Self

4 Spiritual Lessons I Learned Over Decades Of Meditation & 57 Trips To India

Photo: Jihan Nafiaa Zahri / Shutterstock
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At 19, I was introduced to meditation. It sparked a lifelong quest for joy and inner peace. It also placed me on a path that would enable me to enjoy a rewarding career assisting others to find their own peace and happiness through the methods and lessons I've learned.

I have drawn extensively from experiences in my own life and from some of the most prominent spiritual teachers of the day — including Maharaji, Muktananda, and Gurumayi, along with Amma Bhagavan of the Oneness University. The message from each Guru and spiritual leader with whom I studied was clear to me, not from the thousands of hours I listened and learned how to meditate, but from observing their own lives. 

My experience and education have taught me that the path to joy and inner peace is forged by a lifetime of meditation, focus, and visualization — all of which leads inexorably to manifestation.

RELATED: How To Make Daily Meditation Work — Even On The Most Frantic Schedule

Here are four key lessons I've learned through years of meditation and spiritual study

1. Focus on what you desire

In 1987, I sought financing for a new design project that would include a charitable component. I had initially sought $1 million, and while took some time, I raised $850,000 with all the aspects of the deal that I required. It was like having a generous relative offering me a gift and even though many people told me it couldn’t be done, it happened. 

The technique that I used, which I observed in both of my parents, was their habit of thinking about exactly what they wanted, not letting logic interfere with their imagination, and through consistent focus, allowing miracles to unfold. My mother had 15 miscarriages before I was born. My father became a surgeon even though he had been blinded in one eye as a boy. They each demonstrated unstoppable focus — and remarkable results followed.

2. Learn and practice various inner skills

My peaceful path was interrupted by my husband’s reaction to medication and a violent episode that triggered a very violent episode that my divorce in 1998. For safety, I left the meditation group to which we both belonged and joined the Oneness movement, committed to teaching all humans to live in “causeless joy." 

During a 21-day training in India in 2006 I met an Australian spiritual leader who was visiting the campus. I asked him the secret to life, and he replied that when he thinks about something it appears. When I asked how he did that he appeared very surprised and told me that I only need to focus. 

This was the first time I began to understand that what I wanted was possible. I simply needed more training so that I could quickly glide from meditation to visualization to manifestation.

RELATED: 7 Spiritual Hacks For Finding Peace When Meditation Just Won't Work

3. Seek to align your 'one-pointedness' through repetition

One Easter Sunday, I was chanting in Sanskrit and I heard an angel’s voice singing the same chant in my right ear. I had been practicing this chant to the Goddess Mahalakshmi since the 1980s, so again the message was clear that focus, intention, and repetition produce desired results.

I have had many similar experiences with Jesus as well. 

4. Avoid focusing on what you don't desire

If you focus on what you do not want, problems increase, solutions are delayed and you suffer. 

RELATED: I Meditated On My Fear Of Death And Had A Spectacular Realization

A few examples of meditation, focus and visualization in action

Even with many years of structured and informal training, I needed an inner experience to convince myself that this was a valid path to follow. In 1975, I came down with flu during my second visit to India. My symptoms worsened until I felt close to death. So close, in fact, that I experienced a near-death moment.

During this experience, the bliss was all around me. I felt more joy than I had ever felt and a “lightness of being." As I floated toward the bright light, I realized the suffering my grandmother and mother would feel if I died. The instant I had that thought, I was dropped down the bed, landing hard, and all the aches and pains, fever, and exhaustion returned — I felt extremely ill again.

I realized that my thoughts had shifted my reality. I had taken a step toward understanding divine law and manifesting.

RELATED: 12 Ways To Connect With Your Higher Self & Transform Your Life

A further brush with the divine presence

I have studied with many Gurus since my first experience in 1969 including experiencing an incredible bilocation with Swami Muktananda, founder of the Siddha lineage. Through this apparition, he answered a desperate prayer for my emotional pain to lessen.

Fresh from the shocking infidelity of my boyfriend, I literally felt as if I were encased in cement as I boarded my plane in New York to fly to India on a business trip. Even though I had never met Muktananda and I was not his devotee, Muktananda, considered a national treasure of India, appeared to me at the New Delhi airport in 1982 while he simultaneously was seen in his Ganeshpuri India ashram hundreds of miles away.

He looked absolutely real and solid. As he blessed me, he sent a bolt of light into my heart and I was filled with joy. 

RELATED: How Meditation Paves The Way For Forgiveness & Letting Go — And 3 Ways To Get Started

Putting spiritual lessons into action for others

As my life has progressed, I've seen time and again how the meditation-focus-visualization-manifestation cycle produced joy and inner peace for me and for many clients. 

It helped me find a solution to saving dozens of stray dogs in a village in India and allowed me to connect with and befriend many fascinating people who shared my goals.

It also helped me attract multiple dates who were my "dream men", including a famous Bollywood actor and a Harvard-educated master swimmer.

I also used it to focus on de-aging, which helped me find peace during the COVID pandemic by introducing me to the stem cell reactivation patches that I believe helped alleviate aches and pains and chronic health issues.

I have been a coach for 24 years, working with worldwide clients and offering the tools and skills that have been revealed to me, including the step-by-step guide to “Manifesting Rapidly." As more of us find this positive groove the biggest benefit is lifestyle adjustment so that we self-soothe when something troubling is on the horizon and almost instantly, we pivot to focus on what we want and need.

This provides daily benefits to prevent suffering because when we tap into this divine power source, we become powerful. This is the diametric opposite of feeling more and more overwhelmed, anxious, and disappointed, which is a common by-product of aging and one that no one desires. They simply don't realize there is another way to live.

RELATED: The 1-Minute Visualization Exercise That Boosts Your Mood 

Susan Allan is a certified mediator and coach and the founder of the Marriage Forum Inc and creator of The 6 Part Conversation© and The 7 Stages of Marriage and Divorce training to help people understand their own needs and their partners.