Meditation (1)

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From lecture 25, THE PATH: INITIAL STEPS, PREPARATION, AND DECISIONS:

Moreover, I want to tell you before I begin that many of the words I shall give you in these particular lectures can be treated as a meditation. You should retain these words and not just read them once, for that will not be enough. You should meditate on these teachings, so that this knowledge may eventually grow from being superficial and intellectual to reaching the deeper regions of your being. Only then will they be really beneficial to you.

From Lecture 27, ESCAPE ALSO POSSIBLE ON THE PATH

When you sit here or at any time when you meditate, I would advise you to be entirely relaxed, and also not to sit with your legs or arms crossed. Hold your hands with the palms upward, for in a good meditation, whether it is a trance session or simply a meditation, strong forces are present. You are most receptive in the palms of your hands, and these forces can better penetrate into you through them. There may be physical healing forces present, or some spiritual force that you need, and perhaps a force that will help you to overcome some of your psychological problems. Whatever it is, it is important for you. However, if you keep your limbs crossed, you cut off this current. This is why I advise you to do it. To sit this way all the time may seem like a hardship at first, but if you learn to be entirely relaxed, you will be able to sit like this for hours and will not feel it. You will almost feel your hands lifted; you will not even have to support them in your lap any more. They will lift by their own accord, as though an outer power were at work. You will not feel any weight in them. If you can succeed in this, without too much forced concentration, you should be entirely relaxed and should feel a very beneficial effect.

From lecture 194, MEDITATION: ITS LAWS AND VARIOUS APPROACHES — A SUMMARY (MEDITATION AS POSITIVE LIFE CREATION)

Tonight’s lecture is a summary of meditation. I will speak about what meditation is, about some of the laws inherent in it; and then specifically how meditation is best used to fulfill the aim of this particular pathwork: the unification of the whole person with the as yet separated part, the lower self. Much of it will sound, perforce, repetitious, but this cannot be avoided in any summary. Yet it will prove helpful because it will give all of you a better understanding of the meaning of meditation and its laws and will make easier your attempts to put meditation into practice.

Meditation is conscious and deliberate creating. It is one of the most dynamic and creative acts imaginable. You constantly create, whether you know it or not. You create by what you are, by what the sum total of your feelings, your conscious and unconscious opinions and convictions are, by your conceptions, which determine your actions and reactions, by your goals and attitudes. Every thought is a creation and has its consequence; it brings about a specific result that expresses this thought. Since people consist of many conflicting thoughts, and since their thoughts and beliefs often vary drastically from their emotions, the result, their creation, must vary accordingly. The mixed-up, conflicting, and confusing lives most people lead testifies to this fact. There are those who create unwittingly, never knowing that their unwise, erroneous thoughts, their destructive feelings, and their unchecked wishes bring about a negative result just as surely as if they were to commit a conscious act. Between them and those people who attempt to check, test, and challenge their concepts, who seek the truth and adjust their ideas and aims to it, and who purify their feelings by going through them with courage and honesty, wisdom, and the knowledge that what exists inside, no matter how painful, cannot simply be avoided but must be experienced, there is an enormous difference. This latter attitude toward life can then result in the deliberate creation of one’s life. And that is meaningful meditation.

Meditation is creating because you live in a highly potent creative substance, which is what I have also called soul substance. You live in it, you move in it, you have your being in it. Everything that consciousness sends forth into this substance must take form. The word you speak or think, the emotionally charged thought you know and pronounce are creative acts. The creative substance in which you live and which lives in you is then impressed by the thought form, which molds it. This substance changes constantly as it becomes impregnated by conscious thought and intent. This is how creation unfolds in its myriad forms.

In conscious creation you express various thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, and their sum total creates the totality of your life. All concepts and opinions, all views and desires, create a will direction, and this creative force activates the receptive substance of your soul. If you understand this principle, it will become obvious that you can tell exactly what other people think, feel, and believe — consciously and unconsciously — when you see in their lives where they have fulfillment and abundance, and where impoverishment and want.

It is therefore one of the most important aims on this path to make conscious all you think and know, perceive and conceive, believe in and want. Only then can you see all the conflicts and misconceptions. Only then can you begin to create a good life. Meditation can and should, of course, be used for the very purpose of eliminating misconceptions and destructive attitudes. With the help of meditation you can become aware of what your misconceptions are and why they are erroneous. With the help of meditation you can gradually impress correct beliefs upon your soul substance.

