Rev. Patrick J. Harbula - Meditation: The Simple and Practical Way to Begin Meditating

Isnt it interesting reflecting back on certain events in life that led us in a particular direction? Perhaps we would end up in a similar place if we hadnt experienced the same events, or perhaps we wouldnt. My sense and belief is that we would arrive at a similar station and philosophy of life, but certainly not exactly the same. Nevertheless, the path that led me to a life of meditation unfolded in what seemed like random events, but I am certain I would have landed here one way or another.

My first job, at sixteen, working for someone other than my mom as her tennis instructor assistant, was stringing tennis rackets at Paramount Sports Tennis Shop in Hollywood. I made three dollars per racket. This was at a time when tennis was extremely popular in the United States. Lots of people were taking lessons and learning and playing the sport, so there were tennis shops in most cities in Southern California and Paramount Sports, which I always assumed was named such because of its proximity to Paramount Studios, was the most popular shop in Los Angeles County.

But how did this job lead me to a forty-two-year practice of meditation and ultimately writing this book? My boss at the time was not only an excellent businessman and shop owner, but also a mystic. He invited me to attend an introductory meeting at a training called Mind Probe One and told me if I wanted to take the weeklong training, he would pay for half, which I think left me with a price tag of 150 dollars. Upon attending an introductory meeting, I thought the process seemed pretty weird. On the other hand, weird was not much of a deterrent for me. In fact, it was more like an incentive. As an introspective and inquisitive child and throughout my life, I have consistently challenged traditional beliefs and societal norms.

There were many aspects of the training that I wont go into, but the primary process was a meditation technique called the Color Cycleessentially imagining yourself surrounded and immersed in the colors of the spectrum and rainbow in successionred, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and finally, white. Each color represents a specific energy and quality, and white represents the center of the mind, where all things are possible. There were many other techniques and practices involved in the training, including visualization, psychic diagnosis, and energy healing, but all of them were preceded by the Color Cycle process.

After completing the weeklong training, I continued to do the meditation practice for many years. The only classes I found of interest in late high school and college were philosophy, psychology, and a smidgeon of sociology, but I hadnt studied much Eastern philosophy up to that point. Purely as a result of meditation practice and not from the influence of any reading or teaching, at twenty years old, I had a mystical experience, where I knew and felt myself as one with the Infinite Universe. I was given answers to any and all questions. I knew without a doubt that everything and all sentient beings were part of one interconnected organism we can call the Infinite Universe, or God. Every action or occurrence affects the whole and everything and everyone within the whole. Time is an illusion. At the level of true reality, everything that has ever happened or ever will happen occurs at the same time, in one moment. I was going to write the present moment, but there isnt even a present moment, because that would mean there is a past and a future.

It wasnt until I was twenty-three that I found New Thought philosophy, specifically Science of Mind (named after a book written by Ernest Holmes), which includes a strong influence of Eastern and Western metaphysics and an emphasis on meditation and affirmative prayer. I found in New Thought a community of people who understood (at least at a conceptual level for some and an experiential level for others) what I had already learned from my own mystical experience.

My journey was somewhat backward from that of most people on a meditative path who learn about metaphysics and spiritual philosophy, then start a practice, then (for those who take it to a deeper level) have mystical experiences. I had the mystical experience through my meditation practice, which ultimately led me to be part of a larger community of like-minded people and a student of many different meditation schools. My studies in this system led me to become ordained as a Minister of Spiritual Awareness in 1986 by the late Dr. Earl Barnum, a pioneer in the field of New Thought and Religious Science. I later affiliated with Religious Science International in 2010, which is now called Centers for Spiritual Living.

While I am writing this book from a spiritual practice, it is important to emphasize that embarking on a spiritual path is not at all necessary to receive the benefits from meditative practice, but if you continue to meditate, dont be too surprised if you sooner or later deepen your appreciation for the inner realms of your own consciousness and the mystery of life.

At twenty-one, I followed in my mothers footsteps along the path of a tennis-teaching professional. I taught visualization techniques (a form of meditation I will write about later) to my tennis students to help them improve their performance on the court. I found that people who practiced these techniques in addition to physical practice would improve at a much faster rate than those who did not. Scientific studies corroborate my own findings. I also invented a practice called Zen Tennis, which I will elucidate in chapter 4, Meditation Practice.

Many of my students reported that they used these techniques to improve other areas of their lives. Eventually, it occurred to me that this is really good stuff that needs to get out to larger numbers of people. At age twenty-seven, I was teaching a class called The Nature of the Soul, which had a strong emphasis on meditation practice and spiritual service and had a profound effect on my spiritual evolution. The entire class and one additional person became the first staff to produce