Meditation

We are learning the art of discrimination, understanding and right choice. Through a conscious identification of the energies we use to build our bodies, we can transform our physical, etheric, emotional and mental vehicles to best serve The Soul's plan and purpose in present time. It is through experiments with meditation that we can truly change our lives from darkness into radiant light! We become the cable of ascension to the Living, Loving Heart of God, a channel for the Manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth!

Patient observation and thoughtful activities are the most common forms of meditation. Many types of physical activity are in reality a kind of body meditation, just as people who think all day in business activities are actually engaged in mental meditation ~ not the most inspired, perhaps, but certainly taking up 100 percent of one’s attention. What we know as work is another name for meditation.

We do meditations all the time but don’t realize it. The ritual of getting up and going to work is in and of itself an active meditation. The idea that meditation is hard to do, strange and mysterious, is a common western veil placed over enlightened eastern understanding.

Spiritually-minded people understand that active sharing and loving is a type of daily meditation, and has great power. If sharing and loving were not powerful and important, we would all be selfish and introverted, like a candle burning for itself.

More advanced, conscious meditations create conditions for properly slowing down mental and emotional activity, thereby giving the body a chance to heal, rest, and refresh.

A good way to achieve stillness is to carefully observe the benefits and non-benefits of stillness. After observing and then desiring these benefits, you may be ready for meditation. Raja Yoga (the Royal Yoga or Meditation, utilizing the Crown center) creates conscious stillness. Mental disciplines such as Raja Yoga help to still the ever-expanding flow of thought-forms. The results can lead to a sensitive, altered, higher state of conscious awareness. As a teacher of meditation one's job is to be so magnetically attractive that for the student, you are the meditation. Living one's Life becomes an active full-time meditation.

One begins meditation by listening, which is related to seeing. The mind, after all, is our common eyeball that smells, sees, hears, tastes, thinks and feels. All our senses are really passive meditation states. An example of this might be taking notice of how you really truly feel, head to toe, inside and out. After the passive receiving stage, the next step combines active meditation with this passive form.

To generate a meditative picture, see an image in your mind’s eye. To visualize something in the mind’s eye is like taking a journey with the purpose of elevating oneself out of the mundane, everyday kinds of thinking and feeling. When we elevate ourselves out of these habits, we succeed in altering the shape of our consciousness. This systematic way of working has cumulative effects and is a powerful means for creating change.

Conscious meditation can change attitudes: meditation provides a mechanism allowing us to stand above tired, ancient, worn-out thoughts and feelings.

There are many varied forms of active meditation ~ for example, singing, dancing, walking in the park or at the beach. Communing with nature can become a powerful, effective, meditation. You may consider daily bathroom time to be a common meditative form. Truly, all daily rituals can be held as meditations.

Words can be meditations. We all think in pictures, yet we also think in words. Words have unbelievable power over us. For a moment, think about some words you give power to. Consider words like old, young, love, hate, man, woman, light, dark, good, bad, rich, poor, ignorant, enlightened and on and on ... see what we mean?

Colors may also be meditations. Colors are actually pure, vibrational essence. By meditating for a short time on a color such a pink, it was discovered that people could change their depression syndromes. Tests have long proved that meditating people literally begin thinking and feeling differently about life.

Imagine being well-fed, comfortable, sitting high in the mountains or in a rain forest, with all your needs satisfied, and in a neutral state with most people and things. In this self-created state of consciousness, you are less likely to find yourself in a stressful situation. And if some stress does appear, you’re less likely to be upset over it. Meditation can work when you're in physically or emotionally uncomfortable situations. Your blood pressure will remain proportionally as "normal" as you remain neutral to life's situations.

Remember that settings ~ our environment ~ can effect our mental and emotional health. Clearly, surroundings have an impact on our consciousness.

A change of consciousness can mean many things ~ not just becoming one with God or nature. For example, going from lovemaking to washing the car is a very dramatic change of consciousness. We undergo thousands of such changes of consciousness in the course of as single day.

When doing meditations remember always to ask yourself how you feel ~ this affirms that a change of consciousness has occurred or is occurring. Meditations are limited only by your imagination. You can create meditations for most particular problems, meditations will help you deal with your individual difficulties.

Some meditations take things out and some put things in. It’s up to you to decide which is needed. What are you experiencing? Do you feel overwhelmed? If so, take out the excessive energy. Are you feeling empty or lost? Meditate on what you need and fill up.

To best determine which meditation is correct to use, carefully observe your state of consciousness. Meditations should be geared to re-focus and re-direct your energy.

There is no set formula, which meditation you use for yourself or others depends on your observations and discussions. If you or they are high strung, try physical activities allowing for the release of energy, such as hiking, riding bikes, running, or a brisk walk in a park with green trees and wildflowers. You may need to be more in touch with the earth. Go outside, take off your shoes and let your feet feel the ground. Most people do well when their hands and feet can feel the dirt. Remember, all of nature is a meditation!

If you or someone close to you is running too much emotional energy, you might try the meditative technique of putting the energy into an imaginary elevator and seeing it rise to the heart or head. Communing with nature works on our astral, emotional body too!

