Sekhem Inner Sound Meditation: Samadhi as Deep Peace

Beginning the Forty-Day Inner Sound Meditation

Patrick Zeigler first met a yogi at an ashram in Brazil that had been built by Swami Tilak. After Swami Tilak died, the ashram no longer had a resident teacher, so the yogi was invited to teach there. Patrick and his partner were staying with her sister in Brasília and went out for a walk with a young family member. They were playing Pokémon, and one of the desirable Pokémon was inside the temple. They entered to catch it, and a woman came out and asked whether they wanted to meet the master.

They agreed, and this was Patrick’s first meeting with the yogi. They came to hear some of his talks and meditate with him. The yogi explained that he practiced inner sound meditation. Patrick had already been practicing that meditation for many years, but he had never had a teacher.

The yogi invited Patrick to come to his home in India. Patrick and his partner undertook a ten-day meditation with him. His partner was pregnant, and they slept on the floor of the yogi’s small apartment, in a very small space that had been given to him by one of his students.

Patrick wanted to understand the practice more deeply. The yogi told him that if he truly wanted to know the inner sound, he should come and do a forty-day meditation. Patrick agreed. The practice was described as approximately twenty hours of meditation, three hours of sleep, and drinking mata. He was concerned about whether he could do it, and his partner was very supportive. Their child was six months old, so Patrick came in January to begin the meditation.

The original plan was to hold the meditation in the yogi’s apartment. That changed when the owner decided to sell the building, leaving the yogi without a place to live and without a place for the meditation. They considered staying in a hotel, but a close friend of the yogi, who was the architect of a newly built building, offered Patrick a room there. The paint was not even dry.

The meditation became a kind of inauguration for the building. Newspapers came, television crews arrived, and government officials came to interview Patrick. The public attention made the meditation feel like a very big event and added pressure. Just before Patrick began, his father died. Patrick had to decide whether to return to his family or remain for the meditation. He had already spoken with his family because they knew his father might die. He had said his goodbyes, and they had shared a very good understanding that it was his father’s time. Patrick decided to stay and begin the meditation.

The practice was extremely difficult at first. Patrick was not accustomed to meditating with his eyes open. The noise level was high, and there were many distractions. He felt ready to stop. But there was already public attention around the meditation, and his partner had been sharing that Patrick was doing it, so he felt he could not announce that he had quit after three days.

When he decided to stay, he experienced what he described as his first major awakening. His father came to him. The yogi had spoken about seeing Kali and seeing the gurus, but Patrick saw his father. The experience helped lighten his heart. He had been carrying guilt about not connecting with his father, and the experience gave him a very strong sense of connection. It was deeply helpful, although the meditation itself remained difficult.