You first use meditation to eliminate whatever prevents you from meditating. This sounds like a paradox, but it is not. If you hold incorrect, negative beliefs, you cannot create a good life; rather, you unwittingly destroy creative substance or turn it into a negative manifestation. Once the misconceptions are eliminated, you can actively create more desirable experiences, better and deeper feeling capacity, more creative self-expression, more joy and serenity. All this exists in truly limitless abundance in the universe and is completely available to you. The only limitation is your own mind which, because of its false ideas and the negative feelings and attitudes deriving from them, ignores this abundance.

Every act in the universe comes about because the active and receptive principles fuse and create something new. This applies to everything, from the smallest and apparently most insignificant act to the most sublime. Whether it is you who create a tiny object, or the cosmic intelligence which creates new galaxies, both the active and receptive principles must always merge harmoniously. The same applies to the act of meditation, of course.

Each level of your personality can, at various stages in your development, use different approaches to meditation. Each approach can vary according to which level plays the active part and which the receptive. I shall be more specific about this later. Now let me say only that in the first stage the conscious mind almost always assumes the active part by speaking the word, by concisely formulating the thoughts and intents. The more concisely the conscious mind claims and states, and the more constructive and truthful the thoughts and intents are, the more inner, unconscious obstructions will dissolve, provided they are dealt with realistically and honestly.

Let us assume, for example, that you meditate for more fulfillment with a mate. The force of your own conviction that you deserve this, that this is indeed possible and in keeping with divine law, will depend on the extent you have faced your own wish not to love. When you are unaware of this wish, your request for more fulfillment must lack conviction and will be infiltrated with doubt. But if you face your incommensurate attitude — your hatred, your demanding love — and truly give it up, you can meditate first for your own increased capacity to love. Thus the obstruction to fulfillment is realistically dealt with and all resistance and doubt that you indeed deserve the best will vanish.

The soul substance functions according to the receptive principle. The more one-pointed, unconflicted, uncontaminated by secret doubts due to unrecognized negativities your statement is, the more deeply and clearly the receptive part — the soul substance — will be imprinted. Soul substance will be molded by consciousness according to its strength, conviction, and clarity.

The all-permeating Creator uses precisely the same principle all human beings use, whether they know it or not. The higher the development, and the more truthful an entity’s thoughts and concepts are, the more powerful will be the energy with which the entity creates. In the case of the ultimate Creator, the energy will never be eliminated by conflict, by the limitations of the mind, or by faulty visualization.

There is also a correlation between, on the one hand, the accuracy of knowledge, visualization of new possibilities of expansion and experience, and correct concepts and, on the other hand, receptivity of soul substance. When concepts are real and the limitless abundance of the universe is therefore correctly perceived, attitudes will be positive and accord with the cosmic laws of truth and love. Therefore defenses will be unnecessary. In this defenseless state the soul substance becomes loose, resilient, and receptive. It will be easily impressed and malleable, and creation can continuously flow forth.

Conversely, when concepts are distorted, and foster destructive attitudes and negative feelings, cosmic law is broken. This causes guilt and fear, which in turn require defenses. The defenses make the surface of soul substance hard and brittle, therefore much harder to impress and imprint.

To comprehend this process to at least some degree, even if at first such comprehension is merely theoretical and intellectual, will be very helpful for your further attempts at meditation.

Creative meditation thus consists of the following stages or phases:

(1) concept
(2) impressing and allowing to be impressed
(3) visualization
(4) faith.

Let us see how this works.

Meditation must begin with your conscious mind. Like all acts, it follows from a decision of will and intent. The concepts and thoughts you form with your conscious mind are your initial tools. I repeat: clarity and conviction, concise statement and unconflicted directive determine the force and energy of the process. If you feel weakness and doubt in your statement of intent, it is an immediate sign that you must first deal with your obstructions, and your attention should be turned, for instance, to uncovering unconscious negativities, aspects of the lower self, or distorted concepts.

When you have removed the obstructions by dealing with them, when your conscious mind formulates strongly and concisely, your inner will needs to relax, allowing the soul substance to be impressed. You can then create good life, new attitudes, better experiences and events, infinite expansion.

When the mind remains within the narrow framework of its present state, expansion and creation are impossible. Meditation therefore requires that the mind take a leap into conceiving new possibilities, new states of consciousness for the self. If you now cannot conceive yourself free from a certain attitude that blocks your way, you must first consider intellectually that things could change and you wish they would.

