NEW & SELECTED TEACHINGS

Attention is like fairy dust. We cast it upon the beings, doings, and things that we value. What we care about responds, becoming more alive, energized, and even sparkling.

It’s no wonder that spiritual teachers throughout time have urged aspirants to have clear intentions and focus. Gathered attention has power; and when one’s attention joins another’s or even a whole group’s, attention can be profoundly powerful.

In my teaching, I have consistently offered guided meditations. Each meditation is an opportunity for listeners, and myself, to join our forces of attention to elicit aspects and expressions of wakeful consciousness. These meditations have been informed by my own inner journeys as well as the pointers that I have received from my teachers.

In my youth, I took Paramahansa Yogananda to be my teacher, despite the fact that he had already passed beyond this world in 1952 (several years before I was born). I would listen to those who continued on with his ministry, when they offered instructions in meditation posture and heartful receptivity. I particularly recall the following evocation: Speak to God in the language of your heart repeating, “Reveal Thyself. Reveal Thyself.”

With this simple, short, guided meditation, I was given a means to channel both my love for God and my desire to know God. It helped me attune to my heart’s depth and to become practiced in openly listening and sensing. I became conscious of holy desire, a portal to deeper union with the ground from which the desire to know God arises. It was a conscious experience of desire that differed greatly from my experiences of unconsciously acting upon or suppressing desire.

Many guided meditations aim to bring that which is unconscious into consciousness, as well as to dismantle structures of mind. I was largely exposed to such guided meditations in my years studying with Adyashanti. Assumed reference points were called into question, as he pointed to awareness as a fundamental aspect of Self. In the meditations he guided, Adya would ask, “Does awareness have an age? . . . a gender? . . . an edge, or boundary?” As I listened and came to know awareness more intimately, I felt limiting reference points loosen and default perceptions dissolve.

While these guided meditations were freeing, others pointed to what remains when overlying structures yield or are simply sidestepped. One pointer that Adya has wisely given is to ask, “Is peace present here now, already (before I go looking for it)?” This question redirects attention away from mind, to direct experience in ever-present being.

My own interest when guiding meditations has largely been to keep attention on an atmosphere of deep calm, providing a context into which structures of mind and separate self can let go. I feel this approach connects mind and body and anchors attention and body awareness in nourishing aspects of spirit, including silence, peace, vitality, and spacious freedom.

Guided meditations play an important part in clarifying how one can give the precious gift of attention. They offer means of repatterning how attention is directed. Attention is often filtered through the thinking mind and the me-centric view. Guided meditations point beyond these filters to direct experience and knowledge in being. They offer an avenue, beyond thought and separation, to an atmosphere of peace in which the sense of self or “the meditator” can find ultimate rest in universal consciousness.

If you would like to explore further . . . Open Gate Sangha offers guided meditations as video and audio teachings (for free), and as audio downloads from our online store (for free and varying prices). Follow these links for Adya’s video and audio teachings, and store downloads, and Mukti’s video and audio teachings, and store downloads. Enjoy!

© 2025 by Mukti Gray. All rights reserved.