Meditation
Prayer, meditation and decrees each have their place in attuning the soul with God and invoking his blessings, to which all are entitled.
Prayer that is not based on a fear of punishment or a desire to gain personal favors from the Deity is intended to focus in the supplicant’s heart the purity of God’s love for him, even as he, through adoration, builds a ladder of love to God.
Meditation, when properly engaged in, opens the doors of the mind to the wisdom of God that enables man to understand and implement God’s love.
And decrees are invocative of the power and the faith that activate the flame of God’s wisdom and his love and make these practical in our daily living.
Thus, prayer magnetizes the love ray, meditation establishes the wisdom ray, and decrees focus the power ray. The regular, rhythmic use of these three avenues of communion with the Holy Spirit blends the individual’s energies with the white Light of the Christ, in whom he may contact every aspect of the consciousness of God.
The purposes of prayer and meditation
The following definitions of prayer and meditation were given by beloved Kuthumi in the book Prayer and Meditation:
Prayer and meditation are like twins framing the pathway to holiness and delight. Just as prayer or entreaty makes contact with God, drawing down into the world of the seeker the rays of divine intercession, so, meditation lifts up the Son of man that he may be bathed in the radiance of the Eternal.
Meditation is an aerating of the mind, a flushing-out of silt and misconception. Meditation is for purification. It is the thought of man about his Creator. The dust of the world must be blown away, the threshing floor of the heart of man swept clean. In prayer man makes intercession to God for assistance; in meditation he gives assistance to God by creating the nature of God within his own thoughts and feelings.
Many pray from the standpoint of the sinner asking forgiveness for sin. But after forgiveness what? After forgiveness for the sin must come the re-creation of the Divine Man. As man was framed in the mortal image, so must he be formed now in the image of the Eternal. It has not been enough that the image of God, from its lofty position, has been vouchsafed to every man. The gift has not been received in manifestation.
Therefore, to meditate upon the gift is to draw the attunement of the soul toward the harmony of God realization. If man has been a thief, now he becomes the giver. If he has thought evil of others, now he becomes the mediator, the intercessor, the meditator upon their perfection as well as upon his own, reaffirming by his acts the mission of the Christ. The universe is a many-stringed lute. The infinite range of its harmonies can be enjoyed by all; but newness of sight and of hearing, newness of education, the schooling of the vision to transmit lofty thoughts and to transform them that they may come within the reach of the outstretched fingers of man—all of this man must make his own. God has proposed; his laws have disposed. Man has rejected; now he must perfect.
The admonishment of your beloved Hilarion, known unto many as Saint Paul, was “Think on these things.”[1] To meditate, then, is to let the thoughts of God that flow into the heart rise into the head, that the Knower may also become the known. Meditation is an exchange of man’s imperfect thoughts about himself and his Creator for the perfect thoughts held for him by the Creator. Identifying now with the eternal God, who is his Creator, the highest in his nature becomes the joint creator of himself. Thus, in a very real sense, as man draws the perfection of God into his world, he becomes the arbiter of his own destiny—a co-worker in the sublime—and he becomes as God is, self-created and creating.[2]
Preparation for meditation
Prayers or decrees can be used prior to the period of meditation. The ascended masters know that for mankind, caught as they are in the snares of human feelings and thoughts, a decree session given in full voice before the meditation period will serve to insulate, to protect, and to harmonize the four lower bodies so that each lifestream can be best prepared to receive the fruits of his own meditation.
It should be understood that at inner levels, according to the teachings of the Great White Brotherhood, a period of meditation is regarded as a journey into the temple. We call this temple the Temple Most Holy; and it is, in a very real sense, the laboratory of the Spirit.[3]
How to meditate
Meditation ought not to be prescribed by the meditator. He may choose a subject of the higher order upon which to reflect; but he should always permit the hand of God to lead him in thought, that the meditations of his heart and mind may be directed exclusively by his Holy Christ Self and mighty God Presence, I AM.
Among the dangers in meditation which many have faced is the altogether human penchant for the psychic (because it is so readily available) and the wish to find a unique teacher in the higher realms or perhaps a “spirit guide” who will convey some exclusive concept which one can then parade before his fellowmen.
If the aspirant for higher meditation will only understand that the childlike simplicity and trust of the seeker enables him to contact the reality of the living God, he will cease to be led by the curious elements of his own lower nature into the byways of ego-centered ventures that can never reward him with the spiritual bliss that his soul craves. For even as God's love flows to all in equal measure, he does convey a specific motif of exquisite and unique beauty to each monad according to his infinite purposes.[4]
See also
For more information
Jesus and Kuthumi, Prayer and Meditation
Sources
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Christ or Antichrist, chapter 1.
- ↑ Phil. 4:8.
- ↑ Jesus and Kuthumi, Prayer and Meditation, chapter 9.
- ↑ Ibid., ch. 10.
- ↑ Ibid., ch. 11.