First, you must know and believe that you have the right and the ability to mold and create substance with your mind. You may never even have thought of this possibility, so now when you examine your attitude, you may find that you strongly doubt that you can do it. Accept this possibility as a hypothesis to begin with, until you know that it is indeed true.

If your unconscious mind rejects a thought that your consciousness has superimposed on it, this process will not work. You can quite easily determine whether you reject a conscious thought by the way you feel about it. If you sense rejection you must deal with your inner contradiction and use the creative process of meditation to resolve it. You can thus overcome fear and resistance and face the truth that must be faced, feel the feelings that must be felt. It may seem unnecessary to repeat this, but it is such an important point. Many people give up meditation because it does not seem to work. They disregard their unconscious ambivalence and give up.

If, for example, you have a strong unconscious neurotic desire that conflicts with your conscious wish, your conscious mind may refute this desire and battle against acknowledging it, let alone ousting it. As long as this battle continues in the unconscious, the conscious wish will be impotent. At best, it will battle against the unconscious counterforce, vacillating between the two states of fulfillment and deprivation, at least until the hidden wish for deprivation is unearthed.

Meditation is a wonderful way to test how much you resist your conscious positive desire for fulfillment. To what degree do you really want it? To what degree do you perhaps fear certain aspects of what you most desire? To what degree are you really willing to pay the price? Meditation can set your mind on the right track, provided you do not overlook your emotional reaction to the thought you issue forth.

Thus the conscious concept must also prevail in the unconscious. When you choose as your topic of meditation a goal, a wish, or a state into which you want to expand, it is essential to determine whether there is any conflict between the conscious and the unconscious concept.

The unity between the conscious and unconscious directly affects the second stage: impressing and being impressed. With a unified consciousness, impressing will be strong. No defenses and hiding are needed, so your soul substance will be readily impressed with the truthful concept you send into it. You will actually feel the concept you issue “sink into you,” like a seed that falls into the soil to germinate. With no defenses, you will let the germination process take its course. You will not disrupt it with doubt, fear, and impatience. The less you are burdened with unconscious destructive attitudes, the more you will feel the creative process at work. You will trust it, allow it to happen in its own organic way, without hindering it with selfwill and preconceived ideas that stem from the limited outer mind. Thus the new creation will slowly unfold, perhaps a bit differently from the way you thought it would.

This is the most desirable way to create; indeed, the only possible way. It may well be that your first response to meditation points out more hindrances. Since you may not be prepared for such an answer, you may at first tend to overlook it and fail to comprehend that certain occurrences or reactions are indeed the answer you now need. The more you are prepared to accept difficulties should they occur, the easier it will be to understand the language of the creative process you have deliberately set in motion.

It cannot be emphasized enough that meditation, like all creative acts, consists of both impressing by active principle, and receiving the impression by the receptive principle. The more you can feel this interaction, the more effective your creative act must be. This is why the people with strong defenses cannot meditate, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. Their conscious mind may be active enough to formulate the proper concepts, they may imprint strongly, but inwardly nothing happens. They cannot be impressed because they have not removed the defenses that still hide what they do not wish to acknowledge.

The third stage is visualization. Let us first understand clearly what visualizing is not. It does not mean wishful thinking, daydreaming, fantasizing, illusory hope. All of these are attempts to whisk away hopelessness, which, in turn, exists because of destructive attitudes and traits one does not wish to face and give up, or residual feelings one does not wish to experience.

Visualization means perceiving yourself in the state you wish to attain, experience, become: feeling yourself in that state. You can experience yourself in meditation as loving, as opposed to resentful; fulfilled, as opposed to eternally wanting and empty; joyful and content, as opposed to anxious and depressed; or whatever else you are concerned with. Visualization follows proper conceiving. Conceiving means considering the desired state or experience as a possibility, visualization means feeling yourself in that state. It does not mean picturing particulars, for that may easily lead to wishful daydreaming, which is more a hindrance than a help.

If you find yourself incapable of visualizing the desired state of mind, feeling, or experience, that is an immediate sign that you are unconsciously blocking yourself, using a “countertruth” and therefore maintaining a hardened, unimpressionable soul substance, and/or weak thought-power. You should then work on that. The process of visualization requires a constant tuning in to awareness of your inner responses.

The fourth stage is faith. At the beginning, you can only grope for faith by an honestly experimental attitude. You cannot enforce faith as an act of will. That would be dishonest. It would mean superimposing a wishful kind of faith over inner doubts, negativities, negation. Unfortunately, this is what happens all too often in religions, with very undesirable results. It discredits spirituality itself among those who cannot distinguish between superimposition and real experience.

