I was a meditation failure.

After 30 years of traditional meditation in Buddhist, Hindu and Kabbalistic lineages, I wasn't getting the benefits I had been striving for, expecting, and promised. And when I discussed this with my teachers, they admitted to the same experience in their life as well. But where they thought "more practice" was the answer, I gave up meditation... I went "cold cushion."

But my interest in consciousness and awareness and happiness hadn't gone away. So I continued examining and exploring the mind and over the next few years developed some techniques that became my personal practice, something I did on my own. And what was interesting about these techniques is that I could do them anywhere, any time. They didn't require me to leave my daily life and escape to a quiet corner of my house, let alone a retreat center.

One day, during a conversation with a friend, I mentioned these odd little techniques and she asked me to tell her about them. So, I walked her through a practice I now call "All It Is."

It took about 5 minutes to tell her how to do it -- it isn't complicated; it's just a few concepts to consider, or often-unnoticed aspects of our awareness to attend to. And then she did the practice for another 5 minutes or so...

And then she slowly opened her eyes, which were a bit moist, and said, "I've spent 20 years doing Buddhist meditation with the hope that I'd experience something like that."

More than surprised, I felt like I had just been given a huge gift. What a sweet thing to hear.

"Are there more of these?" she asked.

"About 10," I said.

"You have got to teach these," she insisted.

And so I did ;-)

The first class had both beginning meditators, people who've tried to meditate but found it difficult because they couldn't still their mind or sit quietly or didn't have the time, and people who were meditation teachers and other long-time practitioners.

What amazed me was to discover that no matter how much, or little, experience people had, they all were getting the same kinds of results -- results that most people think takes YEARS to attain. And they were all able to get those results in just 5 or 10 minutes.

Again, the gratitude I felt was immense, and the FUN of being able to share and talk about what has been my favorite conversation -- how the mind works -- was even bigger! ;-)

But I still didn't do anything whith what I was now calling Instant Advanced Meditation. In part because I didn't need to. I was retired and so I didn't need to create some new business, let alone a persona as a "meditation teacher."

Then another friend called me and said, "Steven, I just did that 'Perceiving Receiving' practice! Can I offer that recording as a bonus to people who buy the DVD of my Zen movie?"

"Sure," I said. And then I turned to my wife and added, "That would be fun if 100 or 200 people get to try this. I wonder what will happen."

Well, what happened was 1563 people signed up to try the practices, and the I got hundreds of emails from people from all around the world, all ages, and all levels of experience...each one telling me about the profound experiences they had. And most of them asking, "Where can we get more!?"

But I didn't have a "more."

Some of those who had been in the class stepped up and edited the recordings they had made, another friend introduced me to a guy who could make a set of CDs from the recordings and now people can get the I AM Course (it was a total accident that the name of the course turned into that acronym!) online.