Meditation Teacher

The event of meditation can often be considered boring! You might be getting a different impression here. That misconception can and should be blown out of the water, when approaching it in a way that allows what is inherent, facilities of awareness, to come to the foreground. When entering your own personal awareness, usually the first priority is to take care of the stresses; then the next priority is all the discovery and play that is in harmony with all the world within you and around you.

Our Meditation Teacher

Does it work? This is why the accounts of others come in to play. You get to listen, hear their nuances, and decide for yourself to dare or not to dare? Do you dare to go within in a new fashion? Does it sound safe? Does it sound like it is effective for each of them in a different way? It’s not all light weight, but what I will say is allot happens in the interior within us all, anyways, so better to participate with perhaps the most important part of you, the parts no one else can see, the you that is you, that makes you an individual. It is in the interior that determines how we interpret all experience. It is a wonder, it is truly a wonder from within… and endless wonder of beauty in each and every one of us waiting all the time, right now, waiting patiently for you, for each of us, in each of us, to participate.

what if I am a conduit, a matchstick? In a way, that might be what happens here.

Why Does Nearly Everyone Succeed and Have

Such Staying Power of Consistency?

My guess is it is because I have been taught by exceptional teachers who then told me, to, in turn, teach here in North America. I am made to intuit with others the fundamental ability to meditate deeply and successfully and have deep passion for the value of meditation that was taught me. This request, however surprising it was to hear, from grand masters of meditation in Tibet, hearing this from them motivated me to do them & you, both, justice. I knew, since early childhood, I will need help. I had help along the way that found me with Father Peter; I also reached out & found help along the way where I had to travel to the furthest distance geographically possible and took the greatest chances, and found some of the greatest treasures given to me in learning meditation. Not everyone can, nor should, travel thousands of miles, learn a new language, etc. to deeply learn a new subject. I did as it appeared as a clear path forward, the only path that made any sense to me, so it was mine to follow and I am glad I did, and now it all makes more sense, in hindsight. Since, I have found a way to synthesize what was learned in a way easily understandable to the North American heart & ear, being born in this American culture myself. What I’ve come to realize is that this synthesis is proving consistently comfortable & effective for most everyone as it is conveyed with a simplicity: that meditation need not at all be hard, rather, that its quite personally written in your own body, waiting to be read only by you & engaged.

Who are My Meditation Teachers?

Before going any further, please understand that meditation is not necessarily religious. This is also a misconception, oftentimes. Meditation can also be engaging in a philosophy of kindness of any religion or no religion at all. Someone who is secular, agnostic, atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Islam, or of the hundreds of other faiths: we all can meditate, enter silence, have vespers, enter into a conscious awareness practice and benefit from it. Only one thing happens with me, and that is an intuitive process we easily can do together, with aplomb. Ages 5-105 enjoy meditating with me and I enjoy each and every meditation immensely.

So, who are my teachers? Some of them I will list in the order of arrival into my life & let me tell you, you might have to enter your right brain, the creative side, to follow along here:

At age 6 months, 1972, my own patient soul that escorts me from one dimension to the next, the holder of every memory from the beginning to end, greeted me and reminded me that I chose my parents and chose to learn allot in this sometimes emotionally and mentally arduous life.

Ages 4 to 25. Father Peter, a Franciscan priest who arrived into my life as a friend to my parents, and in turn, he became my best childhood friend. A forever gratitude and salút to my dear friend, Father Peter, for meditating with me around the stations of the cross, at home, and wherever it is we walked. He survived Siberia, was a prisoner of Stalin, learned his meditations with the Catholic Franciscan church in the Transylvanian forests of what was then still Hungary. He was a walking miracle to me always, in the seen and unseen worlds, where I got to peek into where golden light comes from when he prayed in secret but he couldn’t hide the light (kids, they see things adults forgot how to see). I thank him For being with me my whole childhood and for encouraging me to go to Tibet, even if the idea was unconventional to those of the traditional Catholic faith, thinking of it as rather heretical. Father Peter encouraged me without hesitation, and sharing with me why I should: so I can bring back to north America what I learn that has been lost to our churches through wars and politics. His message resonated with a deep knowing and visions I had early in childhood. We somehow spoke a secret language, not just his and mine native Hungarian tongue, but one of silence and presence, and that is what brought him so close to my heart with such deep trust, understanding, and deep knowing. I wanted what he had, not in personality, however wonderful that was; but, in awareness, presence, unseen and compassionate power that was mysterious yet definitely real.

An early vision at age seven: nuns singing together in another language, 1979, singing for the protection of little ones, all of us children. I found these nuns praying for me, across the globe, wearing robes that were not Catholic like here in America, my dear soul showed me people praying together and translated their words for me so I could understand they were praying for all children, and in that, for me. That sincerity as a powerful force became known to me when I was seven years old. Thanks to everyone who prays with great ability in compassion, each of you, I thank you and say to you that true compassion in prayers reaches beyond space and time, is powerful beyond what we can know through reason, and in this, you are my heart, heart-friends. This power, again, I feel and sense is what holds humanity together, and the stronger our compassion the better we are all in heart and in manifest reality in our communities, as well as personally.

