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I am not a great meditator.

Just as I often lack the patience to sit down and finish a book (and believe me I’m in the middle of many!), I too often lack the discipline to sit down and meditate. But that does not mean that its benefits escape me.

I have been through periods in my life when I have had deep and prolonged meditations, out of which have come powerful and even life-changing insights.  And equally I have been through other periods where my life just simply gets busy and I’m running in a million different directions. That’s when we find ourselves in the old Catch 22: Because of course that is when meditation can benefit us the most, but as we all know, it can sometimes just be hard to make the time. Tonight I made the time.

My meditation routine is a simple one. I sit in a cross-legged position, on a soft pillow, and I begin to focus on my breath. It does not take me long to get into a steady rhythm and as I do, inevitably one of my cats will meander over to take up a meditation position of his own on my lap as I breathe in and out. They too are not ignorant to the benefits of meditation. As I dive deeper through the different brain waves, I can feel the cat’s energy field connecting with mine and I can feel his body moving up and down with his breath and his purring grow deeper and deeper. This simple scenario is my constant reminder that we are all one, that all creatures on this Earth are connected.

After a steady period of focusing on my breath, it gradually reaches a state where my breathing begins to slow down, almost to a seeming halt, and I begin to become unaware of it. And then the powerful surges of energy come. Simultaneously, I can feel myself diving deeper within and my consciousness being elevated to a higher state of awareness; a state in which I suddenly have a stronger sense of knowing, a state from which clarity and insights often are revealed to me.

Tonight, the message was a simple one and one I get frequently. As my eyes welled up with tears, all I could feel and know was that…love is all that matters.

What do I mean by “love”? Am I talking about romantic love, or perhaps love of family and friends, or simply a love of life? I am talking about all of those and none of those at the same time. And no, you do not need to be “in love” to experience what I’m talking about.

I am talking about Universal love: The love that encompasses all things.

The love that connects me to my cats as I meditate; the love that connects us to people across the globe who are grieving after a horrible tragedy; the love that wells up inside of us at the sight of a newborn baby; the love that overcomes us when we see ocean waves crashing passionately against the shoreline.

Love is everywhere, and it is everything. Not only is it within each one of us, but it IS each one of us, whether we feel it or not. It has the capacity to awaken us, to move us to our core, or humble us to our knees. It has the capacity to transform us. It is all that matters.

Upon finishing my meditation, I immediately posted the message, “Love…is all that matters” to my Facebook page. Within seconds I had a plethora of responses and thumbs up. After all, love reaches out and grabs you by the soul strings. But I was struck by one response that was in disagreement with my own. This person commented that “people are really selfish” and that “they do not care about others.”

This notion will likely elicit lots of diverse responses and emotions in each of you. My first emotion was empathy. For I too have at times in my life felt exactly what this person has expressed. I am certain that we all have at one time or another. Whether we’ve been hurt or betrayed by a friend or lover, or been trampled on in our careers, most of us can relate to feeling this way. I used to feel this way a lot more than I do now. And this is where the meditation has changed my life.

Meditation has the power to change our thought patterns and our brain chemistry.

By maintaining a regular practice over time, we begin to notice that things that once bothered, upset or even enraged us, suddenly do not anymore. In fact often we can surprise ourselves by not even being remotely ruffled when something negative happens to us. I continue to delight in this surprise in my own life.

The longer I meditate the more I am amazed at how I have this new-found capacity to rise above whatever malice or negativity is being directed at me; I have developed a better ability to let it wash right over me and not get me wet.

I have found that when my life hits a rocky patch and I find myself back in the midst of turmoil or distress, when I return to meditation, I am immediately able to find peace…and love. When we meditate, we go within and we connect with something deep inside of ourselves, a bottomless well of Universal love that is connected to all things, to all beings, to Earth and Spirit.

So while it is almost certain that we will have our bad days and we will come on hard times, sometimes at the hand of other people who may or may not be bad-intentioned, it is up to us to decide how we respond to it. At a time on the Earth when there is more turmoil and division than we’ve seen in a very long time, it is more important than ever that we can all develop this capacity to rise above negativity, anger and fear.

So I invite you all to learn to meditate or return to your own practice: go within, touch the bliss of divine consciousness that is the connecting force between all beings on this Earth and beyond. Seek out peace and light. And never forget that love IS all that matters.