GATHERINGS
When we meet in a holy way, we behold the spiritual universe.
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Silence includes not talking.
As a metaphysical student, my training initially included, much against my desire, several years of not talking about spiritual matters.
Some of the lessons learned: We preach to others to try to convince ourselves. We can find the answers inside. The feast is in the tasting, not in talking about it. We concentrate on the solid earned truth, not on shifting needs or theories.
The unobtrusive principle: We sow to the spirit within, not to our ego. When we hold our tongue, we can feel a delicious holy sweetness well up inside. A seed germinates by growing underground left undisturbed. Beloved, let our truth solidify within and ripen slowly, stop expressing opinions. Open to the Silence.
On this path, it’s counterproductive to proselytize; the other person is not needy, but contains the fullness of the Godhead just as we do. We only give the pearl of great price to someone who is explicitly and specifically seeking it from us; only the receptive heart is supposed to listen, or can hear.
And for the pilgrim, there are vast inner and outer realms of events which always remain within the Holy of Holies, not to be talked about. Yet there will come those perfect days when we’re led to commune with our Beloved Other, whom we can never impress.
We don’t have any rules about this working in silence. Each person’s progress is designed uniquely. Often students cannot firmly grasp the principles, which are hard as diamonds, until they can ask questions freely. At some point it may be good for a student to enter group inquiry guided sensitively by the teacher. This will hover above socializing or ego, when the leader carries the Silence within and the meeting is enfolded by the meditations of us all. Rising to the spiritual level, we touch our true oneness, and between us a higher love shines through.
In such a gathering, students may bring up various concerns, or the talk may be sparked by reading from an inspired book. This can be mainly taking turns at reading aloud, with our comments, or reading a single sentence may lead to a whole session of interchange.
Of course, meditation is integral to meeting, both longer periods including at the start and finish, and brief moments scattered. The white space around the letters, the silence around the words, pervades such an activity.
Silence includes talking.
Beloved, if we can talk less, we let God help more.
The right times to communicate may come in waves that we sense, so we bring our best to the altar. These seed pearls of contact, stitched right into the world, highlight our self-sufficiency by contrast. Working within my Self supplies me, for we each are the messiah, uniquely.
Blessedness springs forth immanent in life, not held to ritual or temple. With the Kingdom attained first, all life has ceremonial meaning and becomes a Gathering.
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Where Two or Three Are Gathered Together in My Name,
There Am I in the Midst of Them
Everyone is already saved. We don’t live for someone else or supply the other’s awareness. So those who enter the “same room,” the One Consciousness, connect equally and voluntarily, being drawn to each other to study.
We let Consciousness bring our own. We don’t advertise, or try to draw people to a meeting by any human means, nor by wishing or desire.
We who come to a sacred circle are free to return or not as we choose without even the slightest pressure on us. Everyone’s life follows a different lesson plan. This activity is only right for those who are readied.
A spiritual meeting is a sacred place, not for socializing. The contacts made in this way are very powerful. (We visit at other times, for the sinews of active friendship firm up our Sacred Relationship.)
The united Consciousness of such a group is unintrusive, each of us raised in our individual way to heaven on earth. Sometimes two people have the exact same experience, not due to any intention or telepathy, but for some divinely directed purpose.
Gatherings might be two or three people meeting in a living room, or many more. Growing numbers of people are irrelevant; growth of awareness is the way the group finds its shape.
Not only is the meeting punctuated throughout with silent meditation. The leader prepares by meditating for the gathering during the intervening days, realizing the selfless I Am, the Oneness in Consciousness of all life. This realized Consciousness, this gifting grace, encircling and permeating the group, will satisfy the specific spiritual needs of each person there, whether it be an insight, healing, supply, harmonious relationship, peace, forgiveness or eternality.
Possible activities of the group:
An extemporaneous talk on the principles by a leader.
Instruction in meditation.
Questions and answers.
Listening to a tape recording, perhaps with commentary.
Reading from a divine book by turns, and discussing it, when students are ready.
Praying for the world.
Fundamental points for a gathering:
It inherently contains the essential wisdom of East and West, North and South. Universalism.
The best “discussion group” may be within me. There is no heresy; the unending path of truth takes continuous re-evaluation.
Key: meditate, get to know God directly.
We leave a meeting, taking its serene atmosphere with us.
And later when the ignited coals within us become banked with a little earth, then they stay hot, so we can brush them off and start up a fire any time.
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We may be drawn to attend a class or visit a teacher on the other side of the country. Various challenges may crop up, such as financing the trip (there can be a class fee too, if a hall is rented, etc.). In seeing through these claims, we discover our inner Self-sufficiency and build our muscles.
When a large class converges, it’s heavenly, yet things sometimes seem to go wrong, including personally for the teacher. Partly saying, you’ve seen so many miracles, you can now see that God Is Being, even in the face of an apparently unmet claim. And multi-purpose problems spill out, bringing forth the material that we’re to work on next.
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We may be led to find such a fellowship. Of groups already in place, the best I know of is The Infinite Way, part of the metaphysical movement of the first half of the twentieth century, which also produced Christian Science, Unity, Religious Science and Divine Science. Its teachings closely resemble the Srimad Bhagavatam, and much of the first section of this book. Or we may find ourselves impelled to start our own activity. We never do so because we want to. We have to be brought to it.
There’s no other fellowship we personally know of anywhere that uses all the same principles and practices as our little gathering here at home. But when we find the right teacher, it’s not that important to agree about every point of metaphysics, in order to be raised spiritually. We will ever evolve with fresh new insights and approaches.
In the movements starting today, we’re more like colleagues, compadres. We learn how to learn and how to work together.
A razor’s edge: Sticking to the straight and narrow of hard-gained truth, honoring divergences without getting diverted, while catching the wind of genuine expansion.
While our activity remains spiritual, it doesn’t get itself structured. No membership,
dues, credentials, credo, no human reliances. Our home and our path depend on Consciousness only.
Our spiritual friends network together incredibly, around the world without any organization, leaping across time and space, close as can be.
In A Night at the Opera, Harpo and Chico exchange presents: each delights in receiving an identical salami. Salome, My Peace. If we exchange My Peace, each delights in receiving it.
Metaphor of fellowship: A heavy boulder; a small group can surround it and hoist it up, each feeling as though they lift a feather.
And Consciousness is a rock that lifts us.
Meditating for a gathering: Reality is spiritual, this is not a material room. My Consciousness is God Consciousness, a law of love and truth, of healing and forgiving, of resurrection for all who enter this temple of God. Providence brings us together without any effort. Out of my self-completeness spring holy companions, all those connected in spiritual awareness, wherever we may be. Right now across time and space we are drawn together, I in you and you in me, relieved of every burden, healed and forgiven, joined in supreme serenity and bliss. In our one divine Consciousness, we have all that we shall ever need. Sitting here centering, the Renewed World is revealed, replete with Sacred Relationship, the sharing of holy grace in mutuality. I feel our fiery souls, floating freely while heavy with love.