The Mundane Way

I began meditating in the summer of 2008, when I was 23. I had had no prior experience of meditation, but I was eager to deepen my spiritual awareness. The previous eighteen months of my life had been some of the most spiritually and emotionally difficult I'd ever known. Depression had often drained my passion for life during that year and a half, and my recent marriage had already suffered some heavy blows, due largely to my own seemingly intractable selfish attitudes and behavior. Fortunately, during the spring of 2008 I experienced a powerful breakthrough as a result of some work I had done with a spiritually-focused group dealing with addictions, work that paved the way for my introduction to meditation. One day, a friend in the group who knew I was seeking a method of meditation suggested I read a book by someone named Eknath Easwaran . The book was called, simply, Passage Meditation , and I ordered it online soon after my friend mentioned it to me. When it arrived, I opened...