If you lack faith because you live in blindness and negation and are therefore cut off from the truth of the universe, you must deal with this attitude in the most honest way there is. Examine courageously this attitude and test yourself to find whether you have a stake in maintaining it, and what this stake might be. Since it is basic human nature to love, not to hate; to be joyful, not to despair, so it is also your inherent nature to know the benign presence of the cosmic spirit within yourself and in the universe. If you do not know this, at one point you have decided not to know it. This dishonesty must be ascertained, admitted, and finally given up.

You need then adopt the attitude of openness, of honest questioning. Openness always means considering a possibility that you have not yet experienced. You must then give this possibility a chance — an honest chance. The wisdom of patience, the intelligence to know that there are many possibilities beyond your scope of experience, and the good will to grope for the way should help you. If you honestly seek answers you will receive them, and the true universe will communicate itself to you.

When you cultivate this attitude, positive results have to occur. The human being who is still in a very gray state of doubt is apt to believe that the first manifestations and answers are coincidences, that they would have happened anyway and do not really constitute an answer. This reaction is predictable and even inevitable. It should not make you feel guilty, and, certainly, you should no more hide it from yourself than any other reaction. Rather, confront these thoughts and again use honesty and intelligence.

For instance, you can say: “Yes, it seems miraculous. There is indeed a living process and intelligence at work that surpasses what might possibly be a fantasy. It seems too good to be true. It is what I would like. But there is also another part in me that doubts it could be true. Yet I will give it a further chance.” Right here at this point, where you are conflicted and doubtful, meditation should be used. Examine what the doubtful side wants and does not want. Let it express itself. Request guidance for this, and request further answers for yourself.

Answers may come in various ways: inspiration, sudden new ideas, usually when you least expect them; new realizations of feelings, or through a word you hear or read somewhere. As you go on, you will recognize that these answers are the manifestation of a live process that is so profoundly meaningful and organic that nothing the intellect can think up can ever match it. You will recognize that such answers and the enlightenment they bring are pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, forming little by little a comprehensive picture. Eventually you will rely on this process as on nothing else. It is more real than anything in the material world. It is your own path that unfolds, and it eventually reveals the reason for your being here on this earth now, the meaning of your present incarnation. When this inner experience and certainty comes, you have faith.

Until then, you must learn to deal with the stages that prevent you from reaching faith. This may take years. In the meantime, you must constantly examine the content of your own unconscious, or partly conscious, beliefs and attitudes, feelings and reactions. The incontrovertible experience we call faith can come only when you give yourself the chance, when you keep an open mind and are honest with yourself. In these days, people often keep a closed mind because they fear ridicule from others. Thus their disbelief is often every bit as unnatural, dishonest, and superimposed, as opportunistic and conformist, as false religion used to be.

By the same token, just as frequently people will not allow the answer to an honest question to come to them out of fear that the answer may be “no,” and that they might find out that there is nothing beyond the graspable and material. They are so afraid of this alternative that they will not let go enough to stay open and receptive. True answers can come only when there is no tight, fearful attitude and when the readiness to deal with whatever the answer may be is really there. Since you fear the negative answer, you prefer to keep it constantly in abeyance. You vacillate, theorize, stay on the edge before going into the apparent abyss of commitment to test the truth. Staying with the theory may sometimes last for many lifetimes. To risk obtaining a perhaps undesirable answer, you need to muster your courage. Then truth will prevail. Theory allows only illusory faith, never the real.

Real faith is knowledge, inner experience about which there is no longer any doubt. Real faith can be acquired only by those who are ready to risk an undesirable answer and then are determined to deal with it. If you are truly prepared to deal with whatever comes in life, in yourself, you can take chances and will find truth. If you are not prepared to do this and content yourself with theorizing sophistry, living by proxy in “as-if” land, you can never go beyond the step of inner argumentation.

You need also understand that such honest commitment and readiness to deal with what really is goes hand in hand with a similar attitude toward the lower self. To the degree you hide from the lower self and are unwilling to face it, you will not find the courage to deal with anything else — universal truth included.

All four stages are, of course, directly interdependent. Now I will present a few laws of meditation to give an overall picture of its sequence and continuity.

