The Puzzle and Key…to Life! By Cyma Shapiro

Here’s a puzzle for you:

You gaze into your eyes, breathe heavily, and scan your body.

Are you jogging around the block for the first time, meditating or about to have sex?

You become elated, joyful, and sometimes bored and uncaring. You often come up against your edge. Are you struggling in your marriage, engaging with your children or dealing with something else?

Give up? You are dealing with something else, and that “else” is YOU!

According to Sally Kempton’s latest (and greatest) book, Meditation for the Love of It: Enjoying Your Own Deepest Experience, you…can find your best…you… by being with…you!

A 370-page tribute to the experience, Kempton, a writer, author and master teacher of meditation and Tantric wisdom, believes that whatever shows up comes out of Consciousness and ultimately, love.  She also believes that this is the true key to happiness, peace and self-love; a path to reducing stress and clearing the mind. 

Kempton takes great pains to guide the reader toward greater peace and enjoyment with the following tips:

• Stop worrying about technique
• If your relationship to this becomes troublesome, or more ‘edgy,’ this only requires more patience.
• Be creative, play
• Pay attention to the energy that emerges with the experience. Treat it with tenderness.

Finally, Kempton proposes this: the key to going deep in meditation is wanting to… go deep. The more you crave it, the easier it is to meditate. Kind of like being with your children…or…being with your partner!

This book is a ‘how-to’ of everything meditation – suggestions for body positions and practice techniques; various mantras; tips for how to address the mind, emotional and physical blocks, and the heart.  Kempton envelopes the entire experience and gently exhorts, you, the reader to simply (try to) follow.

As a seeker who is always looking for methods to greater harmony, wholeness and peace, meditation is one of the many methods I employ in my daily practice. Without practices, daily life often becomes too much of a burden with its (many) external variables, and with unexpected internal strife. As older mothers, we’ve got our hands full with younger children, older parents, aging bodies and profound life changes. Without anchors, we sail adrift.

Self-love is probably the greatest gift we can give ourselves and one of the greatest traits we can pass down to our children. In this case, it’s self-care without the sexy! Kempton’s Meditation for the Love of It can be one more tool for us to use on our path to wholeness.

Sally Kempton has been practicing and teaching since the early 1970’s. Sally is an acknowledged master teacher of meditation, subtle energy and Tantric wisdom. Her students include leading teachers of yoga and meditation from around the world. Sally teaches at Kripalu Yoga Center in Lenox, MA, Esalen, in CA, and leads retreats and workshops internationally.  She also writes the popular “Wisdom” column for Yoga Journal. Visit Sally @ http://www.sallykempton.com./