playing around in one of these subtle spaces and you’ll pop through into the vast-

ness, into the silences, into the great pool of awareness. 

It is very important, however, not to get yourself into a sort of technique junkie 

situation. You don’t want to experiment so much that you are doing one practice 

today, another practice tomorrow, and don’t get deep into any of them. Experi-

menting doesn’t mean you hop from technique to technique. 

Rev. O’Brian:

 At the core of yoga is the instruction to explore and to experience, 

because that is part of opening to the deep Self that is beyond change. How do we 

know when we are experiencing the deep Self?

Sally Kempton:

 We know we are in the Self when our awareness opens up and 

we are completely immersed in the present moment, when there is no thought 

of future, past, or even the world. We are utterly inside the unfolding experience 

of being here now. This is one of the most beautiful and immediate experiences 

of Self. Another earmark of being present with the Self is that it feels blissful. 

Another, is an experience of a kind of crystalline awareness.

Rev. O’Brian:

 A passage from the Bhagavad Gita on meditation says: the mind is 

very fickle. It is impetuous, strong and obstinate…it is as difficult to control as the 

wind. How do we address this perennial problem?

Sally Kempton: 

The nature of the mind is to move, to throw up thoughts and 

images, so the first stage of meditation is to harness the mind. I start my daily 

practice with a mantra that I received from my teacher. It has a heightened 

power, that comes through my lineage of teachers, to take the mind inside. You 

start by focusing the mind on the mantra and then, as any meditator knows, the 

mind will start to think and you’ll bring it back to the mantra. You have to teach 

the mind to stay in one place. You have to give it some discipline. But you can’t 

beat it up because the mind is very delicate and sensitive. 

The mind is the most immediately accessible form of the creative energy of 

the universe. That deep subtle power, that subtle love intelligence that is behind 

everything that exists, is manifesting in human beings as our mind. Just like that 

universal intelligence, it is constantly creating worlds in the mind. To ask the 

mind to shut up is literally like trying to fight the creative force of the universe. 

What we need to do is tune into the part of the mind that is subtler than the 

thinking mind, the part that just observes, “Ok, here’s a thought.” Just observe 

that you are thinking, and from that point of observation, come back to your 

essential focal practice. 

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Enlightenment Journal | Spring 2012