One of the most important laws is what all Scripture reiterates: According to your belief you shall experience. This is actually already quite clear from all I said before. Since you are living in an infinitely malleable substance of creative, impressionable mass or substance, your belief molds and creates. The powerful, sizzling sea of energy in which you move, breathe, think, and express yourself, can therefore manifest anything you can conceive of: from the most dismal state of hell to the most sublime state of heaven, and every degree in-between. This realization can truly bring a profound change in your life. I would suggest that you think deeply about this and request inspiration and guidance about it in mediation. This is where visualization comes in. In conceiving, impressing and being impressed, visualizing and having faith, you express and act upon a specific belief, which you must then experience as the created response.

If your belief, as conceived and visualized, is that you cannot change, that the universe is hostile, that your ultimate fate is tragedy, then indeed you will, you must, experience just that. All your actions and reactions are geared to bring this about. Conversely, if you truly believe that you can change and grow out of negativity, destructiveness, hopelessness, misery and poverty, that the universe is abundant joy in every respect and that you can experience this truth, then, indeed, you cannot help but do so. This belief needs to include your willingness to remove your own obstructions. If you are honestly committed to it, you will feel increasingly free to believe in the possibility of experiencing the abundance of the universe.

A finely calibrated inner mechanism prevents you from violating the divine laws beyond a certain degree. So, for instance, if you are unconsciously launched on a road of hate and spite, you cannot believe in the possibilities of love and fulfillment. If you unconsciously want to cheat life by wanting more than you are willing to give, you violate another important cosmic law, so that no matter how much you may try to believe in the possibility of life’s abundance, it will not work. It will not take, your substance will refuse the impression until you remove this violation of law. Life cannot be cheated — and it is well that way.

Another law is that you cannot skip a step. If you want a result that depends on eliminating obstructions which violate a law, the obstruction must first be dealt with. Therefore your meditative aim may have to be altered along the way. If you are not willing to correct what stands in the way, the result cannot come; creation cannot take place in this area.

Here you have the choice of either a vicious or a benign circle. The vicious circle is: “If I unconsciously hold back and do not wish to make the commitment to truth and honesty, to giving as much as I wish to receive, but want — childishly and unfairly — to get more than I am willing to give, then my conviction will be lacking. Or, if I want a positive result without wanting to make the necessary change in my own being, I will inevitably doubt that change is possible for me. Thus my concept, my belief, my visualization will be too weak and my soul substance too brittle to be impressed. This will reinforce my doubt and negation.”

Conversely, “When I fulfill the law of truth and love, of honesty and openness, when I remove the defenses and face my lower self, when I am willing to change, then I will feel my birthright to experience absolute abundance, the intrinsic nature of the universe. If I am stuck along the way and am blind, it is up to me to find the answer. It is never as obscure as a part of me wants to believe. A clear answer is always possible to find when I really want to.”

One of the most helpful things to remember is that you can meditate to meditate; that you can ask for guidance and inspiration to find the right topic, concentration, concern, word and attitude at any given phase of your path. You can meditate for awareness in your soul substance where it is walled in and cluttered up with untruth, where it needs to receive help to loosen up. Meditation can and should be used for every step along the way. Where you feel the resistance is too great, you must know that you do not want the positive, but wish to remain in the negative. Then this wish has to be dealt with. Meditation becomes really problematic when you deny your negative desire, but complain about not getting the wished for result. The moment you know you want the negative you are one step further, because then you can meditate about that.

The more you progress in the art of meditation, the more aware you must become that it is a constant interaction between the active and receptive principles, between the voluntary and involuntary faculties. After this first stage of meditation, in which your mind performs the active, impressing part and affects the receptive soul substance, other possibilities arise where the various levels of human consciousness assume varying roles of active and receptive interaction. Your conscious ego-mind can activate the divine process and let it respond. The spiritual self is being impressed and called forth by the conscious good will and by the mind. But then another interaction must come about. The manifesting spiritual self must become the active principle, and the conscious mind must become receptive, listening, pliable, impressionable. It must tune into and understand the spiritual messages that come forth.

Still another possibility is that you actively use your conscious ego-mind, but address it this time to the lower, destructive part of the self, asking it to manifest and express itself. Subsequently, you must again become receptive and listen with your conscious mind, so the lower self can truly be heard. This does not mean that the conscious mind gives in to it, identifies with it, or is in that sense impressed by it. Rather, the conscious mind listens and absorbs, evaluates and discriminates.

As your conscious mind lets itself be instructed by the spiritual self, so the lower self can be instructed by both the conscious ego-mind and the divine self — perhaps in that order. After you have listened to the destructive nonsense of the lower self, without impinging on its free expression, you can tell where it is wrong; why it is so; what its misconceptions are as well as the damage it causes. An interaction, a dialogue develops.

