Enlightenment begins as an abstract concept and then makes a journey without distance from the head to the heart. As most of us are aware, mere intellectual understanding is not of itself enough to change our lives.
Albert Einstein claimed that the problems of the world would not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. The different level of thinking requires a different worldview, and different brain waves.
During our normal working consciousness, the human brain emits what are called beta waves. As we settle into meditation, the brain shifts and begins to emit alpha waves and sometimes even the deeper delta waves. Delta waves help us access the unconscious, reduce levels of a hormone called cortisol (known to cause stress and aging), and produce a restfulness akin to deep sleep.
Just as we look to food to fuel our physical selves, we should look to meditation and prayer to fuel our spiritual selves.
True meditation practice is more than staring into a candle and breathing deeply, sitting still, slowing down our mind, and so forth. It is more than deep relaxation. Deep relaxation is important, but it is not meditation. All meditation is relaxation, but not all relaxation is meditation.
An actual meditation practice—such as going through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles or doing Transcendental Meditation, Buddhist meditation, or other spiritual, religious, or even secular forms of meditation—includes a technique through which words or sounds instruct the mind to move into deeper regions. These regions hold the key not only to stress reduction but to much, much more. Greater insight, deeper understanding, expanded perspective, more whole-system knowing, and deeper peace, forgiveness, and love—all of these arise more easily from the meditative mind. The rational mind alone cannot cause these things to occur.
In order to not only conceptualize breakthroughs but to actually experience them, we need to embody the spiritual principles we embrace. We want not only our rational minds but also our spirits to be reignited. We want our psyches to be rewired. We want to experience miraculous shifts.
Such shifts are growth into our truer selves. Just as we look to food to fuel our physical selves, we should look to meditation and prayer to fuel our spiritual selves.
Meditation is like spiritual exercise, developing attitudinal muscles and making them strong. Consider it your daily workout. After a certain point in our lives, whether in relation to physical or attitudinal muscles, gravity pulls down what we don’t work at keeping up! Flabby spiritual muscles are things like cynicism, negativity, victim consciousness, anger, judgmentalism, and fear. Just as we do well to exercise our bodies on a regular basis, we also do well to exercise our minds. As A Course in Miracles says, we are “much too tolerant of mind-wandering.”
Meditation, again like physical exercise, isn’t something we can afford to stop doing. We never get to look in the mirror and say, “I like my body now, so I can stop exercising.” Neither can we say, “I feel at peace now, so I can stop meditating.” Gravity, both physical and emotional, is at work every day. So should we be, in order to counter it.
Just as we wash to remove yesterday’s dirt from our bodies, we meditate to remove yesterday’s stress from our minds. A meditation practice is one of the most powerful boosts to our physical well-being, as well as to our mental and emotional health. It even helps us financially! According to an article published by the American Public Health Association, people who practice Transcendental Meditation spend 11 percent less annually on health care than does the general population.
Let’s look more closely at how meditation affects our work and earning capacities. Today’s work environment is routinely stressful. Between the twenty-four-hour blitz of often depressing world news and the economic anxiety rampant everywhere, many people feel like they’re barely holding on. Dysfunctional responses such as overeating, drinking and drugging to excess, and self-medicating through recreational or pharmaceutical drug use have become common responses to stress.
Things are moving too quickly, and we simply weren’t created for that. For millions of years our ancestors toiled with their bodies, worked the earth, and sat around campfires in the evening telling stories. They didn’t fool around on the computer all day. Our challenge is to compensate for the wear and tear of modernity’s assault on our nervous systems. With greater speed comes a greater chance that we’ll make mistakes. We don’t adequately think an issue through; we let fear rule a decision, digging ourselves an even deeper hole than the one we’re already in; we fail to connect deeply with people and situations around us, leading to all manner of negative results.
But there is a revolution in consciousness among us, and meditation is at the forefront. More and more people are looking to nutrition, yoga, exercise, spirituality, and so forth to counter the dysfunction and stress of the times in which we live.
Years ago I had made a pot of chili. When I tasted it, it was too hot; clearly I had added too much cayenne pepper. When I called my mother and asked for help, she told me to put a raw potato in the chili in order to absorb the pepper. She was right: it worked! I never forgot that image, because it reminds me of how it feels when I meditate. Meditation absorbs my crazy thinking the way that raw potato absorbed the cayenne.
As a student of A Course in Miracles, I read one Workbook lesson every day—“I give my life to God to guide today,” “Into His presence would I enter now,” “I am at home. Fear is the stranger here,” or whatever it might be—and while I can’t say that the practice guarantees I’ll be the best version of myself all day, it absolutely keeps me from being the worst version of myself. I might have negative thoughts or feelings, but the chances of my acting on them are drastically reduced. And all of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, know how important that distinction can be.
It can take just one instant for a lack of impulse control to overwhelm our better knowing. We say something we later wish we hadn’t said; we write an e-mail we later wish we hadn’t sent; we respond to a text message we later wish we’d simply ignored. Or we simply weren’t our best selves, diminishing the trust that others have in us. Those are the moments, not just in our personal relationships but in our professional ones as well, that can mess up even the greatest business plans and avenues to success.
The benefits of meditation go beyond de-stressing the mind; meditation actually expands the mind. It gives us insight and illumination. It builds wisdom and compassion. It goes a long way toward making us the people we wish to be.
Below is a prayer, followed by multiple statements that provide a meditative approach to money and career. Read each statement slowly, picturing the images it evokes, exploring the idea or scene, and inwardly asking for further illumination. You may make it through only one paragraph, which is fine. What matters is that we daily do whatever we can to realign our thoughts with the Mind of God.
Do the following meditation gently and without stress. Sit quietly in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and feel yourself in the presence of the holy. Open with a prayer, such as the following:
Dear God,
I give this time of quiet to You.
Please dissolve my thoughts of stress and fear
And deliver me to the inner place
Where all is peace and love.
Amen.
Then, keeping your eyes closed, allow your mind to gently switch gears. When you feel you’re ready, look honestly over the landscape of your material life. With the power of your imagination, pour a holy light over everything you see. Ask to be shown all you need to see and know, and your spirit will guide you.
When looking at the subject of your work and finances, view them from the perspective of your spirit. Recognize your work as your ministry, and see ways that you could make it more so.
See what or whom you’ve allowed to go unnoticed, untended to, unappreciated, or undervalued.
Salute spiritually those you work with now, have worked with before, or might work with in the future.
Dedicate your work to holy purposes. See how the images change when you do.
Humbly confess and atone for any errors or financial irresponsibilities in your past. Ask forgiveness for any wrong-minded thinking, and pray for a miracle.
Notice any places where you are defended against wealth—where you feel it wrong or judge those who have it—and allow this wall of mistaken thought to crumble.
Now envision yourself as a person of wealth, expanding into the energy of abundance. See yourself gladly assuming the responsibilities that come with it. Commit within your heart that you will use whatever wealth comes into your life as spirit directs, as a means of blessing and never of harm.
See yourself in control of vast amounts of money, if vast amounts of money are what you truly desire. See this money as an exchange of energy through which you bless the world.
For being, and having, are ultimately the same thing. Know that whatever you can be, you can have.
See yourself transforming into someone whose internal abundance aligns with a magnificent external abundance. Allow yourself to inhabit this space energetically, and hold the vision for a minimum of five minutes a day. Allow yourself to feel the subtle changes in thought, energy, feeling, behavior, and desire that naturally result from this.
Give thanks and praise God.
Amen.