Welcome To Advanced Meditation
Jon Terrell, M.A.
"It was an early class in Advanced Meditation. I closed my eyes and focused on the Light energy flowing through my body. I started to drift off, then jolted back to the present. I felt totally different, fully alive and centered, not stuck in my brain but centered deeper, lower in my body. My awareness expanded from inside, into the room, and far beyond it. I was connected to everything, held by everything, part of everything, and everything a part of me. The closest word I have to attempt to describe what I felt is Love. I experienced a cosmic love, beyond anything I had previously felt." JT
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Welcome to Advanced Meditation! Our site explores a powerful, unique form of meditation that also includes chakra work and energy healing. Inner LightFire is a modern approach to personal and planetary transformation, with ancient roots.
This page provides an overview of our teaching. Don't let the "advanced" hold you back if you are relatively new to meditation, as hundreds of people have found our approach easier to experience and move forward than other methods. And if you have studied meditation for years, I think you will find that what we offer can complement the awareness work you have already completed.
Advanced meditation is a process of turning inward to awaken our mind and body consciousness to the luminous Light within everyone and everything. If you study along with us, we will help you experience and express this Inner Light in a step-by-step manner to heal, awaken and transform your consciousness.
We highly recommend you work with an advanced meditation teacher experienced with this method to get the maximum benefit. A teacher can help amplify your experience, help you verify that you are doing it correctly, and support you through the sometimes challenging process of personal growth.
When we focus Inner Light into our bodies, it reveals the specific areas where our Light is restricted or blocked. As you concentrate your Inner Light on those restrictions or blockages, the Light intensifies, becoming Inner Fire that burns away these obstructions. In other words, Inner Light reveals just where we need to work and Inner Fire clears those blockages.
What is left is openness, expanded awareness, and a sense of vitality, relief, and freedom. Many clients also feel a more profound experience of Presence. Read on for more about Advanced Meditation, for personal awakening and healing.
Inner LightFire Is Advanced Meditation
The method I teach is a modern version of ancient "LightFire" techniques found worldwide, especially in India, China, and South Pacific and Hawaiian cultures. Descriptions of awakening experiences involving Light and Fire are also central to Western religious teachings.
An excellent introduction to these methods is available in Maps of Consciousness, by Ralph Metzner. Ralph, part of that trio from Harvard that helped introduce psychedelics to the public, was a student and teacher of Actualism for many years and often introduced these techniques in his lectures and workshops.
After having childhood Inner Light experiences (see my bio), I was introduced to the Inner LightFire by Russell Paul Schofield and his wife, Carol Ann Schofield. They called their work Actualism and their method Agni Yoga.
What Is Inner Light?
People speak of "seeing the Light," a Bright or Brilliant Idea, a Spark of Genius. It is a metaphor for a mental breakthrough or insight, "a lightbulb above the head." But Light is also associated with the divine, goodness, joy, and happiness (light-hearted).
Numerous festivals celebrate Light throughout the world, such as Christmas and Hanukkah, where Light signifies hope, divine protection, healing, etc.
Inner Light is much more than just a mental phenomenon. It is something much greater, sometimes described as almost "blinding Light" and leading to a dramatic transformation of consciousness and body. (For example, Saint Paul spoke of "Blinding Light" and was physically blinded for 3 days after this encounter with the divine.)
In written accounts, this Light is described as big, beautiful, healing, enlightening, thrilling, etc.
For most of us, it initially is much more subtle. At first, I wasn't sure whether I was imagining it or if it was real.
In my experience, I've learned that the Light is real, not imaginary or a metaphor. It's much more real than much of what we tell ourselves! And we can all access it, though it may take practice to experience. For many people, it can be a subtle experience until they learn to connect with it more deeply.
Inner Light touches us much more deeply than our brains alone. As we connect with it and learn to bring Light into our bodies, it transforms who we are and how we see the world. We awaken to our true nature as Beings of Light and Love.
That is the living miracle of Inner Light.
What Is Inner Fire?
