My head slowly rises, as my breathing gets deeper and deeper, and meditation washes over me like the caress from a gentle, loving care-giver. Can’t focus on the movement. Don’t want to detract from this feeling of bliss where there’s no concerns, no worries, no thoughts.

Nothing. Bad or good.

I am reaching that “Void” where there are no attachments, no desires, no repulsions. Yet, the head continues to move. Upward. Into a more relaxed position. One in which I can eventually offer my full face to the “One” I feel above me. “My Beloved” is what the Sufi would call this apparition. Perhaps, “Spirit‘ is the word a mystical Christian might use to describe the state I have navigated my Self into.

I  receive a kiss. It’s bestowed on me with all the Love our small world and tiny universe can contain. Now, I feel totally sated with the comfort and assurance that this Love will always be there. I let my head gently touch and rest against the wall behind me, where my back is propped up while sitting in a half lotus position on the floor. I’m at the Resiliency Center: A Healing Arts Collaborative in Ambler, PA. Some 10 other meditators are “voiding” themselves of unnecessary thoughts, presumably with eyes gently closed and hearts fully open.

One, whose name I have not gotten permission to use, is also moved by this meditation experience. She tells the group how she would approach her children, a young girl and boy, and assure them every night that they were “special.” She gestured with her hands as if cupping the chin and face of the child and said to each: “you are perfect just the way you are.” She then kissed each youngster.

Five years ago, when the marriage in the family home had begun to end between husband and wife, she shared this other part of the story. She said she followed her daily routine, going to her children to say goodnight. She went to the top bunk where her son was resting. But before she could comfort him, the little boy named Joseph put his hands on his mothers chin and cheeks and had said to mom “you are perfect just the way you are.” And kissed her. Just the way you would expect a 6-year-old to kiss.

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I did not realize it until later, that the Love that had visited me while meditating, may have touched that woman the same way, re-awakening inside both of us — perhaps all of us — a better understanding of what true Love is all about. It’s totally unconditional. And, if we’re lucky, maybe even a little karmic.

“And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love . . . you make,” — the Beatles.