During my divorce in 2004, my therapist suggested meditation for stress relief — but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you: My actual inspiration to meditate came not from her advice but from Heather Graham, whose radiant portrait on the cover of TIME Magazine was collecting dust on my parents’ coffee table. Gorgeous Heather made it seem so effortless: just sit cross legged on a beach, close your eyes soft as a feather, and boom! Serenity, bliss and illuminated beauty.
Yes, please.
Of course, anyone who meditates or has attempted it knows that the mind does not still itself, which is why it’s a practice. Yet to even approach that level of glow, I was willing to give it a go.
At the time, my life was worn to a frazzle: on one hand, I was hooked on antidepressants to numb the pain of a broken marriage while on the other, I excelled at my position with a famous self-help publishing company as their magazine editor. Which meant it was literally my job to scour Getty Images for the “perfect” cover photos that would sell readers on our magazine. And so I hunted and hunted for a royalty-free picture to convey Heather’s brand of inner peace.
In the process, my mind lassoed on a specific set of images. You probably know the ones I’m talking about … the images of “Ken and Barbie” in tantric embrace, meditating with a glittering ocean in the background. One day, when I’m as good at this as Heather Graham, I’ll magnetize a man who will do THAT with me.
(Last seen in my stock art library archives.)
Images have their place—and potentially a higher purpose—in our lives. When they rivet our attention, a mental process flickers at light speed, faster the brain can compute. It’s as if these images get checked against a cosmic memory bank and a decision is made before we can blink: yes, I want this or no, I want that! Abraham-Hicks refers to this process as launching “rockets of desire,” which eventually “land” (in one way or another) à la manifestation.
Well, 3-2-1, my rockets of desire to meditate with a lover had blasted off to the heavens an obscene number of times. Meanwhile on earth, I was failing on my solo mission to meditate (I mourned the dollars that died in the name of candles, CDs and all walks of enlightenment gear, as detailed in my memoir Wake Up in Love).
What my shrinking savings account taught me was that I needed help from a living, breathing meditation teacher. And eventually I was led to a class where the teacher and I fell in love at first sight. Two weeks later, we were married. (Yup, also in the book!)
This was a love story that never in a million lifetimes would I have felt I deserved—except this time, I’d found true meditation, wherein the thought I don’t deserve this blessing fell away like a grain of sand through the bottomless hourglass of timelessness.
Now leave it to the human mind to find one thing wrong with a perfect dream … this teacher, he did not look one iota like the stock-art model! Plus, initially we meditated together in class, where there were other people all around us. To make the situation worse, he didn’t teach mudras, so our postures were NOT going to be photogenic, if we ever did actually make it to the beach. And when we finally did meditate together in the bedroom at night, my body often drifted off to dreamland. And when the gravity of the Heart tugged my head forward, I looked more like a boiled shrimp than a babe on the beach.
At last, a few days into our relationship, we did take that first, long-desired walk on the beach. But crap, I was so absorbed in the moment that I forgot to ask him if we could sit on the coastline and have a “romantic meditation.”
How could forget to entice him to indulge me?
Quite plainly: Because life had become the meditation, and all need for superficial posturing had washed away in the sound of two eyes closing and a kiss to the rhythm of the surf lapping on the shore. Here, amidst the scent of salty breezes and the sand sinking beneath our soles, we strolled and strolled and strolled…
Who knew it was possible that, seventeen years into this marriage, our every walk in nature would be as simply wonderful as the first? Please don’t get me wrong. No partnership of duration is without its mountains to “get over” — yet it has been my experience with us, and couples we have supported through relationship challenges over the years, that…
The couple who meditates together stays together.
Meditation can take myriad forms, from seated to dancing to walking to Tantric sex and more, because true meditation depends not on how the physical body is positioned, but rather is a mental posture that begins with sensing the outside “world” to be within. From there, it is a consistent turning inward to the One who contains it all. This involves asking, Who is meditating? Or, more simply, Who am I?
Early in my spiritual practice or sadhana, I’d apply this practice to the thoughts floating on the surface of the mind. This is the basic Self-inquiry practice that Nick Gancitano, my teacher and husband, taught and still teaches in Satsang today.
Self-inquiry had been Nick’s practice too, and thus while sitting quietly together a natural attunement happened and still happens to this same frequency—that of the Self. It works like two tuning forks. Strike one with a rubber mallet, and it begins vibrating. Hold the non-moving fork up close to the vibrating one and before you can blink, it starts humming at the same frequency. Ommmm.
Human body-minds, as the sacred temples they are, function in the same way. This is called resonance. And so if inner turbulence swirls within one partner and a couple is in harmony, that turbulence is felt, on some subtle level, by the partner. And if they remember to ask, To whom is this occurring?, they throw an invisible life preserver to the suffering one in that moment — by which they may both attune back to the resonance of Self-awareness, where peace, clarity and love reside. This is effective whether one or both partners initiate this at-one-ment. For where two or more are gathered in my name, there I Am.
Though some good ol’ “rockets of desire” may have played a part in ushering us to the precipice of peace, truly this is not rocket science. It’s ancient wisdom — the wisdom of your own Heart. And it doesn’t even require two — just one. For when Who am I? is inquired with devotion, in partnership or alone, there are no limits to the pictures of love that can be known.
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