I was sure I couldn’t do it. I didn’t even want to do it. To be frank, Meditation scared me. I would have much preferred eating namaste brownies for $6 a pop from Urth Café or getting a massage dubbed ‘the zen experience’ than to actually focus and apply myself to attain Inner Peace. That’s because I didn’t know that Inner Peace actually existed.

I remember vividly my first time going to Cosmos Tree Meditation Center on the Upper East Side. I was new to the city and my seasoned urbanite girlfriend would invite me to join her for nights out that began with meeting at the Meditation Center for a one-hour silent Meditation then heading out to a nightclub. Not only was it a wardrobe crisis to fit in those two activates into a one outfit wonder but, I found, there was a profound sweetness and quietude that steeped inside of me from Meditation that made the other things fall away, even and especially, the loud thumping baselines from subterranean downtown night life. After a few short tandem nights out comprised of this formula I surrendered the second chapter and just attended the main event. I was hooked. Meditation at Cosmos Tree was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

I have always been a go-getter and a fast-moving, high-heel wearing, multi-tasking, modern girl. I thought my worth was determined by what I could produce, whom I could make happy and how hard I worked. I woke up in the morning and launched into a blitz of activity and remained eclipsed by that tornado until bedtime when I crashed from exhaustion. To sit still during waking hours, and focus inwardly, felt like certain death. I was terrified of not being the overachiever. I was terrified of just being. That high blood pressure, inner fire-breathing dragon was mine to slay. Yet, when I sat in my first Meditation the experience I had was utterly opposite of that. If I focused on the Soul within everything else fell away. It was remarkably easy and I discovered, through direct experience, that there was much more to me than who I was in the world.

In the Meditation I was filled with a pulsing warmth and the more I followed the instructions – repeating the Sanskrit name of God, “HU,” and focus at the Upper Part of the Third Eye – the higher I was Lifted. I could feel mySelf being pulled upwards. At times it felt like I was even floating above mySelf. I was met by a me, a Self, that I had known all along but didn’t live as day-to-day. It was a very ancient place inside of me and this euphoria was very familiar. It was an Essence that I recognized but I had clouded so much other stuff on top of it along the way. It was Pureness alive within. I was light and flowing. It felt like the crown at the top of my head had opened like a hatch and in poured radiant energy.

The Meditation came to a close with an elegantly guided Process by which I was led to send Healings and Blessings to others, ask for Guidance and Clarity and Surrender anything that had been released during the Meditation. I did so and I felt much better. I slowly returned back into the room. My breath was long and steady, my eyes adjusting to the candle-light and a soft smile turned the corners of my lips upwards. I knew I had found something profound: My own private island getaway in the middle of the cage-rattling, shake your moneymaker New York City. I had found my own inner destination wedding; where the spark of Light within me was in Union with God. It is the closest to Home I’ve ever felt.

And the most me I’ve ever been.

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