From To Live Within by Lizelle Reymond
When I first observed people sitting for meditation I was in awe of their obvious dedication and devotion. Seeing these meditators sitting so tall, still and serene, I wondered if it would ever be possible for me, too, to sit as they did, poised and collected, still and calm, full of bliss. The way they sat was awe-inspiring to me, so utterly different from anything I’d ever seen in Protestant worship.
There actually was no comparison. I thought: ‘They know something I do not know.‘ I knew in my bones when I saw them that I had been missing something essential, something deep and necessary to engage the whole of my being. My achingly starved soul longed to enter that space or that zone that these people seemed to inhabit. I felt that I knew nothing about spirituality and that perhaps these people could teach me.
Well, fifteen years has passed now and the practice of sitting for meditation in the early hours of the morning is a deeply ingrained habit. And it’s meaning more to me, not less, as time passes. If I knew that a more powerful practice existed to calm the restless mind and to raise the spirit, I would do it. As it is, this simple practice of sitting cross-legged with a straight spine while repeating a mantra prayerfully seems to me to be the best thing I can do to find a certain, exquisite, lightness of being.
Sitting for meditation always involves for me a shift from a heavy, burdened spirit to a light one. I sit in the early hours of the morning poised for bliss and usually find it. I sit poised in the presence of God in my meditation practice just as I stand poised in His presence weekly at the Divine Liturgy.
I don’t think that we can ever expect that our lives will be changed in any deep and insignificant ways unless we are poised and ready for change. We need to put ourselves into position for change to occur. Deep change is possible, I think, if we learn to stand tall and to sit tall, poised and ready to be baptized by the Spirit into deep bliss.
People I meet tell me all the time that they never do anything like what I’ve just described, ever. It seems to them that a meditation practice is but some great mystery, beyond their scope of interests and concerns. They say that they cannot imagine actually ever doing such a thing. I’m at the point where I cannot imagine living without this kind of spiritual practice!
Our Meditation session on Tuesday night is not a hugely popular event. Few people come though thousands of angels are there weekly. I have so much conviction about it that, even if it’s only ever just me and the angels, I will still feel happy about it. I’m thinking that perhaps we may take a short break in the year 2030. Perhaps. No, probably not. We’ll keep going through 2040, God willing. When people do join us, we receive them with great joy and feel so fortunate to share this practice of stillness that means everything to me.
Sri Anirvan, the Hindu holy man who changed Lizelle Reymond’s life forever, describes what it was like for him as a little boy to observe his parents meditating: “My father and my mother would rise very early in the morning, take their baths and sit side by side before a picture of their Guru. And they would meditate for a long time. We had a small house; when the curtain was drawn back, I would stare at them from my bed. They sat motionless, so still! That stillness made me full of awe, And I thought: ‘There must be something in that stillness.‘ So, after a while, I began to imitate them and I felt: ‘Oh! so this is what they have!’ (p 248 “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond and Sri Anirvan) What wonderful words these are! The little boy, upon observing his parent’s meditation practice, was so impressed that he concluded: ‘There must be something in that stillness.’
It’s quite amazing, I think, that this little boy, upon watching his parents do absolutely nothing, that is, just sitting there, quiet and still, began to feel some great, grand hope that, if he, too, were to sit quietly and in stillness that he could attain something wonderful! The little guy wanted to have an experience like his parents. He hoped and longed for a kind of inner sensation, a sensation of being attuned and aligned with God’s Spirit, of being wholly in communion with Him. I used to feel as a young boy in contrast that if I could just get away from the church where my parents worshipped that there would be hope for me!
I’m going to emphasize here that we need to be poised to be blessed and poised to find bliss. So that means, for example, sitting up tall and standing straight. There are three twists in our spine. Our spines are crooked. Sri Anirvan writes about how there’s a relation between a twisted, crooked spine and twisted, crooked thinking. To find bliss we need to straighten our spines. If we straighten our spines, our minds will be straightened out without having to go for expensive psychotherapy!
When we straighten up and wait long enough for the pain to subside, a certain energy begins to flow freely between the base of our spine up through the crown of the head. A certain light and warmth can be experienced usually arising in the tailbone area and then rushing up the spine and up out of our heads.
