"Master, I would like so much to learn meditation." I thought my teacher would say 'no', or 'later', like before, but he had just come back from his evening meditation on a nearby hilltop and his eyes sparkled and his face radiated deep bliss.
"Certainly Gem, I'll be happy to teach you," he answered kindly. "But you know that it is a serious thing, to learn meditation?"
"I'll be very serious, Master." Oh, how I longed to be like him, blissful, peaceful, balanced. I was ready to do anything for that. Getting up early, sitting an hour in the cold, remaining hungry until I had finished my meditation, anything.
My teacher looked at me for a while without speaking. His gaze was probing now, grave. But behind it I felt the beginning of a smile.
***
"The most powerful, uplifting, and spiritual book I have ever had the pleasure of reading!"
Kathy Williams, publisher; author of I Survived / Thorns of Two Roses
(Fifth excerpt)
Winter, First Moon, four hands and four fingers' day
Our meditations are wonderful. Such peace I feel, such happiness...
Sometimes we meditate for more than an hour. Sometimes I continue after my teacher has stopped. My back aches, my feet sleep and my knees hurt so much that afterwards I can't walk for a while. But it's worth it!
I will always remember the first time we meditated together. I was lifted up beyond the sky, beyond the stars, to a place where there was only love. For the first time in ten, fifteen harvests, I stopped criticizing myself all the time.
My feeling of relief was indescribable. The rest of the day I didn't say a word. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I drifted in bliss. I stared into the distance all the time and just smiled.
My Master told me later that he, too, smiled the whole day.
***
You have read several excerpts now. But surely not all your questions have been answered.
Who was the monk before he met Gem?
Will Gem and the monk stay together? And where do their wanderings lead?
What deep spiritual realizations will their meditations give them?
"I can't come up with any adjective good enough to describe the benefit and positive influence that Gem's Story can bring into one's life."
Renuka Ramesh
When you buy the book, you can read what a soothsayer predicted about Gem's motherhood.
You can read who the monk was before he met Gem - long before.
In the book you will see how Gem's courage grows, and her love for herself. You will see how she fights with a strong village chief and turns out to be the stronger one.
In the end, Gem finds answers to all the spiritual questions she had as a child.
You will be with her on her journey to inner peace.