When Light is concentrated, it naturally changes to Inner Fire. As a child, I used a magnifying glass to focus the sun's light and learned that I could use this fire to burn words into the wooden fence around our house.
Accounts of awakening experiences often describe intense heat and a feeling of being burned up. What is actually burning is the person's blocks to their true nature, the Light and Love within.
In this site, I use the term LightFire instead of Inner Fire.
Spiritual Emergencies
Over the years, I've been contacted by numerous folks who were experiencing uncomfortable, scary and very challenging psychological issues. These spiritual emergencies left many of them in pain, hearing unknown voices, and fighting for their sanity and health. Very often these events were due to drug use or trying out a spiritual technique they read about in a book or on the internet.
I've helped many of these people shut down what they have opened up to and start on a healthier, wiser path. Some folks I could not help.
In Advanced Meditation, we work in a gentle and "step-by-step" manner, at a pace that fits each student.
Advanced Meditation And Emotional Healing
I am indebted to Gerald Jud, a United Church of Christ minister, who developed Shalom retreats, and to the leaders he trained, particularly Lawrence Stibbards and Joy Davey, who both personally mentored me. These retreats helped me work through suppressed, painful childhood emotions, particularly grief, that I could not reach fully with the meditation tools alone. I realized many meditators can miss what is holding them back, like I did, even though that is not their intention. The emotional healing work sped up my awakening and brought more joy and pleasure into my life.
The meditation work I did with School of Actualism was limited in this way, despite our best intentions.
The combination of deep, body-oriented meditation techniques and deep emotional work has been enormously helpful to thousands of folks, where one or the other has been valuable but insufficient.
I have gained much more than I can describe by including both approaches rather than just one.
I hope this site helps, particularly those who find their meditation practice valuable but aren't making progress as quickly as they would like. Sometimes it's because of spiritual bypassing, where we want to skip our personality work and go up into higher consciousness, to realms of joy, connection, and Light, to avoid our issues. I believe that instead of going up and rising above our problems, we first need to go down into thoughts and feelings we've avoided and transform them. Then the journey to higher consciousness becomes much easier.
Advanced Energy Healing
When I first started to practice meditation, I had difficulty truly experiencing it and questioned, "Am I doing this right?" all the time. Fellow participants suggested I get an Energy Healing session from the school's founders. It was a little expensive for me, but when I saved up enough to have a session, it became one of the most powerful experiences of my life. You can read about this experience here.
Because the bodywork was so dramatic for me, I immediately vowed to learn everything I could about the school's energy-healing bodywork. Just a few years later, after intensive training and practice, I was promoted to co-director of the hands-on training program and later became the program's director.
With Advanced Energy Healing, I hope to revive this amazing form of energy healing by training people to tap into the power of the Healer Within themselves and others.
Chakras
Advanced Meditation and Advanced Healing Energy focus on chakras: focal points of energy and consciousness within ourselves. My experience and understanding of these energy centers differ significantly from the much more well-known 7-chakra model most people know. I find that old model outdated and based on where people were in India two thousand years ago.
Based on what I learned in the School of Actualism (now called Actual Design) and my own direct perception, I teach an updated version for people living today.
One of my most popular sessions is a Life Energy Assessment, where I look at the client, often remotely via Zoom, and tell them what I see in their chakras, body, and energy field. Along with the first training in Advanced Meditation, hundreds of people have found the session revealing, clarifying, and healing.
Learning to work with our bodies' chakras and energy systems can speed up our individual evolution towards wholeness. To learn more about chakras, opening versus awakening chakras, and chakra meditation, follow this link.
Equally important are planetary transformational practices that go beyond individual work to help free and awaken everyone on earth. Humanity is caught in harmful, destructive beliefs that separate us and amplify fear, hate, greed, and anger. A core focus of Advanced Meditation is cleansing and awakening your chakras,
Go from Home Page to Chakra Meditation Guide
Go To About Jon Terrell
Go To Learning Advanced Meditation
Go To Foundation Training I, our first course