Yes, I don't need it because for me it's Christmas every day—at least twice a day during my morning and evening meditations. I say "at least" because when you have continuously meditated from nineteen to seventy-two (my age today), your system integrates, deep within, a sacred space that becomes part of you—of your body, your psyche, your brain. Therefore, even when you're not formally meditating, in reality you are, because that sacred part within has become, over the years, more and more active, switched on, shining on its own.
Christmas celebrates the divine Light on Earth. Meditation activates the inner Light, regenerating us, nourishing us, guiding us.
I would never have survived the continuous heavy pressure of unceasing challenges if it weren't for the steady practise of meditation.
What Meditation Is Not
Let me clearly state some facts about meditation: It is not a relaxing exercise, even if you must first get into a relaxed state. It is not a breathing exercise, even if you have to regulate your breathing. It is not listening to relaxing, dreamy music—even if that may help at the very beginning. Honestly, I discourage people from combining the idea of meditation with that mellow new age music because they get trapped into a misconception.
And finally, it has nothing to do with some kind of romantic sentimental state, or even the mystical devotion that in some religions is taken for deep divine connection. These things may help at the beginning if you clearly understand they are the very first stages of your inner journey towards the destination. In other words, if you know they are not the meaning of meditation.
Early Influences
My mother was a deeply disturbed person—emotionally, with her devouring need to show how much better she was, and mentally, as she became more and more disconnected. But from a conceptual point of view, she was educated and very clear. In fact, it was she who introduced me to the world of meditation when I was very young, between four and five—the age when most children are read fairy tales. Instead, I was told incredible, fascinating stories about monks in a faraway land called Tibet, where they meditated and could withstand the sharp bite of cold without being disturbed.
My father taught me the existential necessity of wide knowledge—not just to show off, as I see everywhere today, but because only through knowing can you dare to jump out of the box. He urged me to think above, below, at the side, and beyond what is obvious or accepted.
My mother, instead, gave me all that kind of education necessary to be a "lady": how to behave, good manners, how to speak appropriately, no accent "for the Lord's sake!" How to recognise a class style—"class" in the old meaning, not the cheap striking style they often call "class" today. The different styles in art (she had very pronounced artistic traits), and so on.
Of course, always attending elite schools helped consolidate all that. Why did I attend elite schools, even though my parents were totally against the "cheap" (my mother's definition) showing off that the emerging new-money class was looking for? Because they have the best teachers and give the best education.
One day I asked my father why I was always given the best schools while my two brothers weren't. His answer was totally unexpected: "Because they're not interested in studying! I surely don't spend my money for them" he said sharply, with an angry hint of disappointment.
It was true. All my mother's good manners left them completely untouched. Both my parents eventually capitulated. My brothers grew up to become people I could hardly recognise as family—a strange alienation that made my own isolation even more pronounced.
The Move to Milan
I was eleven when we left the Italian Riviera—first San Remo, then Genoa. We moved to the suburbs of Milan, where my father's new offices were. And everything brutally changed.
My mother hated being there. She found the surroundings not as "signorile" as they were in Liguria, although we moved into the most "signorile" house in the area (to such an extent that older men of the "common people," the "populace"—as my mother called them—would take off their hats as a sign of respect even in front of me, an eleven-year-old girl).
My mother's deep unsettling feelings when we left Liguria contributed to exacerbating her personality. Everything became hell.
And yet, soon after, at nineteen, I luckily found how to regenerate my massacred inner state through meditation. I couldn't change my external life, but I could change my inner state. A safe anchor indeed.
I began to create my Christmas inside.
Little by little, the "texture" of the many memories that once furnished my mind is fading away. They no longer exist—not because I have erased them, but because they are no longer the same as they were when they first became my memories.
