Finding peace

Meditation
I was mentally a mess Very dissolutioned with the way my life was going. I would sit in church and watch everyone else. I'd read their auras and switch off when a sermon started. Often I was told women were sinful. I would come out at the end and wonder where in the heck was a creator in that? If you talk to your creator aren't you supposed to get feedback, an answer or something? So I started searching different religions from my present one. Pentecostalism, reiki, different meditation styles, creative visualisation. I started going to all the healthy lifestyle exhibitions. Nothing gave me the inner peace that I longed for.

I one occasion I was walking round an exhibition with everyone trying to sell their product or their beliefs when I came on a stall where people were just sitting. A man at the stall [Sahaja Yoga], asked if if I would like to try so I found myself sitting with a small group of people, hands palm upwards and a young woman shortly began working on me from behind. She just told me to look at a photo of a woman on a table at the front or close my eyes. The photo was a bit confronting so I closed my eyes. There was no drastic response but I felt peaceful. It had been a very, very long time since I had felt any peace in my heart. At the end she gave a paper with the time and place of meditation sessions.

I started going each week. I was suspicious. Who were these people? Were they good living or was it some sort of cult? But every week it was peaceful. It introduced ideas that were quite different from my strict Christian beliefs. After a few months someone commented that something was different about me. I didn't question her. I could feel the difference. It was water in the desert. It took me a long time for me to trust them. Living in a small country [New Zealand] bizarre cults stood out. Was this another one?

Eventually I cut ties with the Christian group. I've kept up with this same group of people and I now know how to keep peace and balance in my life in a sensible, down to earth way. Leaving my christian group was so hard. I lost all my friends. I was on my own. It took me a long time to gain new friends and start over but I wouldn't change anything. Except I would perhaps have woken up to myself earlier, a lot earlier.