Here's my answer:
Currently, my life is a meditation. I meditate off and on throughout every day, while walking in nature, waiting in a checkout line etc. It started in 1975 with a 6-week enlightenment experience I had while traveling from Minneapolis to Niagara Falls, across upstate New York in the most glorious autumn ever, to Boston, and back to Minneapolis. The intention I declared to the Universe was, among other things (like a closer relationship with my daughter and making new friends) to have greater spiritual inner awareness. A longer story than this, but the final message from the Universe to me at the end of the six weeks was, “Contact Anja. Her teacher will be the one to get you off of the planet.” (Exact words.) I knew Anja was a patient of mine at the dental office I worked at so I went to work, found her file, called her on the phone and asked, “What are you into. I have to know.” She invited me to an MSIA seminar she was hosting that night. I didn’t have a car at that time but I took 3 buses and walked several blocks to get there. I was cautious about the seminar but it seemed straightforward to me so at the end of the evening I asked, “What’s next?” Someone suggested a little poetry book called, The Spiritual Promise, which I bought. I journeyed home and when I got there, not wanting to disturb the people whose home I was staying at, I sat on the floor under a tiny lamp to read. While I read the book my heart opened. So magical. I knew I was home. As Spirit would have it, MSIA is an acronym for Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (note the almost exact words I declared to the Universe). My conscious journey in multi-dimensional consciousness began that night, on November 15, 1975. Three months later I moved into an ashram in Minneapolis with 17 other MSIA students, including Anja who has been my best friend since then. She and I traveled the country singing our original spiritual folk music, thinking we were the very ones to bring in the New Age.
I take my studies seriously, as you may know. The meditation I learned how to do was active, not trying to empty the mind but rather to chant tones and/or focus on breathing. The tones I started with were HU (God) or Ani-Hu (empathy with all creation). Two years later I received my 1st initiation, was given my own tone, and from that point through this day, I used/use my personal tones from that and future initiations. Living in a spiritual ashram made it easy to be consistent with meditation because we were all committed to spiritual enlightenment and were meditating at odd hours all the time. It was glorious. There was a period a few years later when I no longer lived in an ashram, and instead was married (to another MSIA student) when, after I claimed the meaning of devotion as “living out my vows” in the world, I made a commitment to meditate for 2 hours a day, which I did for 3 years.
At a time when, a few years later still, after having moved to LA and deciding to leave my marriage, I found a lump in my breast that was cancer. The doctor gave me 10 years. I thought, wait! I don’t want to leave yet. In meditation I had strived to be one with God. Instead, I course corrected, changed everything about my life, continued my spiritual studies but in a more balanced way, and I started living my life for me, expressing who I am (rather than taking care of everyone else). My entire company was created after that point. I have been supporting myself with my art for over 25 years. Meditation now is like breathing. I pause and consciously sit to breathe my tones, but I also feel them always around me as I drift to sleep, wake up, be in nature, share with others, even while I’m working at the gallery. Meditation is life.
- Raphaella Vaisseau
