MEDITATION

This week is NAVARATRI. I will quote my teacher’s Vani words: “NAVA means nine, and also fresh, new. RATRI means giving solace or rest. TRI means three. There three types of problems that may affect a person: physical, mental, spiritual. Navaratri means the nine nights that give you rest from all these three types of problems.

The nine days represent the nine months spent by the baby in her mother’s womb, that is to say the evolution of the consciousness to a heightened awareness.

In life there are positive and negative qualities that affect us. Navaratri represents how the negativity can be conquered by the inherent positive qualities in an individual so that one emerges as a divine being. The Navaratri celebrations are done for the benefit of all the humanity. It is done with the intention that all people should be happy”.

 

If you meditate or follow a spiritual path, this week all your practises are more intense and deep. There is more connection with the Divine in the Universe.

 

One year and a half ago I have started to meditate after having read how good it is for healing. I did not know what to do, I hadn’t bought any book about it nor done a course yet. I just stretched out in bed, early morning and closed my eyes. The expert ones know perfectly that the optimal posture to meditate is being seated crossed legs or in a chair or on a meditation bench. But lying down in bed is more for couch potatoes than for spiritual seekers. Well I was unaware of all this. So my very first meditation was very relaxed. After a while I was absolutely so relaxed that I felt weightless, sinking in my comfortable mattress but not feeling my body; then I started to see lots of colours like waves of coloured clouds just showing off in front of my closed eyes. The colour range went from all the shades of yellow and orange with the permanent presence of a violet background. Wow…it is better than what I could expect of course my mind was very active with enthusiastic comments for the show going on, which tells everybody that I was not really meditating. But those were my energy’s colours. I think I lazed in this bed-meditation for a while and then fell asleep. When I woke up I was thrilled but also relaxed. I was thinking I have meditated, I have meditated and felt like repeating the experience. I repeated it, till one day a dear friend of mine suggested we should do a proper meditation course. We thought we could go with our husbands and learn altogether. So she got in touch with an old meditation teacher, very academic and experienced man, who taught her meditation 15 years earlier. The course was quite expensive so I pictured myself in a very “Zen” clean place, with waterfall sounds, birds chirping outside, surrounded by nature and people very fit and dressed in white. To my surprise the course was late in the evening in a scary area of the city, in a stinky old ram-shackling flat that made us feel the main characters of a horror movie. Johannesburg can be very dangerous. Our teacher was weird. Oh he is really really weird. After the introductory talk that lasted till midnight (he was the only one to talk, not bad for a professional meditator) he asked us why we wanted to learn meditation. I said I wish to meditate to improve my healing. Looking into my eyes he said“ don’t worry, if you meditate regularly you ‘ll survive slightly longer than what the doctors expect you to live” Bloody hell, does this old wizard know that I am not going to die for the next 100 years? So, content with the thousands information he had given us we scheduled our first meditation session. Then I asked my friend how old is he? She said “he must be 85 now”. Before leaving she told him “You look so great, Peter” “oh thanks my dear I have just turned 70!” I ran away to burst out with laughter. We spent our way back talking over the cell phones about the evening and I really split my sides laughing. I felt so good afterwards!

So we did the course. Once a week from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. for about 6 weeks. Everything was new and bizarre. This man chanting in Sanskrit without warning us oh my gosh what is he doing? The rituals before the meditation, the whole atmosphere. But it was the beginning of something that would become a daily practise for me. Once my friend’s husband was so relaxed in the meditation that he fell asleep and started snoring loudly close to me. We, the girls, tried not burst out with laughter, unsuccessful attempt, to which the teacher reacted trying to make his Sanskrit chanting louder.

We really had fun. But this experience, unforgettable for many things, planted the seed to develop a spiritual path in our lives.

 

 

Copyright 2009 Lorenza Verdini