Meditation - Clara Codd
Letters to Spiritual Aspirants, Chapter IV, “Meditation”
The Ancient Wisdom has taught us that man is a three fold being. He has a body with which to gain experience, a subtler "soul" whose great powers are feeling and thought whereby these experiences are thought over and felt and in turn transmuted into mental and affectional concepts which guide and inspire his life. But more deeply hidden than either of these two is that eternal quality which shares the underlying Life of the universe, which can never pass away or die, and which shares, albeit as yet unconsciously with most of us, the power and wisdom and love of God. Here lies the true source of all real wisdom and power. How shall we come into touch with it deep within ourselves?
The first thing is to realize by faith alone that the reality is there and does exist. Faith does not mean the ability to believe something beyond reason. H.P.B. called it "the soul's unlearned knowledge." Eternity and Reality are always there, whether we understand and realize them or not. But by turning our attention in their direction we slowly begin to realize them.
How is that done? At first, in just the same way as we study and observe outer things. When we first turn our attention to it, that interior world seems vague and unknowable. But as time goes on, it begins to take on a clearer, richer appearance. Look around you. Your eyes see a wonderful world full of rich colours and forms, each of which has an eternal meaning and value. Shut your eyes and look within. What do your mental eyes see? Another world, full of thoughts, aspirations, memories, ideals and hopes, which, when we know them, are even more beautiful and full of meaning. We must get acquainted with our Higher, better selves.
At the level of this "higher self" within us, we are one with the Master and also with the Divine Life. To realize him is to draw nearer to the Master and to God. We should not try to draw the Master down to our level but rise to His. In the scriptures, our Lord is said to have retired apart into a mountain to pray. I do not believe that He actually went up a physical mountain for that purpose. It is a symbol indicating how He rose in the interior worlds to higher and higher levels of consciousness. Whenever we try to think deeply and steadily upon higher things, we impose a quicker rate of vibration upon our inner vehicles of consciousness.
At present, man is more or less absorbed at his own level of life, though from a higher level comes all real love and power. Let us take time, however short, to turn our thoughts and emotions toward all that is lovely, unselfish and true. Into a world at first dim and uncertain we enter, but day after day that dimness clears and becomes a wondrous world of vision and beauty. As The Voice of the Silence puts it: "The light from the one Master (the divine life), the one unfading, golden light of Spirit, shoots its effulgent beams on the disciple from the very first. Its rays thread through the thick, dark clouds of matter." Then it will begin to influence our daily lives, lending dignity, beauty and meaning to every separate action and event. We must use the creative power of the imagination. It does not matter what forms we create, for they are but stepping stones to greater and simpler realizations. A Moslem sage said: "We make the forms: Reality fills them." So the ideas, mental concepts and forms we build are really little windows through which we peer into Eternity and through which Eternity looks back at us. But remember they are windows through which and beyond which we gaze.
Ponder on lovely and true statements from a scripture, a poet, or a sage. Picture to yourself the ideal you long to be and attain unto. Dr. Besant's advice to Indian students was: "Build for yourself a great Ideal the Ideal of that which you wish to be. Think of it, dream of it, try to love it. One day you will wonder that you have become that fair thing that your thought threw on the clouds of the future."
The Ancient Wisdom has taught us that man is a three fold being. He has a body with which to gain experience, a subtler "soul" whose great powers are feeling and thought whereby these experiences are thought over and felt and in turn transmuted into mental and affectional concepts which guide and inspire his life. But more deeply hidden than either of these two is that eternal quality which shares the underlying Life of the universe, which can never pass away or die, and which shares, albeit as yet unconsciously with most of us, the power and wisdom and love of God. Here lies the true source of all real wisdom and power. How shall we come into touch with it deep within ourselves?
The first thing is to realize by faith alone that the reality is there and does exist. Faith does not mean the ability to believe something beyond reason. H.P.B. called it "the soul's unlearned knowledge." Eternity and Reality are always there, whether we understand and realize them or not. But by turning our attention in their direction we slowly begin to realize them.
How is that done? At first, in just the same way as we study and observe outer things. When we first turn our attention to it, that interior world seems vague and unknowable. But as time goes on, it begins to take on a clearer, richer appearance. Look around you. Your eyes see a wonderful world full of rich colours and forms, each of which has an eternal meaning and value. Shut your eyes and look within. What do your mental eyes see? Another world, full of thoughts, aspirations, memories, ideals and hopes, which, when we know them, are even more beautiful and full of meaning. We must get acquainted with our Higher, better selves.
At the level of this "higher self" within us, we are one with the Master and also with the Divine Life. To realize him is to draw nearer to the Master and to God. We should not try to draw the Master down to our level but rise to His. In the scriptures, our Lord is said to have retired apart into a mountain to pray. I do not believe that He actually went up a physical mountain for that purpose. It is a symbol indicating how He rose in the interior worlds to higher and higher levels of consciousness. Whenever we try to think deeply and steadily upon higher things, we impose a quicker rate of vibration upon our inner vehicles of consciousness.
At present, man is more or less absorbed at his own level of life, though from a higher level comes all real love and power. Let us take time, however short, to turn our thoughts and emotions toward all that is lovely, unselfish and true. Into a world at first dim and uncertain we enter, but day after day that dimness clears and becomes a wondrous world of vision and beauty. As The Voice of the Silence puts it: "The light from the one Master (the divine life), the one unfading, golden light of Spirit, shoots its effulgent beams on the disciple from the very first. Its rays thread through the thick, dark clouds of matter." Then it will begin to influence our daily lives, lending dignity, beauty and meaning to every separate action and event. We must use the creative power of the imagination. It does not matter what forms we create, for they are but stepping stones to greater and simpler realizations. A Moslem sage said: "We make the forms: Reality fills them." So the ideas, mental concepts and forms we build are really little windows through which we peer into Eternity and through which Eternity looks back at us. But remember they are windows through which and beyond which we gaze.
Ponder on lovely and true statements from a scripture, a poet, or a sage. Picture to yourself the ideal you long to be and attain unto. Dr. Besant's advice to Indian students was: "Build for yourself a great Ideal the Ideal of that which you wish to be. Think of it, dream of it, try to love it. One day you will wonder that you have become that fair thing that your thought threw on the clouds of the future."