THE BEST THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN
For years, I followed various teachers and did things as I was instructed to do. But my spiritual life really took off when I finally trusted myself enough to KNOW WHAT WORKS FOR ME.
To my mind, the very best thing that could happen from you visiting this site is that you cobble together your own way of doing inner work. Every guided meditation you find on this site or in 99 VISIONS is meant to be a jumping off point. They are just breadcrumbs on the path to get you on your way. You can mix two together, you can edit or augment any of them and make them your own. One of the greatest things any of this media could do is inspire you to create your own mash-up meditation adventures to take yourself on. There are all kinds of unlived pieces of you that just need 10 minutes of your kind attention so they can offer up their hidden gifts.
The second greatest thing that these meditations could do is connect you to your own inner helpers – what I like to call your friends on the inside. This is something that has been so powerful in my own life – we tend to feel like we are on our own in this great big world and it’s just not true. There is a whole cast of characters just waiting for you to make contact. If cultivating invisible friends interests you, listen to Episode 6 of the podcast – VIPs and then close your eyes and go find your powerful allies.
We are alive at this moment in time for a reason. These are heightened times we are living in; we can either throw up our hands, throw in the towel or we can use every tool at our disposal to shake ourselves free and look at it all (the good and the terrible) with wonder and leave the door cracked open for our genius and the world's genius to show up.
Here's a great Joseph Campbell piece that gets right to the heart of this matter...
"There's a moment there in Arthur's banquet hall when all the knights are assembled around the Round Table. Arthur would not let anyone start to eat until an adventure had occurred. Well, in those days adventures were rather normal, so people didn't go hungry for long.
They were waiting for this day's adventure, and it did indeed occur. The Holy Grail itself showed itself to the assembled knights - not in its full glory but covered with a great, radiant cloth. Then it withdrew. All were left ravished, sitting there in awe.
Finally, Gawain, Arthur's nephew, stood up and said, "I propose a vow to this company, that we should all go in quest of that Grail to behold it unveiled."
Now we come to the part that interested me. The text reads,
'They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group.
Each entered the Forest Adventurous at one point or another, which he himself had chosen, where they saw it to be thickest, all in those places where they found no way or path.'
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.
Where there is a way or a path, it's someone else's way. Each knight enters the forest at the most mysterious point and follows his own intuition. What each brings forth is what never before was on land or sea: the fulfillment of his unique potentialities, which are different from anybody else's...when the knight sees the trail of another, thinks he's getting there, and starts to follow the other's track, he goes astray entirely.
The idea is to find your own way."
- Joseph Campbell