Thank you for being here!
If you're curious about meditation, you may be interested in a little bit of my background to see if I'm someone you'd be interested in learning with. Here, I've done my best to present my story for you as genuinely as I can. Before I get into it, I also want to mention Rick and Kiera, two people who have had a profound impact on my life (and meditation practice) through what they've taught and shared with me. To both of you, my deepest gratitude.
Now, here we go!
Lost, but interested...
Like a lot of people, I came to meditation looking for peace. It’s hard to write about my early experience with it, because the person I was when I began seems so far from me now. I was so unhappy. In my dissatisfaction with my life, I would often imagine flying high above myself – free. I think that’s originally what appealed to me about meditation: the thought of that kind of freedom.
I didn’t have any teacher or formal structure for a while, only what I read about Zen or Taoism, or in various kinds of new age books. I was curious. It was something I experimented with on my own. I would sit still, or lie down trying to feel some kind of energy, or trying to not think about anything, or trying to get in touch with the God I believed in – an all present, all powerful love that was there, but that felt just out of my reach. I had some interesting experiences, but when I left the meditations and came back to my life, I was still unhappy.
In retrospect, a lot of my early experiences with meditation were a way of “checking out”. I found peace in letting go, but I always woke up to the same self, and the same world.
Finding a way home...
Then, in 2003, I found something that led me in a very different direction. Instead of looking to get away from what was inside me, this new practice invited me to feel it more deeply, to embrace it. In Wujifa, I was asked to simply stand, relax, and feel my body. It’s fair to say I struggled with this.
At first, I got anxious. My heart beat fast. I did my best to just breathe and learn to tolerate my experience of these feelings in my body, but there were times were it was all I could do just not to quit and run away!
And then, something different started to happen. My growing ability to tolerate the feelings allowed me to observe them in a new way. I began to notice that for me, underneath that anxiety was a single belief: “I’m not safe”. When I clearly saw this belief and how deeply I held it, I began to notice how it was like a pair of dark sunglasses, coloring my perception of the whole world. I could be in the most peaceful place, and still this voice would be saying “I’m not safe” and so I wouldn’t feel safe
Continuing to just stand, breathe, and feel my body, I sensed how in that moment, my body was not under attack. I could see with my own eyes that right here and now, nothing bad was happening to me. These direct experiences started to shift my belief. I started to experience safety, in connection with the reality of the present moment. Not as a concept but as something I could feel, here and now.
Throwing off the covers...
As I stuck with it, over time these experiences gave way to new feelings. I began to discover a lot about myself that I hadn’t known before. Emotions I had been afraid to feel on some level emerged, were felt fully, and dissipated, like storm clouds finally empty of rain and lightning and thunder.
What also started to emerge, as I moved through these experiences, was a sense of a part of me that existed in the midst of all the changing experiences: a sense of self that could be aware of all the changes and could hold them with compassion, awareness, and deepening understanding.
Finding more comfort with these aspects of myself through meditation gave me the courage to live with more authenticity, taking risks to more fully express what was present for me, and allowing that to change and develop over time. At a certain point, and I don’t know exactly when or how this happened, I noticed that the anxiousness and unhappiness that had occupied my life for so long had become a memory to me. I was enjoying living. I was finally glad to be alive.
Continuing the journey...
I started by looking for freedom from myself, but what I have found instead (and what I continue to find more and more) is freedom within myself. The journey is far from finished, but practicing these simple exercises day-by-day helps in the gradual peeling-back of layer after layer of assumptions, defenses, and illusions to see things ever more clearly as they are, here and now.
Now, I bring my experiences with this inner journey to helping others, and it makes me so happy to share this path that has touched my life so deeply. In Wujifa, we have a saying: “take care of the roots, and the fruit will take care of itself.” These are root-nourishing practices, and if you’re interested, with a little time and effort they can support your individual tree in finding its own fullest expression.