MAKING I CONTACT
A couple was told that the King was coming to their house for the evening meal. Accordingly, they laid out their modest best, including their sacred candles. Then they saw the King’s messengers approaching, emissaries of light bearing great tapers. Humiliated, they hid away their own candles. Then came the King, filling the sky with brightness, and entered their door. The King looked and said, “Dear children, now where are your lovely lights? Do you wish to honor me and host me here tonight?” The couple answered, saying “We have hidden them away for we felt ashamed, seeing how you illuminate the entire universe.” The King replied, “My dearest dearest children, when I come to you to dine in your home, then we see the world lit by the shining of your candles.” (Nineteenth century tale)
Tibetan prayer wheels spin on and on, constantly centering for us while we do other things. Yet healing practitioners don’t mop it all up for us, we need to contact them again and again. Why? Because we are really looking to them for more than human benefits, for our own awakening, to which the meditative work eventually brings us.
None of these will do the centering for us: Books on the shelves, recited verses, good deeds or healers. Only when direct conscious involvement with our own infinitude suddenly enters us, are our eyes uncovered and our activities caressed.
It first seems so inconvenient and arbitrary that we must attain divine Consciousness to find the missing God, but that’s what completes God, re-entering our divine Consciousness.
“A well of living waters.” We go to the primordial oceanic Self deep within, for communion only, and Its good pleasure is to fulfill all Its expressions As us.
How to Meditate Without Technique
Anoche, the divine I Am: pronounced “Ah, no key” --- ahh, we need no key, no secret or technique, no forced entry, to access our very own Self, Who is more than expectant and welcoming, is present with us always. We remain always beginners. We do not know how to pray. We don’t have to depend on postures, breathing, clearing the mind, chants, concentration, affirmation, wishing, visualization, etc.
We make the effort to achieve the effortless, by following a pathless way. (Described below.)
Contemplative Meditation
In contemplative meditation or contemplative prayer, we open to God within by reminding ourselves of the truth that we already do know, by viewing a truth from various angles, by considering the implications and scope of that truth. We let this discourse bubble up from inside, not forcing our mind to think, but giving it up as a tool of our core wisdom.
Often I’ve started by saying to myself, in the words of Joel S. Goldsmith, “This is a spiritual universe.”
Now what does that mean again? How has it been shown to me? If this is indeed a spiritual universe, can I relax? Is the presence of God here where I am? The Self of me?
We may return to the same statement devotedly for months or years, continuously gaining fresh perspectives.*
*A list of some statements that we may work with contemplatively is provided at the end of the book.
Several quotations may come to our attention as we meditate; newly phrased insights or visions may reveal themselves.
A wandering thought during contemplation isn’t accidental, it floats by so we can grasp the truths that apply to it. Or if fears and desires arise in us, they’re sent from the collective unconscious, seeking our exoneration and help.
The thoughts, the remembrance and the clarifying of what we inherently know, are the lead-in to the actual event. Statements of truth are really God Itself, stashed away in these wrappers. As night changes subtly to dawn, we feel the Divine seeping in during the process of inquiring. So our exploration leads beyond the words to the experience, to our cradling in the living love. This experience of transcendental Reality may last only seconds, or may go on a long time. This contact is our meditation, our centering in our great Self.
Contemplative Inquiry
Very often, the way we frame a question contains such assumptions that they’re not really questions.
In the contemplative phase of meditation, we are asking freely, trustingly and radically. Sometimes we start just with questions. With open ear, we adventure where we know not, towards a world beyond thought.
We go beyond our thoughts in meditation, and we voyage past words, which of themselves are also on the mental level, however much truth they convey. Mental power has some paranormal results, but we seek the stairs to a wholly other level.
Eloquent words are fish hooks to reel us in to the eloquent silence.
Like a guidepost with the word “Tiger,” the frail words lure us in to the secret place of the most High. We contemplate the Principles on the way down into meditation, or like whales meeting a diver, God contemplates us. We only seemed to do the work. We surrender, we let go, into our infinite Life.
The Truth in the Statements
God is one and Its qualities are primally one, while now in our diffracted human awareness seeing God As this world, we wonderfully multiply these qualities as a number of facets of God, including Consciousness, Love, Substance. Another aspect of God is Truth. Again, truth is one, then we magnify it into a number of related truths.