Mental types might meditate on a spiral. Follow the spiral up and up with your mind, then go deep, down into it. One direction balances male energy while the other balances female energy.

Imagine a hoop around you. See it revolve around you in one direction. Now let it rotate the other way. Next, imagine two hoops, one around your waist and another rotating from head to toe. Now see both hoops rotating in different directions. This exercise stimulates the two hemispheres of the brain in new, evolutionary ways. Communing with nature works on our mental body too!

We meditate a lot on how to fulfill our desires. One might consider substituting one's personel desires with ideas, aspirations of a larger nature, for the greatest good of all. When we do this we find we become truly satisfied, satiated, Full of Life! A Mahat once said, "Peace begins inside, from this truth we cannot hide! We discover one of the greatest treasures of All, Enlightenment, leading to Peace. A Mahat once said, "Peace begins inside, from this truth we cannot hide!

Personal, lifelong meditations consist of "finding the right people and inspiring them."

Recommended Additional Meditation Resources

Meditation, What Is It Really?
Institute for Global Transformation

Meditation.com ~ Go to the Source
Global community sharing on meditation

Meditation States ~ Bliss, Clarity and Nonthought
From The Buddhist Path

Orin's Meditation Room
Brief, guided meditations for receiving solar light

Personal Meditation
Arcana Workshops

Seven Ways to Enlightenment
The Secret of Creation

There are seven approaches to Divinity through meditative work. Four are related to the individual and to consecrating the personality, and the other three are of a group nature.

The seven steps or grades of focused intention in meditative work include working with

Desire

The attainment of achieving that which satisfies the lower desires initially drives one towards focusing their will, which begins the process of meditative work. This form of approach is inclusive of all human desires from the beginning of human development up to and the aspiring mystic.

Prayer

Prayer is an approach to Divinity invoked by the aspirant, the mystic or the spiritually inclined being that blends personality desire with a desire for soul contact. Through the demonstrated effectiveness of prayer, one observes the subtler powers and the fact of the essential dualism of life, discovering both a lower self and a higher Self.

Mental Reflection

Mental reflection or concentrated thinking produces integration and definite personality alignment, which leads eventually to controlled reflection and concentrated thoughts. This type of thinking has produced all the creative wonders of modern civilization and culminates in the concentration achieved in occult meditation. This meditation brings about personality and soul fusion.

Straight Meditation

A focused, concentrated mental attitude and fixed reflection that is creative in nature is termed straight meditation. This practice births the "Christ Within," producing the soul-infused personality. The soul-infused personality then reorients the life and environment, and begins consciously to cooperate with the creative work of the Spiritual Hierarchy, the Group Soul.

These four stages of meditative work are responsible for all that is seen and known to exist in the three worlds. These expressions of meditation or focused thought ~ from desires for physical or emotional objectives to the higher aspects of spiritual, focused aspiration ~ definitely create that which is desired.

This is also true of the other three stages of meditation that are group in nature, as they are intelligently and effectively creative. These three stages involve

Worship

Worship is the united group recognition and reflection upon Divine Transcendence and Divine Immanence. Worship creates the path of return to the source of Divine Life.

Invocation and Evocation

Invocation and evocation is a form of dynamic, spiritual meditation. The New Group of World Servers and people of goodwill worldwide are creatively striving towards the upliftment of humanity, the creation of a new world order and a more spiritually-polarized civilization. To assist in this evolution, The Great Invocation was given to assist in the creation of the new world order and is a cornerstone of the New World Religion. The united use of this prayer is one of the most powerful demonstrations of invocative and evocative meditation.

Ashramic Meditation

Ashramic mediation is based upon the evocation of human response to the higher spiritual values and the creation of those conditions which allow the new values to flourish according to the Divine Plan. Ashramic meditation focuses on the immediate aspect of the Path humanity is needing to tread. Its intention is to swing into creative activity the desires, aspirations, reflections and focused meditation of humanity, at whatever their point in evolution, so that a potent, cooperative and invincible movement will be established, resulting in the creation of the new heavens and earth. This is one way of preparing the way for the Kingdom of God on Earth, with a new order and way of expressing life.

From the initial focused intention to satisfy the appetite, one ultimately joins in ashramic meditations. Meditative work performed by the Hierarchy and the New Group of World Servers creates dynamic and evolutionary results in the three worlds of personality expression, made up of the physical-etheric, astral and mental planes. It is through experiments with meditation that we can truly change our lives from darkness into radiant light! We become the cable of ascenion to the Living Loving Heart of God, a channel for the Manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth!

Credit for information and synthesis (7 Ways to Enlightenment):
The collected volumes of writings by Alice A. Bailey,
specific reference here to Discipleship in the New Age, Volume II, p. 215–217
Lucis Publishing Co., 120 Wall St., 24th Floor, New York, NY 10005

Daily Meditation
Purification Meditation
Zen Ping Pong
Sea of Fire Meditation
Meditation ~ Upgrade Your System
Invoking the Divine~The Great Invocation
Spiritual Focus ~ Calendar
Altar Your Reality
Blessings Upon You
Soul's a Goal
Healing Deities
Healing Arts
Secret of Creation

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