Declan Diver can recall the moment when his life was about to change, though he did not know it at the time.
In 2002, when Declan was a student of structural engineering at Dublin Institute of Technology - Bolton Street, he had gone into a bookshop to collect a pre-ordered engineering book. That book had not arrived, but as he left the shop his eye was draw
n to a book about the life of an Indian yogi.
"A few chapters into that book and I knew, right, I had to learn to meditate," Declan recalled. He showed the book to just one friend, but as it happened the friend's aunt taught meditation. That is how he began.
Today Declan himself is a teacher of transcendental meditation (TM). The Bunbeg man is giving an introductory lecture on TM tomorrow night, March 8, at 8 pm at the Ionad Naomh Pádraig in Dobhair.
He said that for two or three years before that encounter in the Dublin bookshop he had been delving into philosophy and reading, "but nothing had caught my attention" as much as meditation. Once Declan began learning the TM technique, he discovered, "This is what I've been looking for all the time. I never looked back."
Declan continued his engineering studies and after graduation took a job with O'Connor Sutton Cronin consulting engineers, a major firm with offices in Cork, Galway, Belfast, Glasgow, London, Warsaw, Bucharest and Moscow. The building boom was in full throttle and Declan was kept busy.
"I was actually quite happy in life," he said. "I wasn't feeling quite stressed though a lot of people come to [TM] for that." But his continued work with meditation led to another major decision some years later: When he was 28 he quit his job to dedicate himself to TM.
"I just felt at that time, okay, I can devote 35 years to this or I can actually do what I want to do, and that's to tell people about TM," Declan said. Since he began studying TM he has been involved in international meditation projects in India, Holland, Bulgaria and the United States. He travelled to India several times, spending up to six months on intensive courses. During one trip to the states Declan participated in a World Peace Assembly, where more than 2,000 people meditated together on a daily basis. Declan had spent more than a year on the assembly.
More recently, he completed an intensive, five-month teacher training course in Bulgaria and is now teaching TM in Donegal and Dublin. But he said that people could receive value from TM without taking such drastic steps. He said that a person who practiced TM for 20 minutes, twice a day, would receive the same level of rest and peace.
"The whole purpose of TM is to enjoy your life, not to give up your life," Declan said. "I just feel my whole life has been improved so, so much that it is hard to think about what it was like before."
The course fee is €600 for people who are employed and €300 for people who are not employed. There is also a family fee of €900.
