Gwyneth's GOOP newsletter arrives with her New Years resolution--and no it's not to subsist on juice for the month of January, though she's doing that anyways--but it is to bring meditation into her life. She writes:
My New Year's resolution is to learn how to meditate. It's always sounded like something I should do, but I don't know how to. My friends who do it say it's really freakin' brilliant. They say you can't know the peace/awareness/contentment until you do it. My brain drives me mental. I am going to start. Tomorrow. I asked three amazing people to share how they achieve this bliss. Their approaches are different but I think they are pretty much landing in the same spot.
I think I get it.
Love,
--- Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth shares her friends' meditation secrets and one of those friends is filmmaker David Lynch, who has a foundation devoted to "transforming lives from within." Here is how Lynch discovered meditation:
In July 1973 I went to the TM center in Los Angeles and met an instructor, and I liked her. She looked like Doris Day. And she taught me this technique. She gave me a mantra, which is a sound-vibration-thought. You don't meditate on the meaning of it, but it's a very specific sound-vibration-thought.
She took me into a little room to have my first meditation. I sat down, closed my eyes, started this mantra -- which is a specific sound-vibration-thought -- and it was like I was in an elevator and they cut the cable. Boom! I fell into bliss - pure bliss. And I was just in there. Then the teacher said, "It's time to come out; it's been twenty minutes." And I said, "IT'S ALREADY BEEN TWENTY MINUTES?!" And she said "Shhhh!," because other people were meditating. It seemed so familiar, but also so new and powerful. After that, I said the word "unique" should be reserved for this experience.
It takes you to an ocean of pure consciousness, pure knowingness. But it's familiar; it's you. And, right away, a sense of happiness emerges - not a goofball happiness, but a thick beauty.