from
How To Meditate
Uranda April 9, 1953 Class
How do you meditate? How do you
function in relationship to spiritual communion? If you ignore your
opportunities for spiritual communion, to the best of your capacities, do you
think that the greater experience shall come to you? How much time have you
spent today, or within the last twenty four hours, in actual, personal,
individual meditation, in a manner which opens your heart and mind to the
realities of communion? What have you done? What have you felt, what have you
thought which carried the pattern of entertaining the Lord, or at least His
Spirit, in your heart? What have you done to establish in your own
consciousness an awareness of welcome to the Lord?
In twenty-four hours, twenty-four
priceless, precious, wonderful hours, how much time could you spare for the
reality of true meditation? Now I know that there were many things which you
had to think about which had no direct bearing on entertaining the Lord. That
would be, I suppose, understandable in this world. You just had to think about
some other things. Did you? Did you waste any time?
Was the working of your mind, the
working of your heart, the feelings within yourself, were they revealing the
Divine pattern? Did you work in meditation until there was not one slightest hint
of resentment towards anyone or anything? Or, did you entertain resentment
instead of the Spirit of the Lord? Did you work in loving meditation until no
slightest hint of fear could be found in your heart and mind? Or did you spend
your time entertaining the spirits of fear instead of the spirits of Love and
Truth and Life? What spirits have you been entertaining, for you did entertain
some?
You cannot maintain consciousness
and remain physically alive without entertaining spirits of some kind. What
were they? Were they the spirits of Heaven? Are you aware of anything in your
heart which ought not be there or have you reached the point of being pure in
heart? “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”—the moment they
are pure in heart. They do not have to wait till they are dead, until some
hereafter. The moment any human being is pure in heart he sees God; in fact, if
you consider the nature of your heart you will find out what your gods are,
whether they are idols, whether they are things which are not worthy of your
worship, or whether you have obeyed the commandment “Thou shalt have no other
gods before me.”
How do you meditate? What is the
process of meditation? Did you ever take some text—most any text will do that
appeals to you. You should select your own—but did you ever take any text, any
statement that you knew was Divinely inspired, any statement which you knew to
be true, a short text preferably that is not so long but you could learn it
easily? Did you ever look at it, read it over, think about it, wonder about it,
perhaps memorize it. If you have reached the point of having looked at it, read
it, thought about it, wondered about it, and memorized it, you have only
started. That is not the finish. You have not yet begun to meditate at that
point. No.
If you are going to meditate you will not try to understand it—you will not take
the text or the inspired words and treat them like a puppy would treat a rag
doll, just to wool them around.You
will not take them and try to understand them and struggle with them. That is
not meditation. You will look at them. You will memorize them, yes, but not
just to repeat them over and over. But you look at them and keep looking and
stop trying to understand them and let your heart blend with the spirit in
them, and keep looking, and look some more, and meditate, not repeating. Once
you have memorized them you do not need to repeat them. Your mind may go over
them gently, caressing each word like something much loved.
Did you ever go over a passage of
inspired words mentally, spiritually, caressing every word with all the love of
your being, just meditating, holding each word like you would hold a little
angel from Heaven close to your breast? Did you ever look at each word like a
loving parent looks at a baby, not trying to figure anything out, just looking?
Didn’t you ever look at a baby and just look, not trying to dream any dream of
what the child shall be, not wondering anything, just looking and enjoying the
looking? Did you not? If you have never had a baby of your own to do that, any
child will do. Did you not? If you have not, you have not learned how to
meditate.
Just to look and to love, and then
to caress mentally and open your heart and enfold without any effort to
understand. Do not try to understand. What is there to understand? You are
supposed to be meditating, not trying to understand. If you are trying to
understand you certainly are not meditating. No. Just to enfold and caress with
your heart and your mind, and to look at it some more, and to consider—perhaps
for many days, and perhaps sooner or later you will pick up some other inspired
passage. Do not try to exhaust all the potential in any passage when you
meditate upon it. If you take any passage and try to get everything out of it
you will have nothing when you get through.
If you are going to entertain the
spirits of God in your heart you must entertain His Spirit first. Until His
Spirit is at home in your heart do you think He would be? That loneliness, that
yearning, that longing, which you have known, was it not the sweet desire for
such communion, for such meditation? Was it not a recognition that when you
truly love the Lord and open your heart to Him you will begin to know the true
spirit of the words, “My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my
fair one, and come away. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone. And the
time of the singing of birds is come, and the flowers appear on the earth.”
© Emissaries of Divine Light