Perhaps a bit later you can request the divine self to issue instructions to the lower self. Let the divine self talk to your conscious mind and your undeveloped lower self. Listen to it; let it teach and inspire you on all levels. Let it talk or write to you through your ego-mind.

The divine self can instruct the usually unconscious lower self in various ways. You may actually hear an inner dialogue conducted by these two levels of consciousness in your being. The ego can then actively ally itself with the divine self. Or the process can happen during your sleep without your conscious mind being directly involved. The process may create some momentary turmoil you may at first not understand. It may come from your wish to purify the lower self. After you have fully recognized how the process works — this is always necessary, it cannot be skipped, since you must assume responsibility for it — the influence of the divine self may take place on the involuntary level. You need to become very tuned in, very receptive, to become aware of it. This much more advanced state comes about only when the previous stages are already mastered and practiced.

There are occasional periods when such an inner process may go on in the life of all human beings even when they are not involved in a path such as this. It may arise from an intent stemming from before the present incarnation. The entity may have reached a specific crossroads where this inner guidance becomes instrumental for an outer decision and commitment to a real path, with all that it implies. Such guidance may come in periods of upheaval, through powerful dreams or a specific succession of events. However, if you are not already deeply involved with and attuned to your inner reality, you will not be able to decipher its meaning. You need help and guidance from others. Even then, the full significance of such a guidance may become clear only much later.

If your conscious and unconscious mind do not obstruct such an inner guidance but wait and listen, tremendous development can take place following such periods. More unfoldment, more enlightenment must come. But if conscious resistance and unconscious negation, fears and blocks bar the way, then a very harmful process is set in motion because the inner expansion pushes forward and the outer blocks stifle it. This leads to crisis. It may occur on any or all levels. It may cause a breakdown if the pull into expansion on the one hand and obstruction on the other are too strong. It is always the outer, the obstructing side that must give way to the inner urge to expand, for the latter is the divine and true voice that knows the right timing. All crises should be viewed in this way.

The farther you go on your path, the more receptive to the inner process you will be; the more you will be able to alternate between receptivity and initiating, from level to level. The increasing awareness of and attunement to the inner processes, and thus to the inner world of truth, finally eliminates the strong wall that separates your ego from the greater reality.

Meditation can be applied to all life experiences, both inner and outer, and to self-expression. If it is rightly practiced, it alternates. If the outer fulfillment is not obstructed inside, meditation for fulfillment will immediately bring about the proper concept, with impressing and being impressed, visualizing and faith in the result. The creative process will work, and you will feel it. But when there are inner obstructions, meditation must turn its focus on them, so that meditation on the outer desirable goal can later be resumed.

Whether you use meditation first for the express purpose of experiencing life in a more meaningful way, or whether your primary concern is to experience the Creator within you, it matters not. For both mean the same inner state, and bring about the same outer experience. If you experience God in you and know that you are God’s manifestation, your life must be rich and fulfilled. Or, if you start with conceiving the richness of life, you will succeed only when you know that abundance is the nature of Creation and the will of God. In order to attain both aims, you have to remove inner obstructions to true unity, rather than trying to maintain the false unity that comes from splitting off the undesirable part you do not wish to deal with.

You may use meditation to meet your deepest fears and deal with them. You can ask for guidance and enlightenment, strength and courage. You do not need to live in fear, but the fear vanishes only when you go into it and expose it as the phantom it really is.

There is not a human being who does not fear death. A wall within separates people from the process of life beyond death. That, too, can become a topic of meditation. You may want to remove this wall and ask for necessary guidance, but are you truly willing to fulfill the conditions? If you are, you can indeed remove the wall. You can live without fearing death. You can experience the truth of eternal life, right here and now, in the body. But it means giving up all the ego attitudes; all the tremendous preoccupation with everything that sustains and cultivates the ego: pride, selfwill, fear, vanity, separateness, duality, in sum, the belief that there is a difference between you and others, that either you or the other should be more important. All these erroneous, illusory attitudes are part of the ego consciousness and keep out the awareness of who you really are: the greater consciousness that knows no wall and therefore fears nothing. You may delude yourself that you do not fear death by not looking at it, but your fear will manifest in all sorts of ways. As long as you are encased in the ego’s walls, you must fear death, even as you destructively wish for it, motivated by hostility and the wish to escape. You can truly remove this fear when you abandon the ego attitudes. Playing fair and square with life, without cheating, not setting yourself above others and therefore not feeling below them will indeed make you fearless. For your fear is conditioned by your ego, as you know but choose to forget.