Spiritual truth is a real and substantial thing, it is God Itself. When our limited awareness first turns to the truth, we may perceive Principles in the form of verbal statements. As a genie shrinks into a lamp, as an adult play-acts concepts with children, so God appears to us draped in the familiar shape of mere words.
It’s in the nature of words that they’re subject to misinterpreting, that they’re clipped by their definitions, puzzling in their brevity.Words sneak up on actuality from all sides. Metaphors spun of Nothingness, words are much less and much more than they pretend. The portent of words plummets beyond their author’s understanding. For instance, “freedom” can be political, social, psychological, material, spiritual, etc.
So contemplative prayer as the opening phase of our meditation is far from vain repetition. It’s rather our active exploration of a statement of truth from varied angles, each time fresh and new, so that we are led through the gateway of the words and along the path deep into the heart of the experience of the living God of Love. Then we know the inner substance of truth to which the words refer. We can remember the words even while in the most somnolent, stagnant pools, and then proceed through them towards Home.
Our interim beliefs now color the outer fruitage released after our meditative contact, and cloud it too. So in learning ever more about the Principles by contemplative inquiry, we’re also opening to broader revelations, signs following, here in our evolving kingdom on earth.
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The Practice: Beloved, Be Assured, Every Meditation Is Helping
There are various ways to meditate. Contemplative inquiry is an effective way. (Further ahead, we’ll study outgrowths: healing, morning prayer, grace, communing with nature, compassionate and conciliating and loving meditation, praying for family and world.)
In this meditating, mind and body and all things human go to good purposes. We don’t try to stop thinking, make end runs around our thought or wait it out, or practice physical austerities. On the other hand, we don’t make our mind, or our posture or breath, manage the practice. If body or mind aren’t working, we go on anyway. We cling only to God, dependent, unknowing, led by inner teaching. Our thought helps us sink into that realm beyond thought. Likewise, we bodily relax as if deboned, and sometimes we find ourselves strongly inhaling, because our breathing had been stopped still.
In order to meditate, we make ourselves comfortable. We sit comfortably, or maybe lie down, in private, in a quiet place that becomes the Quiet Place, and close our eyes. Once we become well-used to centering, we might make an inner connection while driving the car, working, talking, or in the midst of a crisis, whenever it’s needful, still unobserved.
Meditation may last a long while, half an hour or more. Often, our entire meditation will fill just a few immeasurable seconds. We never push it. If we don’t feel the Presence in four or five minutes, we might return to our activities and in awhile pray again.
The intention of our heart is all that really matters. Those times we’re in the groove, on the beam, we can often feel this union immediately when we turn. Dispensing with any thoughts, we just drop in.
It may take some months of regular meditation before our ego-defenses are melted through and contact with our greater Self is made.
Beloved, be assured, when things seem barren, we’re growing below the surface. No meditation is ever wasted. We will be successful if we persist, for to this very end were we born. No one else can or should do this for us, as our lives are consummated in this blessed union.
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How the Listening Creates the Song
Let God, let God. We stop running on the gerbil wheel which can never take us away.
Where inertia seems to bog down our quest, we’re actually running away in place, due to the fear that there is no God. (If no God is here for us, then we have no God.) In meditation, we imbibe the precious present love of God. Baruchu: “Bless God who is already blessing us forever and ever.” Our love for God is our flowering open to God loving us.
In meditation, we sit receptively. “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” We have an attitude of expectancy. “Before they call, I will answer.”
Dream: A shell-like animal ear, larger than the crimped human ear and filled with liquid. Hearing with the inner ear; hearing deeper than the human scene.
Receptivity. In prayer we receive. We listen for God, not informing Omniscience or
needing to implore an evergiving Love. (If we must implore, okay, we cut away our own anguish.) When we consider principles of truth in this way, we notice that the Presence is already tiptoeing in. Then we arrive at a place where we are sitting confidently, expectantly, and receptively.
Flooding the boxes of thought with peace that passeth understanding
O wordless word O numberless One
We silently reach communion, which cannot be articulated (broke in pieces) or comprehended (bounded), and as we return to ordinary sense, we remember that we bathed there, we’re buoyed up from beyond.
Meditation: Not us having a vision, a vision having us. Not us having a god, God being us.
