Yanni's Blog

This is Part VII of a ten part blog. Part I begins on 10/15/07. In order to better understand what follows, it would be best to read the previous parts.

So, I kept looking for meaning. For me initially, meaning/purpose to me meant finding a cognitive understanding of what life is all about. But, wisely I looked in spiritual directions, too. I started meditating at 16 years of age. I looked into all kinds of “stuff.” And I kept looking and looking and looking and yet still never felt right or felt a connection with myself or with others; still always feeling odd, always odd. I never fit into anything.

And it was not until 20 years ago, when I was sitting in class, similar to this one, with one of my teachers, Philip Burley, when I “got it.” Jaime, my wife and I, would travel three hours one-way to get to these classes because it was the only place we could find anything like it.

We were attending regularly for a year or so and then one night during a session somewhat similar to this, all of a sudden, this profound “Embrace” came over me. It was visceral. I felt it throughout my whole body. I was shaking, vibrating. And it was electric. And it was so embracing and so unitive and so totally transformative. I felt totally accepted and at one with myself. In the middle of it I thought, “Eureka, this is it. This is what I have been looking, but in all the wrong places” [This is a reference to the song “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places”.]

But it was not that kind of love, that co-dependent love stuff that I was looking for. This was the Real Thing: a profound Embrace, a unitive oneness with my Self. And at that moment or during those moments (it was an experience outside of time and space) I said to myself, “One…this is it. And, two, I am not letting go of this one.” And I didn’t. I then began a practice of spending two hours a night in mediation looking for it. By the way, you don’t really have to sit in meditation for two hours a day to experience this.

This is Part VII of a ten part blog.