Any question, any problem, any conflict, any darkness, can and should be taken into meditation and dealt with honestly. The only problem here, my dearest friends, is that even when you have already experienced the truth of meditation and have genuine faith in it, you still tend to forget to use this wonderful communication. It simply does not occur to you to use it at all times; you forget how effectively it can be used for the smallest and the biggest issues of living. In reality there is no small or big. Everything is important. Every issue makes room for the alternatives of constructive or destructive attitudes. You can choose to adopt truthful or erroneous ones, divine or demonic ones. Since everything can be important or unimportant, depending on your vantage point, everything can be taken into meditation.

As you meditate to remove your blocks, you will increasingly be lived through, lived by, and be a manifestation of the divine expression as this particular entity you are now. Then there is no more wall, no more ego: you are the divine consciousness. You no longer need to go into specific acts of meditation, in the sense of thinking and concentrating, consolidating your thoughts and listening, shutting out the vagaries of the mind that want to take you away. You will not have to make an effort. You will just emanate creating. You will live it, breathe it, be it. Every expression and thought and feeling will be a creative meditative act when the real you is free.

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Thanks:

To my teacher Marieke Mars who taught me self-honesty. To my courageous and loving pathwork helper Dottie Titus.

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fear truth experience feelings love God consciousness reality negativity spirituality soul pain spiritual_paths mind attitudes emotions power destructiveness movement ego energy pleasure awareness personality development lower_self divine desires change guilt childhood create conscious spirits thoughts spiritual_laws fulfillment spirit_world death happiness unconscious problems positivity earth give growth images pathwork spirit understand pride evil creation body life_force higher_self exercises cause_and_effect needs parents time prayer center duality reactions New_Age freedom sex life contact beliefs universe individuality control relationships expression meditation discipline values motives doubt reincarnation Jesus_Christ women inner_child wish faults will confusion spheres strength men illusion struggle activity shame faith maturity demands idealized_self self-image self-will authority acceptance hurt selfishness real_self frustration resistance meaning connections soul_substance receive knowledge responsibility conclusions bliss life_task Christ mass_images free_will trust observe lectures know denial intellect pretense decisions conscience perception birth Lucifer salvation religion reason marriage light identification courage laws rebellion words union humanity long receptiveness surrender misconceptions mask let_go vicious_circles communication instinct concentration no-current tension commitment fantasy involuntary_processes opinions secrets contraction expansion difficulties punishment evolution space divine_substance obedience emptiness male female passivity darkness self-responsibility grace inner_will conflicts self-confidence anger suffer groups nature cruelty pulse_of_life unity energy_centers chakras openness negative_intentionality order spiral exposure self-respect universal_self affirmations visualization laziness background_thoughts foreground_thoughts daydreams wishful_thinking superstition appearance_values being_values inferiority assumptions obligations danger defensiveness superimposed_conscience divine_conscience compulsive_conscience universal_spirit divine_spark vacuum self-awareness dimensions rigidity tradition Christianity Judaism automatism reflexes education mediums masculine feminine purification fall subtle_body God_image self-love spirit_language approval unhappiness outer_will fight forcing_current success isolation think self-discipline self-preservation criticism peace relinquish defenses sin self-alienation sadness psyche crisis yes-current intelligence effort chain_reactions perfection opposites error envy existence organism life_substance impress avoidance channel now blame fusion abundance psychic_nuclear_points Christmas leadership eternal_life admit Dottie Titus harm self-knowledge lightforces daily_review immaturity tendencies egoism ideas dependence karma Eastern_Spirituality Western_Spirituality atheism transcendence centeredness attention constructiveness world_weariness war ambition positive_thinking forms ecstasy sacrifice psychology life_plan dignity shock eros guardian_angels inner_wall blindness Eva_Pierrakos homosexuality bondage cosmic_principles static_principle restriction self-importance rulership utopia sickness betrayal weakness rejection progress prove rituals intuition subconscious transition motivations impatience exaggeration myth cooperation serenity defeat safety pseudo_solutions universal_life self-pity Tower_of_Babel false_religion true_religion rules gratification repression compassion inner_split alternatives neurosis unfulfillment imperfection perfectionism joy self-rejection masochism sloth lust gluttony depression blessings restitution hope habits security determination displacement substitution respect unknown moralize intensity self-realization universal_power childishness inner_self numbness relaxation inner_control outer_control closeness vulnerability negative_desires magnetic_fields destruction character transformation false_feelings human_nature unpleasure blocks cosmic_pull self-liking regulate flow spontaneity impulses anxiety universal_consciousness guidance health unselfishness forgive abandonment aliveness self-esteem traits dislike disunity unification interaction fate mutuality stagnation negation terror tricks cosmic_feeling force_fields disorder exchange moods devil greatness richness distortions divine_voice service group_consciousness hate self-forgiveness balance imbalance distrust omnipotence immortality pessimism manifestation self-hate boundaries abuse government political_systems lose inertia acts christians jews injustice justice deficit heal privacy win inner_space autonomy positive_aggression community
