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Hello All:

I want to share an experience that has a profound spiritual message that applies to all of us.

Late last year I noticed several lumps in my groin, and upon performance of a biopsy received a diagnosis of "metastatic melanoma," a dangerous and potentially fast-moving cancer, which years ago had a survival rate of one year or less. This was after some 50 years of yogic living habits, spiritual practices and almost never being sick. Quite a surprise.

Scans were done and it was determined that, fortunately, the cancer had not spread beyond the groin to other parts of the body yet. It was decided not to do surgery, and an aggressive course of "immunotherapy" infusions was undertaken using a drug specifically designed to redirect the power of the immune system to destroy this particular kind of cancer. Within six weeks it was working and the tumors were shrinking. However, the side effects from the treatments were extreme, leading to high fevers, extreme weakness, nausea, inability to eat anything for weeks, or even get out of bed.

The treatments also led to the immune system attacking the body's blood, reducing it to less than one-half its normal volume. This landed me in the hospital for nine days in March, where efforts were undertaken to save my life from blood loss, including administering additional drugs to stop the destruction of blood, having transfusions, etc. It finally came around, and since getting out of the hospital, I am doing much better, though in a very weakened state with a lot of rehabilitation to do over the coming months. Meanwhile, the cancer is currently in retreat, but I am still a patient who will have future scans and potential treatments as needed.

On the spiritual dimension of this experience, the one thing that really stands out is the power of the witness, and the effect of many years of daily Deep Meditation. At no time was I (or my wife who has been primary caretaker) overcome by fear, regret, or even much grumbling, live or die, and it could have gone either way (still could, I suppose). There has been a silent joy throughout the whole thing, with quite a bit of levity, and continuing now. No suffering... A definite confirmation of the power of the benefit of long term Deep Meditation practice in the face of a major life challenge.

Of course, this applies to everything in life, whether it be a pandemic, personal financial hardships, health issues, loss of a loved one. Any major life challenge. The life experience will be there, the pain and all the rest, but so too is the silent Divine within us for those who meditate. No real suffering, which is the identification of awareness with the life experiences, including physical, mental and emotional. We saw a lot of suffering in the hospital, people crying out in attachment to their pain and worry, both patients and family members. I wish they had been meditating all these years too. We who teach and share Deep Meditation have a lot of work to do. The world needs this!

The most important thing that has come out of this experience for me is that everyone needs to take a much closer look at undertaking a steady daily Deep Meditation practice. It is the cornerstone of establishing freedom in this life. It is not a big thing to do, only a few minutes each day. Over time, this will bring in the element of abiding inner silence in all aspects of our life and insulate us from the suffering and misery that come when awareness believes it is the external experience. It isn't! In our essential nature, we are beyond all that, untouched, and direct experience verifies this again and again. We can engage fully in life, in absolute freedom.

Deep Meditation is the simplest and easiest way to cultivate this condition of freedom from suffering, no matter what challenges we are facing in life. The book (which is top rated on Amazon with hundreds of reviews) is the quickest and most direct way to get started with Deep Meditation and sustain a simple practice that can change our perspective on everything, including the difficult circumstances we will all surely face at some time in our life. That is why I am telling this story. We never know when extreme difficulties will happen, and we'd like to be ready, established in the witness where we are free.

I also want to offer a few comments here about the overall AYP system of practices. It is vast, developed over many years to cover every nook and cranny of yoga practice and the broad range of spiritual experience that human beings are capable of by virtue of our inherent subtle neurobiological structure. It is a teaching for the ages really, refined and collated here, and accessible for anyone to use. Human beings are designed for advanced spiritual expression and experience, and radiating that into the environment in the form of outpouring divine love, and the emergence of unity in all aspects of ordinary life. This too is very real and verified by many long term practitioners. However, it is not for everyone right now. It is a long journey from the cultivation of abiding inner silence in Deep Meditation to the outer expressions of inner silence as ecstatic conductivity, radiance, and unity.

I feel that I, and many, have jumped the gun in focusing on the broader scope of AYP too much, where instead, the focus for the vast majority of people should be on establishing an easy and steady routine of daily Deep Meditation, and that only. The broad scope of AYP is for the few who are experienced and are ready for that. But it isn't a good idea for most people, and most will not be interested in the broad scope of AYP anyway. Simple daily Deep Meditation alone will provide the necessary abiding inner silence to support all aspects of our life, including reducing suffering in trying times. This is all you need. Trying to do everything at once in AYP (energy practices, etc.) can actually reduce the effects of Deep Meditation.

For everyone engaged in ordinary daily living, this is all that is necessary. So engage in daily Deep Meditation first. Get the book, and do it today.

Thank you for listening to this old yogi. It can make all the difference when a crisis comes. That is what has been brought home by my experience. Meditate!

The guru is in you.

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Originally posted by BlueRaincoat

I feel we could be more conservative in our advice in the forums. Beginners often do not recognise overload. Maybe we could do more to help them understand how important it is to safeguard their meditation practice. And also encourage everyone to stick to the meditation technique that suits them. There is a perception that the alternatives to the I AM meditation are second best. This perception puts pressure on some practitioners to hang on to a meditation technique that is too strong for them. The best meditation technique for each of us is the one that is sustainable. If that happens to be breath meditation or passive awareness, then that is the practice we do and love, and we should not feel that we are underprivileged because we're unable to meditate with I AM. I also feel that passive awareness meditation can receive more attention in AYP. For oversensitive practitioners, it is the natural progression from breath meditation.

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Originally posted by Buffle37


I have translated your message for the forum in French:

https://forum-meditation-ayp.com/vi...07d8a92#p490

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