Leave Me Alone;
I'm Trying!!!

She happens to be one of the most rebellious and stubborn people I know (although in a quiet kind of way). She's spiritual, but not the kind that really goes out of her way for it. She has never attended a workshop, has read only a handful of the books I've read and has the habit of resisting a lot of what she reads, hears or we discuss about such matters. Her meditation practices have been even spottier than mine used to be, to say the least. Lately, she'd gotten to a point where she was annoyed at anything even remotely spiritual-sounding, and for the last few months had been spending a lot of time stewing about these issues, not taking any step forward, and actually taking a few back.

Then, one fine day, she's chatting with a friend on the phone about some of her issues, and he says to her: "Remember who you really are." That strikes her to the point of bringing tears. She starts repeating to herself: "Remember who I am," and then just "I am" several times during her meditation that evening (by the way, she had completely stopped meditating for a while, and I was the one who had insisted several times that she should start doing it again). Then, all of a sudden, BOOM! She's there. She had the whole experience, from complete union and connection with everything in the Universe to ecstatic bliss to total clarity about our purpose here to absolute consciousness that she had planned her experience and could change it however she chose to, etc. She even got a vision of her surrounding "reality" completely dissolving into pure light!!!

After I forced myself to congratulate her on her wonderful experience and got passed all my anger and frustration with myself, I managed to have a good meditation session that evening. I even got a blissful glimpse, but when I tried to emulate my friend's "I am" exercise (which is very powerful, by the way) in an attempt to get passed that state and go further, a voice popped in my head, saying: "Relax. You are trying too hard!"

Finally, I just had to quit it and accept the fact that there must be a good reason why I chose to make this seemingly simple process so hard; obviously some lesson I wanted to learn. I also had to understand and, most importantly, accept this simplest of all truths: We are all unique in our sameness. Each one of us is completely different from everyone else, and we have our own individual ways, systems, processes, timing, etc, to get it done (whatever "it" is).