Don't just do something, sit there!

It's what Buddhist monks say, or so I'm told by my meditation teacher. I've started going to a class held every Wednesday eve in a place in Sugarhouse. The guy who guides our meditations, Clint, also doubles as a massage therapist...and a shaman. But not just any kind of meditation massage shaman. As you enter the room that we meditate in, there is the faint smell of burnt sage and a picture of Jesus on the wall. He begins by asking us to invite the Holy Spirit to dwell in the room and to invite God to dwell within us. He mixes in teachings from the New Testament, the Buddha, Catholic Saints and other holy souls. Then we meditate in silence for 20 minutes. Then we talk about our far-out experiences. It's pretty cool.

I'm not having the kinds of experiences some people talk about there: the feeling of traveling without moving, a blank mind, a cleansed soul, visions of gurus teaching profound truths...but what I am getting in this silence is insight.

This week Clint talked about opening our eyes and recognizing the divine connection we have with each other. He said we need to meditate with eyes open and see the divine. He had us all open our eyes then and focus our energy on a stone that was set in the middle of the room. He then asked us to feel the energy of everyone concentrating on the same thing. Some other people spoke of "feeling the wave". I didn't get some mystical wave thing. What I got was the understanding that we really are all divine. I could look at everyone in that room and recognize that they were divine, that everyone we meet in our lives, at the grocery store, on the street, in work, in family, in friends, in strangers. They already possess the divine within them and that divinity connects us in a profound way to one another. We just need to open our eyes and really see that.