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Let’s Talk About the Great Silence
While centering, the outside sounds and such that enter our perceptions are not extraneous, they’re a divinely orchestrated accompaniment. A birdcall is holiness manifesting. A siren is a call for our meditative help, to see through our mundane belief.
“A still small voice” might be translated as “subtle sound in the silence” or more closely as “voice of profound stillness.” Sometimes we have only an intellectual awareness to start our meditation. Then when we humbly realize it already Is a spiritual universe no matter our state of awareness, we reach the earned knowledge in our very bones now; and we notice the subtle sound, the forever peacefulness, the humble Presence.
“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” A deep great principle, which contains a second hidden meaning. The original Hebrew can also be understood as “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the one Lord.” Hear the one God. So the statement is like directions on a box of cake mix. The object is not only to read the label out loud, but to follow its directions, hear the one God. This bakes the cake.
Silence is the fullness of the primal Beyond-form. Mystics demonstrate that silence is audible above all. They fit in, look to be doing nothing special. The silence of the mystics’ actions, the silence of a perfect motor. As if they were practicing tai chi: the silence, the tautology and balancing paradox of the mystics’ statements.
Vision: The World Tree, each leaf a hand always upholding a person. Each leaf a cup of light. Light between leaves like diamond drops. The spaces we allow for the profound stillness. Easier done unsaid.
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Not Reacting
Since this is a spiritual world, we don’t have to give it mental treatments. The need to struggle and change things or demonstrate effects, an earlier day in our process, now arrives at the sabbath of celestial rest.
We know our work is done if a suggestion bobs up again and we respond with peace and love.
Our meat is within---I Am the meat---With less “work,” we accomplish more. It’s unnecessary to address every specific claim in meditation; we just drop it, and an answering truth may come to us. Seek only Me and the rest shall be added by paths that we have not known. A meditation: God in the midst of me is mighty. Now I turn within. I am lifted beyond, into My spiritual life, to the hightower of peace. And now My domains reveal themselves all around, spreading over the horizons, a world made new....
The purpose of meditation is to change our own awareness.
When problems show up, I’m not obliged to “do something” meditatively. And realizing that this is already a spiritual world also opens the floodgates for revelation to cascade forth, not from “me” alone, but from the Other we pray for, who seems to be out there. The blessing is not a transmission, but rather a recognition of the divine self-sufficient Presence hid within everybody, every situation.
Everyone is doing what they can, and all our positive, negative, or veiled actions help in our Self-discovery.
When a claim of a material power apart from Omnipotence is delivered to our door, my teacher says: Just don’t sign for it. Then without taking anxious thought, the lessons we glean, and anyone seeking our help, will plug in where they belong. When I feel the great peace, the divine I of everything involved in that situation feels it, and so the world is made new.
(And if we do buy into it, then we can simply get an immediate refund.)
When we dive into the river, our clothes are washed too.
We don’t have to do good to others in prayer and we cannot ever do evil.
We dwell in the kingdom of God. I don’t try to help or harm anyone according to appearance, but only rest in our sacred relationship and realize I Am, We Are. The first step in healing (before proceeding to compassionate and loving meditation): “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils;” “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh;” dip in the fount from which the freshets flow, the sea to which we rush. We go to God for God alone. Do not resist, do not assist. Yet this saves the world.
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Back and Forth
Whenever someone on the path opens to the Presence it will readily pour in, even if we felt light-years distant beforehand. We’re not expecting trumpets, as the Presence can be so fine and subtle.
Supposing we get distracted while meditating, we can always yield back to that continuous river.
When we encounter that fusion, that peace, even for a moment, our work is done. A little bit of God goes a long way.
If we feel sometime later that we were not released, that we are still concerned, then we can meditate again.
We feel that we haven’t done a good enough job meditating, yet miracles flourish all around unbeknownst to us. Human virtue or blame miss the point. God is at work, and that’s it.
Sometimes we have meditations a million miles away from the human scene. Sometimes the human sense comes to us for healing and compassion. Both meditations are equally deep.
We’re highways for divine activity to ride, avenues which find that we’re whatever holiness courses through us.
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(A Mission Statement)
We keep increasing our centering; the only work is the surrender to our Self.
We consciously realize divine Oneness. Oneness in every sacred relationship, Oneness in all My Consciousness: this is the purpose of prayer, and of the world.