1991 Green Tara visits while I study at the college of Wooster to get my bachelors degree in Religious Studies. I did not know it at the time, but a year later I find the visitation described to a “T” in some Tibetan Tantras (in the form of descriptive sequential poetry) and recognition of this affinity by my teachers, in me. This was a spontaneous Tantric experience that I have not completely understood, but I have made a painting of her and perhaps I will write about this experience and share this painting, some day.

In 1992, University of Madison Wisconsin I partook of their ten week intensive Tibetan language and script program, eight hours a day, five days a week, for ten weeks. Intensive is right. I will never forget it! Because Hungarian was my native tongue, and Hungarian is rooted in Uzbec/Uralic, as is Tibetan, this quickened my learning of this third language for me. Actually, the first westerner to ever make a dictionary of Tibetan to English was a Hungarian by the Name of Csonda Körös, who was later sainted by the Tibetans, in a Northern Indian Territatory.

1992 - to today: Tulku Chökyi Nyima Rinpoché is still alive today and teaching in Boudanath, Nepal, a refugee from Tibet & son of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoché. I wanted to keep meditating for ten more years in the Himalayas, he said, instead, I need to return to the USA and teach. That was a tall surprise. While I am not a master, I am definitely & apparently an igniter and that has value enough. He wasn’t wrong, in retrospect, as I can hear, and now so can you, that the secular approach I have developed is helping new as well as seasoned meditators swiftly achieve much desired meditation results and benefits.

1992- today, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoché, father of Chökyi Nyima Rinpoché: anyone who went to him to learn anything with an open mind and open heart, sincere in wishing to learn meditation, was floored when getting to learn from him. I learned, also, from some of his longest term students at Asura Cave Monestary and to those friends and to all of the teachers I am indebted.

1993 Chatral Sangye Dorjé Rinpoché instructed me, as well, another grand Master refugee from Tibet, considered one of the greats.

1993 His holiness the Dalai Lama with a number of practices over a segment of 3 weeks in Sikkim and Darjeeling. (Tulku Urgyen Rinpoché was also one of the Dalai Lama’s teachers). I was so fortunate to sit near the Dalai Lama while he is meditating and teaching his own Tibetan community, rather than westerners as his audience. With all of these meditation powerhouses of knowledge and compassion, I learned that meditation is where it is at, and that this is true that I have a long way to go, but that this long way is beautiful and filled with the beauty of compassion, awareness, mystery, curiosity,joy, healing, fearlessness, wonder, knowledge, humility, and endless trustworthy ways of approaching this moment and any moment.

These were my greatest influencers, and still today, I read and translate Tibetan script for my own pleasure and solace; the language and meaning sinks in deeper every time I read these ancient and also new “terma” poems. There are other authors I read, other teachers who have touched my practice and understanding of how to meditate even better. I am always interested in doing better! Dancing tango is a teacher and those who teach me tango are also teaching me about meditation specifically in leadership and “followership” in kinesthetic movement. Every moment can be a teacher, once you get the hang of meditating and greatest old or new pains can become a treasure, once seen from a whole new vantage point, truly! Even pain and trauma can be an advantage! In Tibet they say the greater the trauma of the past, the greater the advantage in meditation. I find this to be true. Not that I recommend entering or creating trauma for the sake of meditation. Gentleness is the end that we experience and kindness a crown jewel. In being human we are here to learn so much, the whole spectrum of our potential in our personal path of intellect and feeling. In one biological human brain there is enough space for 1000 years of experience to be experienced and stored. From the greatest joys to the greatest sorrows, all, we can bring to this inner mystery and experience of meditation and become better for it, at the very crest of our evolution here and now, determined or influenced by even the little time we take to meditate.

A neurologist by trade, Dr. Dan Cohen, made his dream come true in inventing the SoundChair technology. It is profoundly relaxing, in and of itself. For those of you who come to my meditation space in person, this is definitely something made available to you and to begin with a phenomenon of how a certain focus, rhythms and music can produce a profound and deep relaxation. It’s not for everybody, and if you haven’t tried it ever, there is more to it than what is pictured here. You’ll just have to come and see for yourself. Again, words fall short, and we are here, alive, now, for the experience, not just concepts or theories. If you are online only, there are similar sound frequency technologies that produce similar brainwave pattern effects that are also made available to you, in another format, that are equally profound in effect.

Whether we meet in person or online with Skype/Zoom, etc., we can achieve the results that are unfailing in those that have come before you. All the is required is your inherent human sensibilities, willingness, interest, an openness to new experience and the trust of your ability to follow along the pathways your own awareness unfolds before you and as you follow this incredible inner dance dancing in you, all along.

With over 20 years of teaching methods to pass on to you, this endless beauty of simplicity with results seen and heard here at Making Sanctuary where it is otherwise unheard of elsewhere; to see such results so swiftly opening in new meditators and enhancing long time meditators, is for you, too. We need meditation and it is natural and innate because this is a natural muscle of your own mind. You are in part this wild pulse. Gently come to, enough so you can become unshakable in knowing it is a very good place within to become most familiar. That is what meditation means: to become familiar.

During this unprecedented time take advantage and learn to meditate in such a way that is more satisfying than you ever knew possible. Listen to their stories on the “meditations” tab, and now, make your own story of discovery, creation, the new frontier of you ready to be this lucid dreamer with you of mystery and partnership with creation in a trustworthy path of humble & sustainable awareness.