University of Michigan campus, Ann Arbor, 1970. Crisp September days; apples pressed to cider; football games; I am in college and hopelessly optimistic, so my mother says. Optimistic maybe. But hopelessly? That can’t be true!

I am quite sure life is going to be Heavenly for me and for everyone else, and I am going to know everything there is to know. My grandmother always said: "Nothing’s impossible to a willing mind." Only question is, how on earth will it all come together?

I arrive at my evening class to a note on the door saying, "Class Cancelled." No explanation. I suppose I could be disappointed. But instead my heart leaps with joy and I make a spur-of-the-moment decision: "Tonight I’m not even going to attempt to study. Tonight I’m going to do whatever my heart desires."

Usually, on a night when I don’t have class, I go to the Undergraduate Library with a deep and sincere desire to know everything, but within a matter of minutes after settling into one of the cozy cubicles, I am fast asleep, my head on my pile of books. I wake up when the lights flash. The library is closing. By osmosis I’ll get all the knowledge. This is the comforting thought I always fall back on.

But tonight is a different story. Tonight I am going wherever my inner-most feelings lead me. I begin to wander the empty halls of Angell Hall, my footsteps echo on the marble floors in tune to my singing heart. In minutes, I find myself outside the door of a packed auditorium. What has pulled me here?

People are standing at the back; all the seats are taken. Must be some very popular course. Something pulls at the core of me. I make another quick decision motivated by my heart: "I’m going in. No one will notice me in a class this size."

I enter the auditorium, feeling at home. Looking around, I notice an empty seat, nicely accessible near the aisle. No one appears to be interested in it, so I settle into the comfortable seat that seems to be reserved for me.

It doesn’t matter to me that I can hardly hear a word the speakers are saying. With the combination of no microphone and their soft voices, the words barely reach me. I close my eyes and enjoy the quiet feeling within, contented just to be here. A delicate friendly impulse permeates the room.

I finally sit up and listen when they open the floor to questions. These speakers appreciate the questions that are being asked and give fulfilling answers. Something real is happening here.

At the end of the lecture, they invite us to fill out a postcard if we want to attend a second lecture in two weeks. It is for a course on Transcendental Meditation. I have never heard of Transcendental Meditation before, but along with hundreds of other students I willingly wait in line to get a postcard. Anything for a few minutes longer in this room. I decide to sign up for the course. Another easy decision.

During the first meditation I find, deep inside myself, what I hoped to gain by osmosis from all the books I slept on in the library, and from all of the courses I took, from all the thousands of dollars I spent, and from all the years in school. And in the eyes of all the others who learned TM, I see the same translucent knowingness.

School is now a new experience for me. The books are getting read, the teachers make sense. And when I walk to class through the throngs of students, the Meditators, the transcendental ones, stand out. We see each other and we know, this is the beginning of Heaven on Earth.

Contribute Your Story to a New Book! Enlightenment magazine is planning to publish a collection of stories on how Meditators learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, and the benefits they’ve experienced in their lives.

Margi Wilson works for Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.

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