I had a rather dramatic experience of this flood of warm energy travelling up through my body when I was 20 years old. The experience was so powerful that it led to my transferring out of the Education Faculty into taking preparatory courses to enter the ministry.
I think that our forever false idea is to think that we will find satisfaction through some external event of some kind, such as, for example, moving to a new location and acquiring a new home. The problem always is of course that we have to take ourselves to the new place and live with ourselves there, just as in the old location. It’s actually very easy to be miserable wherever we are. An inner shift is required for true bliss to be found and felt.
I’d like to share with you Sri Anirvan’s specific instructions about how to be poised for bliss. He says: “Just sit straight. Close your eyes and try to feel the spinal column as straight. Forget that it is not straight. Imagine that it is straight! Gradually you will feel a lightness and also that heat is being generated. Your temperature rises. If on a winter night you sit erect outside in the cold, even if you shiver and whine like a puppy, you will feel heat being produced with you.” I haven’t tried that yet, but you never know. I just might.
He goes on: “To sit straight still and rigid, eyes closed, is to be living truly within. Deep concentration takes place. Go deeper into a vast calmness, a deep vital energy and an illumination. To sit straight is to think straight. You must sit straight, die straight, with no crookedness and no bending. Then you are open, waiting for eternity.” (p. 218 Ibid)
What I do not wish to live with is a sense of heaviness either in my body or in my soul. Deep meditation, as I said, takes away the sense of heaviness to replace it with an exquisite lightness of being.
At this time of year we are again involved in a fast as Orthodox Christians, anticipating Christmas. We’re practicing not simply giving in to our various animalistic impulses. The experience of letting go of the heavy food has the effect of creating a lightness of being.
In a cruel experiment a man once threw a bunch of monkeys into a deep well. For the first few days he threw some food into the well and could hear the monkeys shrieking and fighting with each other for it. Then he stopped giving them food. I am not enjoying tell you this story!
“For many days the man heard shrieking and hissing from the well and then it stopped. The man thought: “They must all be dead. Then he peered over the edge of the well. No movement. No sound...
Tied to a rope, he let himself down and saw a mass of dead bodies, partly dismembered, savagely contorted. But on a stone which was jutting slightly out of the wall, there sat a small monkey, his arms wrapped tightly around his body, his eyes wide open staring at nothing.” (p. 22 Ibid) One little monkey survived. Why? The story suggests that he was alive because he did not give in to his crude animal impulses. By refusing to participate in the fight for the food he entered a deeper dimension of himself. He tapped into certain spiritual energies dormant within him.
It is said that the little monkey then demonstrated various miraculous powers. I’m not going to push my monkey story too far here but am using it to make a point. That point is to say that if I choose to sit tall, poised for bliss through meditation and poised for bliss by disciplining my various appetites and impulses, that I can trust that my inner being will be renewed and rejuvenated.
It is said that the rays of the sun are embedded in carbon and that upon experiencing tremendous pressure the arrangement of the atoms is changed to produce a diamond. We, too, are like that carbon, unformed and shapeless. But if we focus our attention and position ourselves to be poised and ready, we, too, will experience a certain life changing, creative pressure. Our energies that formerly were dispersed everywhere will coalesce inwardly. This experience of synergy will lift us out of any dull, heavy state of inertia into an experience of an exquisite, diamond-like sense of being.
Sri Anirvan writes about the birth of Christ in our inner being. Surely if Christ’s presence is there in our hearts there will be a sense of the crushing of heavy matter, that is, a crushing of all those things which burden and enslave us. As that “heavy matter” is crushed, we will be fashioned into God’s likeness and Being, which is light.
‘Come to me’, Jesus implored, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ His presence, in other words, has a freeing effect. ‘If the Son of Man makes you free, you shall be free indeed.‘
So, here I am poised and ready as I sit for mediation and poised and ready as I stand in the Divine Liturgy. There’s something I need to do, after all. No great change will occur if I’m just sitting there like a bump on a log! Thanks be to God. Amen.
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