“The primary goal of meditation is not relaxation–it is awareness. This is what leads eventually to getting the mind back under control. Relaxation is a side effect of learning how to meditate.” Suzanne Kobosa

As we shift our feelings and thoughts to positive from negative, we become aware of the power that we feel inside. We are becoming aware of our soul. The soul is bigger that just our mind. It includes our dreams, our feelings as well as our thoughts.

I don’t think that we can try to attain the awakening of our soul in any other way than by choosing to put ourselves in the presence of the God of our understanding. Many centuries ago, a wonderful monk lived and wrote “Practice in the Presence of God”. He taught me, centuries later, that all I had to do was practice presenting myself to my God. I didn’t have to do anything else but put myself in a place where the God of my understanding could communicate with me.

Prayer is when I communicate with my God and meditation is the practice of listening to God. Although I have tried many times to maintain the principles of meditation to my life, I have never been able to do meditation in the traditional way of going to one place and commencing to meditate.

Instead I set aside time several times a day to “check in” with Him/Her/Us. When I present myself to God for His/Her/Our answers, I come in a spirit of peace and quiet. I rarely “hear” anything. Instead I sense directions or guidance from Him. If my direction is God’s will for my life, the going will be easy. If I am trying to force something to happen, I will become stressed about it.

The difficulty is in getting out of God’s way. If I think that I know exactly the direction of God’s guidance, I have learned that it is probably my ego answering me. Another way that I use to understand God’s direction is when I really want direction to be a certain way, then I resolve to not do anything to make anything happen. This is especially hard when all that may be needed is a phone call. If I don’t receive some kind of guidance, I realize that the answer may not be no, but rather may be later. This letting go releases great energy and feelings of belonging. “Let go and let God.”

From A Worshiper’s Tale:

“There was once a woman who was religious and devout and filled with love for God. Each morning she would go to church and, on her way, children would call out to her, beggars would accost her, but so immersed was she in her devotions that she did not even see them.

Now one day she walked down the street in her customary manner and arrived at the church just in time for service. She pushed the door, but it would not open. She pushed it again, harder, and found the door was locked.

Distressed at the thought that she would miss service for the first time in years and not knowing what to do, she looked up. And there, right before her face, she found a note pinned to the door.

It said, “I’m out there!”