We receive letters from our community regularly, and with permission, we share some of them here along with our reflections. Names have been used with the writer’s consent.
James’s Letter
Dear Bird’s Way,
I want to be honest with you because I think honesty is more helpful than another success story right now.
I almost gave up on meditation. Completely. After two years of daily practice, I was ready to walk away and call the whole thing a waste of time.
I started meditating because I was anxious. Really anxious. The kind of anxiety where your chest is tight from the moment you wake up and your mind races through worst-case scenarios all day long. A friend recommended Joseph Murphy’s books, and I read The Power of Your Subconscious Mind in one sitting. The idea that I could reprogram my subconscious through meditation and affirmation felt like a lifeline.
So I started. Twenty minutes every morning. I’d sit on a cushion in my spare room, close my eyes, and try to quiet my mind. For the first few weeks, it was terrible. My thoughts were louder than ever. My anxiety actually got worse during the sessions, like I was sitting in a room with all my fears and there was no TV to distract me from them.
But I kept going. Month after month. I read everything Murphy wrote. I listened to Yogananda’s teachings on Kriya Yoga. I tried different techniques: breath awareness, mantra repetition, visualization. Some days felt peaceful. Most days felt like wrestling with my own brain.
After a year, I expected to be transformed. I wasn’t. I was still anxious. Still overthinking. Still waking up with that tight chest. The only difference was that I was also frustrated, because now I felt like I was failing at the one thing that was supposed to help.
Year two was worse. I started comparing myself to people in meditation forums who claimed they’d achieved bliss in three months. I wondered if something was wrong with me. Maybe my anxiety was too deep. Maybe my subconscious was too stubborn. Maybe Murphy’s techniques only worked for certain people and I wasn’t one of them.
I was about to quit when something happened. I was sitting in meditation on a Tuesday morning, twenty-two months in, and for no reason I can explain, the anxiety just… lifted. It didn’t fade gradually. It dropped away, like a coat falling off my shoulders. For about thirty seconds, I sat in a silence so deep and so peaceful that I started crying.
It came back, of course. The anxiety. But something had changed. I’d felt what was underneath it. I’d touched the stillness that Murphy and Yogananda had been pointing to all along. And once you’ve felt it, even for thirty seconds, you can’t unfeel it.
That was eight months ago. My anxiety hasn’t disappeared. But it’s different now. It comes, and I watch it come, and I know it’s not the truth of who I am. The truth is that silence I touched on a Tuesday morning. Everything else is just weather.
I’m writing this for anyone who is where I was. Two years in and ready to quit. Please don’t. The breakthrough comes when it comes, and not one second before. But it does come.
With hope,
James, Manchester, England
Our Reflection
James’s letter is one of the most valuable we’ve ever received, precisely because it’s not a fairy tale. It’s the real story. The one that doesn’t make it onto motivational Instagram posts. The one about the two years of practice that seemed to be going nowhere.
Yogananda spoke about this directly. He knew that meditation was not a linear path of constant improvement. He warned his students that the journey would include periods of darkness, doubt, and apparent failure.
“If you practice meditation regularly, do not be discouraged if you do not immediately achieve results. The power of God is with you at all times; through the practice of meditation you will eventually find Him.”Paramahansa Yogananda
What James experienced is something that nearly every serious meditator encounters: the desert. The long stretch where nothing seems to be happening. Where the practice feels mechanical and the results feel nonexistent. Most people quit in the desert. James almost did.
But here’s what Murphy would say was actually happening during those two years: James’s subconscious was being reprogrammed, layer by layer, even when his conscious mind couldn’t detect any change. The daily practice was doing its work beneath the surface, like roots growing underground long before any flower appears.
Murphy was very clear that the subconscious works on its own timeline:
“Do not be concerned with the means by which your prayer will be answered. Your subconscious mind has ways that you know not of.”Joseph Murphy
The thirty seconds of silence that James experienced wasn’t a random event. It was the moment the underground work broke through to the surface. Twenty-two months of patient, often frustrating practice had cleared enough debris for the light to come through. Not because James earned it that day, but because the cumulative effect of all those mornings finally reached a tipping point.
There’s a Zen saying that’s relevant here: “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day, unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” The practice isn’t about what happens during the meditation. It’s about what happens to you because of the meditation.
James, your letter is a gift to every person who is sitting on their cushion right now, wondering if it’s working. It is. Keep going. The silence is there, underneath everything. And one ordinary morning, you’ll touch it. And everything will be different.
