The Only Thing That Matters (31 page)

As has been shared here now several times, all people have achieved Completion in many Moments on their Sacred Journey of the Soul. The experience of
continuing
to live in that State is what they are after. And that is simply a matter of learning to open a pathway or a channel between the Mind and the Soul, so that the Mind can bring in the Soul
at will
, producing the experience of Expanded Consciousness regularly over many months or years—and ultimately, as a sustaining reality across the largest part of one's life.

The next tool—the final tool we will explore here—offers a way to
sustain
the experience of Mind/Soul Oneness, when the Mind's Experience combines with the Soul's Awareness to produce the experience of Expanded Consciousness.

This experience does not have to look mysterious or mystical, by the way. The Soul uniting with the Mind can happen in quite ordinary ways at quite ordinary times. For instance, you could be having this experience
right now
, as you are reading this book.

All of the tools you have been given here so far are highly effective in connecting your Mind and Soul.

Nothing will bring you the
feeling
in which the Soul lives faster than Gratitude. Nothing will open you to the depth of the Soul's wisdom faster than Recontextualization. Nothing will bring you more of the Soul's infinite peace faster than Compassion. And nothing will express the gift of the Soul's true nature faster than Forgiveness Forgone.

But there is one magical device, not yet mentioned, that will allow you to
sustain
the experiences to which the other tools lead you, and this is our final recommended tool:

M
EDITATION

If it seems predictable and almost spiritually trite to mention this here, it is only because this tool has for so long been such a
proven
method of accessing the Awareness of the Soul that everyone recommends it all the time. Its predictability speaks well for its efficacy.

Not a lot of time is going to be spent here, then, endorsing or advocating Meditation. By now you've heard about it from enough people. What you may want to know, though, is how to do it effectively (if you are not already).

There is no One Best Way to meditate. There's not a Single Size Fits All answer to how to best do it. Each person experiences the process differently. But there are some approaches to the use of this tool that you might find interesting to hear about.

There's not a lot “out there” on the subject that can be found on a few pages for quick and easy reference, so we've included in the Addendum here a direct lift from a book mentioned in
Chapter 29
,
When Everything Changes, Change Everything
.

That spiritual guide contains a description of four different approaches to meditation, and we felt the material offered insights that should be included in this document. It's part of the back batter, though, rather than the main text, so that if you've read the previous book, you won't have to move through the material again to complete your reading here.

If you have
not
read the
Changes
book and you have an interest in seeing if there's a way that Meditation might work for you—or perhaps work better for you—you'll want to take a look at this Addendum to the present book for sure.

The reason that Meditation is such an effective tool in moving you along your Sacred Journey is that it creates an environment within which a connection can be made between the Mind and the Soul.

There are other ways to create such an environment as well, including, but certainly not limited to, prayer, visualization, guided imagery, ecstatic dance, vision questing, fasting, chanting, drumming, and simple quiet contemplation.

Prayer is probably the most widely taught method of connecting with Divinity (which is, of course, what connecting with your Soul is all about). Every religion on the planet teaches it. It can be a wonderful way of establishing contact with God, but for many the difference between Prayer and Meditation feels like the difference between calling room service to place an order and listening to a recording of gentle music on earphones. One is a “sending” energy, and one is a “receiving” energy.

Visualization definitely helps to move the Mind from its current preoccupation to something more profoundly connected with one's desires, and if one's personal desires are identical to
What One Desires
(they are at the deepest level, but they may not be at the surface level), this technique can be very useful as well. It does, however, engage the Mind more actively than most forms of Meditation.

Other avenues to the Soul, such as guided imagery and ecstatic dance, can absolutely bring one closer to the inner peace that can lead to higher awareness, but most people report that this occurs with not quite the dependability or regularity of Meditation. Guided imagery is a form of Meditation that is led by another person, either “live” or on a recording, and so, by its very nature, is not quite as quietly intimate. Ecstatic dance takes you out of your Mind completely, and has been known to lead to sudden bursts of awareness, but, like drumming and chanting, it uses focal centers of the Mind that are not nearly as peacefully engaged as the Mind is in Meditation, when the focus is away from these centers and away from all activity.

So Meditation has been found by the most number of people, most of the time, to be the most beneficial, constructive, potent, and efficacious tool for bringing the Soul into the Mind.

Whatever
you
do, find some way to create the space for your Mind and your Soul to merge, sharing in the wonder of all that you are. The Mind was not designed to function alone.

Your Mind is a marvelous part of you, and nothing that has been said during this entire discourse has been meant to suggest that the Mind is somehow “less than,” or inferior to, the Soul. It is not.

Your Mind is a brilliant apparatus, and it serves the function of guaranteeing your physical survival in this lifetime extremely well. In fact, unfathomably well. We still don't fully understand all the ways in which the Mind works. Yet we
have
observed, through simply watching ourselves, that the Mind functions even more brilliantly when it is open to sources of information—what might be called “wisdom”—that are not generated by the memory of their own limited experiences, but by the unlimited awarenesses that lie outside the Mind, but not outside the reach, of the Totality of You.

If survival were your only concern—or even your primary concern—your Mind might be enough for you to move forward with, as you travel through Life. Yet as we have observed earlier, survival is not your primary concern. It is not even your Basic Instinct. It is, therefore, not at the top of your agenda. Completion is. Completion of the Sacred Journey. And for this you need not only the Mind, but the Soul as well.

That is why Meditation, the final tool explored here, is so strongly recommended.

That is also why this whole book was written. The book might very well have been titled
The Soul Also.
It's overarching point—that the Mind and the Soul were designed to function together—is that important.

If you go through life using only, or even primarily, your Body and your Mind, it is like riding a tricycle on two of its wheels. It's going to be very hard to keep your balance.

37
The First Gift

A
ND SO WITH THESE FIVE
marvelous tools you are now able at last to take your mind off of the 98% of things that really don't matter in your life. These include …

How much money you earn.

What people think of you.

Whether your work is done.

What your sexual orientation is.

How many mistakes you've made.

Whether you have your finances planned.

Where you will be ten years from now.

Which stocks to buy.

Why the dining room should have cream-colored walls.

If it's time to install new carpeting.

What car to get.

How to invite some people to your party and not others without hurting feelings (even though in truth you don't want the others there).

Where to store the boxes.

Are the grapes organic?

What religion to follow.

What political party to join.

Which pants to wear with what top.

Should you cut your hair?

Why to make the bed every day.

How
to make the bed.

How to make more friends.

How to get rid of the ants.

How to work the remote.

What's for dinner.

Whose turn it is to take the garbage out.

Are you having an affair?

And the 1,001 other things that are not listed here, but that crowd your Mind every single day of your life, to the point where it's been months—literally,
months
—since you've asked yourself:
How can I best serve the agenda of my Soul?

“How can you—what?”

“How can I best serve the agenda of my Soul?”

“What in the world is that? And what does that have to do with how we're going to pay the mortgage? Or with Matilda's pregnancy! Good God, get your head out of the clouds.”