A Broken Heart and a Meditation Mystery

It’s 32 years ago, and I'm in the common room of a youth hostel in Rosslare, Ireland.

I’m chatting to some guys I’ve just met when a girl walks in, and my heart goes flip-flap.

She has long blonde hair that flows down to her waist, a fair complexion with a flush of pink in her cheeks, and deep blue eyes that reflect the ceiling light.

She is one the most gorgeous girls I’ve ever seen, and it’s an effort not to gape as my world freezes, my mind shoots into overdrive, and I try to concoct a plan to introduce myself.

Now, sometimes luck flitters away the moment you reach for it.

At other times,it flutters down and perches on your shoulder.

On this particular day, the gods aresmiling down on me, and every little strategy I come up with works.

I ask her if she wants to play chess. She says yes.

I ask her if she wants to play Chinese patience (where she needs to sit beside me), and she says yes.

One thing leads to the next, and before I know it, we are walking hand in hand along the nearby seashore, gulping in the briny air and gazing out upon the foamy, breaking waves.

From that moment on, everything flows, and not only do we spend time together in Ireland, I also end up staying with her and her family in the south of Germany near the Black Forest.

It is a perfect bubble in time.?

I’m crazily in love.

She seems to return my feelings.

And the possibility of a future together dazzles me like an explosion of fireworks in a clear night sky.

Except that’s not how it turns out.

After leaving her place and returning to Italy (where I am studying), I call her and ask when we should meet again.

Paris.

Milan.

Lake Como.

So many options.

So much to see together.

I wait for her to tell me her preference.

The phone line falls silent…

And she answers that she doesn't want to meet me again.

SMy mind does a doubletake.

Words bottleneck in my throat.

My head spins, and the best I can do is stutter a few jumbled phrases before hanging up.

Now, maybe today, I'd question her on what she was thinking and try to reassure her that whatever was troubling her, we could sort it out.

But back then there was no Internet, international phone calls cost a fortune, and inexperienced as I was, I just didn't know what to say.

In the end, I never saw or spoke to her again.

Of course, if that were the end of the story, things might not have been so bad.

But even though I never saw or spoke to her again, it was hard to stop thinking of her.

And every time I thought of her, itwas as if someone had wrapped two big hands around my heart and started to squeeze.

And even when I tried not to think of her, I only needed the vaguest reference to anything German for the pain to kick in once more.

I rememberturning on the TV one night in Italy and stumbling upon a channel showing the Stuttgart Athletics Meet.

Stuttgart.

A city in Southern Germany.

Only a few kilometers away from where my beloved lived.

It was the proverbial dagger to the heart, and the dagger kept sliding in and out until I finally switched channels in a futile attempt to stem the bleeding.

With time, the pain did, of course, dull. But all I needed was to see or hear anything that reminded me of her for the bleeding to start again.

It was then that I learned that time doesn't heal everything, it just buries stuff. Stuff that still lurks in the basement of your being.

This all happened shortly before I started my spiritual journey, and nothing I knew or read at the time helped heal the pain.

But it did spur me on to find a solution, and soon afterwards, I began practising a kind of mindfulness meditation.

This helped me in some ways.

It calmed my mind.

It relaxed me.

It helped me think more clearly.

But, it did little for my broken heart.

Still, I saw benefits to meditation, so I went on a quest to better understand it and see if I could find a style that would help.

I gave everything to my search, and brimming with the fervour of youth, I couldn’t help but be optimistic.

For I was going to find THE perfect form of meditation (the form from which all other styles were just pale imitations), and it was going to fix everything.

Over the years, my travels took me far and wide, and I spent thousands of hours studying every meditation method I could get my hands on.

I spent months sleeping on wooden boards and learning from monks in Thai monasteries.

I journeyed deep into the heart of giant cacti-ridden Mexican deserts in a bid to understand shamanism.

I sat at the foot of meditation teachers in Nepal.

I spoke to wisemen (sadhus) in India.

Along the way, I learned technique after technique, but although they all gave me something, none could qualify as the PERFECT technique.

They were good for some things and not good for other things.

None of them were complete.

And so I cast them aside, moved on, and continued my search for the one and only perfect meditation method.

It was only when I was on my second trip to India that I finally understood something that unshackled the way I looked at meditation and helped me piece everything I had learned together.

Upin a small Himalayan village where the Dalai Lama has made his home, I heard that the Tibetans have over 70,000 types of meditation, and that one bit of information caused something to click in my mind.

For if the Tibetans – who created a society built around spirituality –practised so many kinds of meditation, there must be a reason.

If there really were only one perfect form of it like I had believed, then that is all they would practise.

If there really were only one perfect form of it like I had believed, thenthat is all they would practise.

But that then begs the question: why did they practise so many types of meditation?

It was only after pondering this question for some time that the obvious answer hit me: they (we!) need so many different kinds of meditation because they all do different things.

Some meditationshelp you feel grounded.

Otherspush you towards an out-of-body experience.

Others strengthen your chakras.

Others still clear your meridians.

Each meditation excels in something different, so the best meditation for you at any given moment depends on your needs.

And that means that one meditation method isn't necessarily better per se. Rather, it depends on your specific circumstances.

Until that moment, I was a meditation snob who dismissed most kinds of meditation.

But after this epiphany, I realised that vast numbers of meditation techniques could rightfullyenjoy their place under the sun, for they all help us in different ways.

This opened my mind to possibilities, and as I continued my search, I not only revisited meditations I had previously learned but never fully appreciated, I also learned new ones which, among other things, revealed ways to rapidly heal a broken heart.

These were the kinds of meditations I wished I had known back on the night in Italy when I made that fateful phone call, for they would've saved me a lot of pain.

They were the exact tools for the job, and after practising them, I was simply left with the memory of what happened without the emotional residue.

Gone was the pain that made my chest tighten and my heart bleed.

Gone was the heaviness of grief.

All that was left was a lightness.

A wholeness.

Like I’d been put back together.

Now, I’m not going to lie. I had to put in the work.

And the meditation process did sometimes bring up emotions I’d been trying to keep buried.

But once I found the right methods, I began to feel better even from the first meditation sessions.

And the key to my healing was,in many ways, simplya shift in my attitude.

While I looked for the perfect meditation method, I was blinded to the beauty and power of most types of it.

I saw them as inferior meditation forms and missed what they had to offer.

But once I understood that meditation techniques all excel in different ways, I could open my heart and mind to the ones that could heal my old wounds – even if these techniques didn’t impress me as much from a theoretical standpoint.

So if you are suffering from a broken heart, the pain of a fractured relationship, the scars of abuse – whatever! – there is almost certainly a meditation to help you. You just need to find the right one.

And just knowing that it is out there waiting for you is a big part of the journey.

For that will incentivise you to look for it, and, as the saying goes, ‘Seek and ye shall find.’.

Article written by the Om Reiki founder, (Jeremy O’Carroll)

PS If you are suffering from old wounds that haven't healed despite your best attempts to work on them with meditation, Reiki and the like, you might like to join us this weekend at my Redesigning Your Energy Body meditation course.

At the event, I’ll show you techniques to simply and quickly unburden yourselfof the past.

These techniques will improve your relationships and help you to become less reactive.

They will also help you to reclaim lost energy.

So if your intuitive heart stirs at the thought of joining us, you can learn more about Redesigning Your Energy Body at the course’s homepage.

To check out my three philosophical novels, click on the links below:

The Slob’s Guide to the Perfect Job

The Call of the Silver Cockatoo

Full Speed

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