I was a busy young mother with small children in Seattle during the 1970's when I began to experience stress and sleepless nights.
"You have to relax," my doctor advised.
I didn't need him to tell me to relax, I thought.
If I knew how to relax, I wouldn't be stressed! It was during one of those sleepless nights when two words suddenly popped into my head: transcendental meditation.
T.
M.
Where had I heard that?Oh, The Beatles.
I remembered.
They went to some mountaintop to meet with some guru.
I'll check into it tomorrow, I sighed, as I struggled back to sleep.
The next morning after breakfast, I dragged out the Lincoln logs to keep the kids busy for ten minutes while I checked the yellow pages for meditation.
There it was: Transcendental Meditation.
I hurried to make the telephone call before my ten minutes were up.
A very pleasant voice answered.
I was already beginning to relax.
She explained, "The course takes one week and costs $125.
You meet everyday with a teacher who leads you through the steps to meditation.
" "What if I don't learn how to meditate in a week?"She didn't know how stressed I was.
"We will work with you as long as necessary," she assured me.
And that was that.
I learned T.
M.
I didn't go to a mountaintop.
I went to an office building in Seattle where transcendental meditation was being taught.
I didn't have the Beatles's guru but I had a very good one of my own.
I meditated on and off, mostly on, for the next 30 years.
It was 2004.
My brother-in-law discovered he had lung cancer.
"I can't sleep," he told me.
"I can't get any rest.
The medicine the doctor gave me to relax doesn't really work.
I read about cancer and meditation.
Can you teach me how to meditate?" "I'm no meditation teacher," I told him, " but I will teach you how I meditate.
" And I did.
He often told me before he died that meditation helped him to rest when nothing else seemed to work.
Something I learned 30 years earlier helped a loved one much later.
You never know.