21-Day Meditation Experience

Day 21 - Seeing with the Eyes of the Soul “Living in constant love and gratitude is the essence of spirituality.” – Akemi G In today’s meditation, we learn to see others and the world with the vision of grace and love. We call this "seeing with the eyes of the soul," because when your deepest self recognizes its essence in another person, it experiences love. When your true self sees itself in an object, it experiences beauty. When we see with the eyes of the soul, we find our pure self everywhere. Daily Journal 1. Make a list of people who have a natural habit of seeing situations in a positive light and bringing out the best in the people around them. Describe their qualities – perhaps it comes from their kindness or lightheartedness – and how you might be able to adopt them for yourself. 2. Close your eyes and bring to mind three people you will see throughout your day today. Visualize them as pure light and feel this connection from your soul to their soul. Journal about your experience and set the intention to remember this feeling when you see them today. 3. Take a moment right now to see yourself with the eyes of the soul. See your own inner light as pure and untouched by any difficulty or concern. Write about how this makes you feel. 4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 20 - The Highest Love Is Grace “Love is such a deep gratitude. When you are truly in love with life, every breath you take is gratitude.” ― Bryant McGill Today’s meditation shows us how to harness the power of gratitude to guide our spiritual transformation. We are used to relying on our ego mind to make major life choices, but the vision and guidance of our separate self is always constrained by our past and our limited understanding that sees the world in terms of differences. The guiding grace of our higher self is not restricted by the past or our limited knowledge. Grace sees the differences in the world as integrated parts of one wholeness. We feel this grace personally as a kind of divine love. This loving state of grace connects us, fulfills us, delights us, transforms us, and awakens us to that elevated state of divine consciousness. Daily Journal 1. Write about a time when you felt transformed by someone’s love. Perhaps you were a child and didn’t even realize it at the time. Think about how that unconditional love and acceptance allowed you to grow in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise. 2. Now, compose a short letter of gratitude to the person who gave you unconditional love, and thank them for showing you the power of grace. 3. List three people you feel are messengers of grace in your life. Describe how you will let them know this. 4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 19 - The Path to Total Transformation “It is only through thanksgiving that I can become myself." ― Kallistos Ware In today’s meditation, we provide the necessary tools of transformation on the path to grace. As we navigate the ups and downs of daily life, with the mix of positive and negative situations at work and home, we need two tools to help us turn our practice of gratitude into a real state of grace: knowledge and experience. Knowledge provides the understanding and vision of how grace manifests, and direct experience gives us the personal validation that makes it real in our lives. Using the tools knowledge and experience with our practice of gratitude ensures that our path to grace is real and practical. These tools allow us to transmute all of our life experiences, positive or negative, into a genuine life of grace. Daily Journal 1. Write about three times in your life where you felt guided in the right direction, even though you didn’t understand why. Reflect on the wise and loving intelligence behind that guidance. 2. Now describe three times in your life where you suffered a great loss or setback, only to see that this unwelcome experience matured you and made you a wiser and more compassionate person than you were before. 3. Journal about a difficulty you are currently experiencing, and list the possible gifts or positive outcomes that can emerge from it in the future. 4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 18 - The Rewards of the Higher Self “You will never accept gratitude as a solution to your problems, until you have reached acceptance.” ― Shannon L. Alder In today’s meditation, we explore the benefits of living from your higher self. Living from your higher self means your sense of identity is rooted in your inner awareness rather than your separate self, or ego, which is oriented toward objects of perception. The higher self is who we are. It is our self-awareness and so it is always with us. The reward of the higher self is a life liberated from the demands, fears, and limitations of the separate self or ego mind. Practicing gratitude and appreciation helps to keep awareness aligned to the higher self because we remain focused on the unifying and uplifting qualities of consciousness, instead of allowing attention to get trapped in differences. Daily Journal 1. Write about how practicing gratitude has lessened or removed feelings of isolation, stress, under-appreciation, or dissatisfaction in your life. 2. Describe how you feel ego might still be blocking your full expression of gratitude. It could be through feelings of entitlement, envy, selfishness, self-pity, or resentment. 3. Pick one of these ego obstacles to gratitude from Question 2, and list at least two active steps for overcoming it. 4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.