I had an immediate reaction after that first meditation on the couch, and it
caught my attention, because I didn’t get up as the same person who had sat
down. I stood up and I felt so aware and so alive. It was like I was seeing so
many things for the first time. Some mask was removed from me, and I
wanted more of that.
So I retreated from my life for about six months. I kept up my clinical
practice to some degree, but I canceled all my lectures. My friends thought I
was losing my mind (I was), because What the BLEEP was at its height,
and they reminded me about how much money I could have been making.
But I said I would never walk onstage again until I was no longer living an
ideal for the world, but one for myself. I didn’t want to lecture again until I
was the living example of everything that I was talking about. I needed to
take time for my meditations and to make true change in my life, and I
wanted to have joy from within me and not from outside of me. And I
wanted that to come across when I lectured.
My transformation wasn’t immediate. I meditated every day, looking at
my unwanted emotions, and one by one, I began to unmemorize them. I
started my meditative processes of unlearning and relearning, and I worked
for months to change myself. In the process, I was intentionally dismantling
my old identity and breaking the habit of being myself.
That’s when I began to feel joyful for no reason. I became happier and
happier, and it had nothing to do with anything outside me. Today, I make
time to meditate every morning because I want more of that state of being.
Whatever has drawn you to this book, when you make up your mind to
change, you have to move to a new consciousness. You must become very
clear about what you’re doing, how you’re thinking, how you’re living,
how you’re feeling, and how you’re being ... to the point that it isn’t you,
and you don’t want to be it any longer. And that shift has to reach you on a
gut level.
What you’re about to learn is what I did, the steps I took in making my
own personal changes. But take heart—you very well may have done
something similar in your life already. There is just a little more knowledge
to come, related to the meditative process, in order for you to make this
method of change a skill. So let’s get to it.