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June
2000
How
I Learned TM
A Quite Revolution
by Rabbi Alan Green
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I began my practice of the Transcendental Meditation
program on June 12, 1971. It was the last week of the last year of high
school for most of my senior class, but not for me. I was bound for summer
school, having failed the second semester of U.S. History for the second
time. Actually, that was the least of my problems. My relationship with my
parents, teachers, and fellow students was tense. My view of life and its
possibilities was bleak.
At that critical stage of my life, I could only see two
paths: the path of materialism and the path of intellectualism, but I had
little desire to traverse either one. I barely knew what the word
"existential" meant, but at the tender age of 17, I was having
an existential crisis. I was quite certain that there must be more to life
than what I had been living.
Very fortunately, some friends had learned the TM
program earlier that year. I was an aggressively skeptical person in those
days, but they were good friends and could see that I was suffering on
many different levels. One of them told me I could be as skeptical as I
wanted, but he was very sure that if I practiced TM, I would become much
happier. That was a novel approach!
I probably could have opposed him in my usual way, but
the possibility of escaping from the mire of my misery was so tantalizing,
I couldn’t possibly object. He had hit upon my greatest weakness. And
from my side, I certainly was ready for some new possibilities.
Twenty-nine years later, it is still a vivid memory: a
pervasive silence the moment I set foot in the TM Center, which grew as I
stepped into the instruction room and witnessed the ceremony of gratitude.
Then there was the mantra, and the experience of a deeper silence than I
had ever known before. In that silence, I realized that all that had gone
wrong in my life, in time, would be put right. On a deep level, I felt for
the first time in my life that there was great hope for my future, and for
the future of the world.
Over the following weeks and months, a quiet revolution
began to unfold in my life. I began to think thoughts and feel emotions
that I had never experienced before. I began to enjoy the company of my
family and friends. Music and art acquired a whole different dimension of
meaning for me—a meaning that inspired and influenced every level of my
heart, mind, and soul. Increasingly, I began to experience a depth of
appreciation that no one could have convinced me even existed; a depth I
could never have imagined before actually experiencing it for myself.
Today, 29 years and more than 20 thousand meditations
later, that same silence continues to unfold in its graceful and often
surprising way. I am deeply grateful to God, and to Maharishi, for having
guided me to this point in my life. May all of us, and all of humanity,
merit that Divine guidance as we journey together on the road to realizing
the truly unlimited potential of the human spirit.
Rabbi Alan Green attended the Transcendental Meditation
program Teacher Training Course at La Antilla, Spain in 1973. He received
his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 1991. As
of September 2000, Rabbi Green will be spiritual leader of Shaarey Zedek
Congregation in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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