas about meditation. I began practicing some of Tamarack’s exercises, which were intended as meditations in their own way. He called it shadowing; it essentially involved merging consciousness with another object or being, e.g. the trees moving in the wind. The basic form of meditation he taught was what he called circle attunement, a kind of sitting dynamic meditation.

It wasn’t until I discovered the Toltecs that things began to fall into place.

I began with Victor Sanchez and from there read the original, Castaneda, and Ken Eagle Feather. The idea that formed the foundation in my mind was that the body already knows, the challenge is to get it to see. In order to see, one must develop enough personal power, and get out of one’s own way. The latter was achieved by silencing the internal dialogue — or, in other words, by meditation.

There are, of course, a number of other reasons to meditate, and meditations for many other goals. But silencing the internal dialogue is the common thread, because that route leads to both engagement of and differentiation from the body. It leads not only to the already-proven benefits of lower blood pressure and less stress, but to contact with one’s basic sense of being. From there, depending on your orientation, one can develop psychic powers, gain insight and awareness into various issues, or simply sit in awareness.

The form of sitting meditation I practice right now is fairly basic: Breath meditation, which I use as a bridge to trance meditation (with which I’m still pretty shaky). But there are more that I have practiced or explored. So much became clear to me upon seeing that silencing the internal dialogue is the common doorway, and contacting the basic self is the common path. Shamanic journeying, lucid dreaming, qigong standing meditation — these are all founded upon engaging one’s essence in different ways. Indeed, virtually everything relies on this; it’s just that such subtle awareness is more necessary in the internal, spiritual disciplines. But take basketball, for instance: concentration and relaxation are equally as necessary for the basketball player to consistently make goals in the midst of stressful games as they are necessary for the monk to reach a state of deep, thoughtless awareness.

Lately I’ve begun to be able to apply this kind of awareness with more facility and frequency than before. Which is not to say much more; I’m always at novice stages. But when I go for a walk now, I can sometimes sense the energies of the trees around me, and not just the chatter in my head. I am occasionally able to tell in advance that there’s an animal behind that tree. Sometimes I can feel a sense of peace and belonging in the world, from silencing the internal dialogue and feeling where I am connected with the world.

I’m beginning to see that this kind of connection — centered in the body — is what everyone longs for, unknowingly. Maybe I should speak only for myself and say that it is what I’ve always longed for. I have always found fragments of it in “highs” — from things like sugar or an exciting movie. Others may find it in alcohol, work, shopping, you name it. I had always longed for, and now found, some measure of it in a loving relationship, too. But I’ve found that the connection with my partner can’t replace this connection — the yearning for a soulmate is, in fact, a substitute for this lack of connection in our everyday lives. The connection with the world feeds the love I feel for another person, and not so much the other way around.

Connection with the world is the same as connection with oneself. Connection with the world is blocked by things in the self: negative or unhelpful beliefs, trauma, all of the attachments that lead to pain and suffering. The truth, that I have experienced in myself, is that it simply takes a letting go, a surrendering to this greater energy that is the earth, the Great Spirit. In this, the Christians have a facet of the truth. One cannot just work one’s way to enlightenment or salvation; ultimately it requires acknowledging a greater power (even if not by name), and surrendering to it. But it also takes enormous effort and personal power to surrender so completely. I’m not there yet, by far. But it is worth working towards, if simply to better myself. I cannot truly be one with the world unless I deal with my guilt and fear around my parents, unless I forgive my partner, unless I resolve the hurts in myself. So this takes place in little ways, like coping with the loss of a loved one, or freeing oneself of addiction, or grasping why an unjust war is allowed to continue, or even just accepting that I am angry at someone.

How gratifying to find that awareness of and acceptance of myself does lead to opening and connection, does lead to something more than just vague ethical congratulations. How gratifying to finally have an understanding of that connection, and, even more, to have experiences of it. And yet, the more I see it, the farther I feel I am from it, if only because I know I have that much farther to go.