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abandonment abundance abuse acceptance activity acts admit affirmations aliveness alternatives ambition anger anxiety appearance_values approval assumptions atheism attention attitudes authority automatism autonomy avoidance awareness background_thoughts balance being_values beliefs betrayal birth blame blessings blindness bliss blocks body bondage boundaries cause_and_effect center centeredness chain_reactions chakras change channel character childhood childishness Christ Christianity christians Christmas closeness commitment communication community compassion compulsive_conscience concentration conclusions conflicts confusion connections conscience conscious consciousness constructiveness contact contraction control cooperation cosmic_feeling cosmic_principles cosmic_pull courage create creation crisis criticism cruelty daily_review danger darkness daydreams death decisions defeat defenses defensiveness deficit demands denial dependence depression desires destruction destructiveness determination development devil difficulties dignity dimensions discipline dislike disorder displacement distortions distrust disunity divine divine_conscience divine_spark divine_substance divine_voice Dottie Titus doubt duality earth Eastern_Spirituality ecstasy education effort ego egoism emotions emptiness energy energy_centers envy eros error eternal_life Eva_Pierrakos evil evolution exaggeration exchange exercises existence expansion experience exposure expression faith fall false_feelings false_religion fantasy fate faults fear feelings female feminine fight flow force_fields forcing_current foreground_thoughts forgive forms freedom free_will frustration fulfillment fusion give gluttony God God_image government grace gratification greatness groups group_consciousness growth guardian_angels guidance guilt habits happiness harm hate heal health higher_self homosexuality hope humanity human_nature hurt idealized_self ideas identification illusion images imbalance immaturity immortality impatience imperfection impress impulses individuality inertia inferiority injustice inner_child inner_control inner_self inner_space inner_split inner_wall inner_will instinct intellect intelligence intensity interaction intuition involuntary_processes isolation Jesus_Christ jews joy Judaism justice karma know knowledge laws laziness leadership lectures let_go life life_force life_plan life_substance life_task light lightforces long lose love lower_self Lucifer lust magnetic_fields male manifestation marriage masculine mask masochism mass_images maturity meaning meditation mediums men mind misconceptions moods moralize motivations motives movement mutuality myth nature needs negation negative_desires negative_intentionality negativity neurosis New_Age no-current now numbness obedience obligations observe omnipotence openness opinions opposites order organism outer_control outer_will pain parents passivity pathwork peace perception perfection perfectionism personality pessimism pleasure political_systems positive_aggression positive_thinking positivity power prayer pretense pride privacy problems progress prove pseudo_solutions psyche psychic_nuclear_points psychology pulse_of_life punishment purification reactions reality real_self reason rebellion receive receptiveness reflexes regulate reincarnation rejection relationships relaxation religion relinquish repression resistance respect responsibility restitution restriction richness rigidity rituals rulership rules sacrifice sadness safety salvation secrets security self-alienation self-awareness self-confidence self-discipline self-esteem self-forgiveness self-hate self-image self-importance self-knowledge self-liking self-love self-pity self-preservation self-realization self-rejection self-respect self-responsibility self-will selfishness serenity service sex shame shock sickness sin sloth soul soul_substance space spheres spiral spirit spirits spirituality spiritual_laws spiritual_paths spirit_language spirit_world spontaneity stagnation static_principle strength struggle subconscious substitution subtle_body success suffer superimposed_conscience superstition surrender tendencies tension terror think thoughts time Tower_of_Babel tradition traits transcendence transformation transition tricks true_religion trust truth unconscious understand unfulfillment unhappiness unification union unity universal_consciousness universal_life universal_power universal_self universal_spirit universe unknown unpleasure unselfishness utopia vacuum values vicious_circles visualization vulnerability war weakness Western_Spirituality will win wish wishful_thinking women words world_weariness yes-current
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