AM-108 MEDITATION (2)

We made a start in presentation 107, to talk about mediations. We never quite got round to saying what it actually was. Instead, we introduced ourselves to the value of controlling our thoughts and why this is necessary if one stands a chance at meditation. Today we start by looking at three steps towards gaining control of one’s conscious processes.

The first step formed the basis of the last presentation and that is if you want to meditate, the first thing you have to do is be able to concentrate in a focused manner. As we saw and you well know, this is easier said than done. So the challenge we all face is not to allow our consciousness to flit from one subject to another. It should be focused on a direct object or concept. Ideally, this focus should be backed up by a previously formed plan of action. The object or concept may be physical, emotional or mental in nature. Examples of such objects or concepts could be a picture, a feeling, a quality or a problem. To this concentration process, one should endeavour to add as much power of concentration and reflection, as possible. If you do this, there is a good chance, in time, that you will be able to reach higher levels of mentality. You drag yourself off subplanes 47:7 and 47:6 and onto 47:5. This is the beginning of moving the focus of your monad from its current home in the 48:1 permanent atom in your emotional body, into your mental permanent molecule. So, now we have one definition of mediation. It is the prolonged concentration on something particular. If we accept this definition, then we have all meditated when we are absorbed in some creative activity that draws us into it, body, heart and soul. 

You can go beyond concentration, into a state of contemplation. This is absorption into the object of your concentration. You are able to identify with it. Consider this the next level of mediation. This has to be experienced to be understood. So, to clarify, concentration is another word for attention, leading to mediation, which is a methodical and systematic way of thinking. Someone playing chess is concentrating and meditating at the same time. When you learn something, you are concentrating on the subject matter. Mediation takes this one step further when you reflect on what you are being taught. This allows you to solve a mathematical equation or compose an essay. One thing to always bear in mind is that concentration, which we have also defined as ‘attention’, should not involve any kind of tension. This is counterproductive and can be harmful.

The focus of one’s attention is, clearly, a big deal, so let’s look at it in greater detail. We are still very far from truly understanding that the most important thing we command is our attention. Why is this such a big deal? We touched on it in the last presentation. Whatever we attend to with our thoughts and emotions, are real objects on the Mental and Emotional planes. These objects start in our waking consciousness and eventually drop down into our subconscious memory. Why is this important? That object that forms a thought or feeling is sitting there, somewhere in our envelopes. As discussed before, this can lead to ulcers and possibly even cancer, depending on how persistent those thoughts were. The focus of our attention can lead directly to an action, which invariably leads to a reaction. It is therefore prudent that we do not pollute our envelopes with uncontrolled thought and emotional patterns. These become all manner of complexes that we then have to set about assiduously ignoring. Why do this to yourself in the first place? Not doing it is easier said than done, but now at least you know what consequences can result from unfocused mental and emotional activity. Forewarned is forearmed. What is doing the concentrating anyway? It is the Self. Attention is the focus of the Self and this implies a concentration of consciousness.

Once we realise that we are not our thoughts and feelings but that we are a Self, a 1st-Self to be precise, we come to realise that our Self is the centre of our consciousness. We are then in a position to observe our sense perceptions, our emotions and our thought, as things outside of ourselves. Once we get a handle on this, we really get a new appreciation of ourselves and life in general. What is the Self trying to get a handle on? It is trying to gain control of its three lowest envelopes of incarnation. Here, we mean the Etheric, the Emotional and the Mental envelopes. The Self realises that if one wishes to reach higher levels of consciousness, it has to start with these three envelopes. Once you begin to get a handle on your concentration and focus your attention, something amazing becomes possible. Your Augoeides, your Guardian Angel, that patient Solar deva, that lent you your causal envelope, is able to start to send you causal impulses through your 47:4 permanent molecule. It is then up to you to concretise these causal ideas, into mental ones. This is the start of your journey, eventually, into the causal realms.

We now focus on the dark and mysterious realms that constitute the ‘Unconscious’. Let us assume we are conscious of ourselves as a ‘Self’. What we apprehend as our consciousness, within our envelopes, is something we have managed to activate ourselves. We keep consciousness alive by paying attention to it. Alas, not all that inhabits or permeates through our envelopes, come from us. We are awash with the machinations of others. What is worse is that we take these thoughts and feelings to be our own. Depending on where you are focused in your envelopes, and as has often been said, this is usually somewhere in your emotional envelope, you can apprehend such vibrations that are at your level of consciousness and below that level. Your monad may be centred in the 48:1 permanent atom, but it will be actively conscious on a lower subplane. Listen very carefully, for I will only say this once; no, in fact, I will repeat it again and again until you beg for mercy.  I am sure you are all very fine people and you dwell in the upper reaches of your emotional body and your thoughts focus up to subplane 47:5, yet you may be surprised when you suddenly have a very low and dark thought. Where did this thought come from? You remonstrate with yourself, for even allowing such a thought or feeling to pollute your being. Yet there it was, in plain sight of you. You feel bad about yourself and think that you are much worse than you really are. Let us unpack what is going on here. In the last presentation, we discussed how the subconscious is a source of energy that continually feeds our waking consciousness with new impulses. Most people are ignorant of this fact and the power that wells up from the subconscious. But to get to the subconscious, the random thoughts and feeling first enter our conscious space and get filtered down into our subconscious. In this process, all manner of fiction and illusions get squirrelled away. These then resurface and lead us by the nose. We do not realise where they first came from.

To use an example we are all aware of today, fake news pervades our environment. Those that resonate with the fiction being pervaded, take them and eventually own them as being the ‘truth’. This process is going on all the time, without us even being aware of it. Thoughts fly into our mental envelope, we resonate with them, we store them away and then we think they were ours all along. This is how you can suddenly spew up a dark thought or feeling and then wonder how you could have ever have dreamt of such a thing. If you are irritated by something, the feeling may vanish quickly enough from your waking consciousness, but it lives on in your subconscious for several days. This is why Laurency tells us that our emotional envelopes could be likened to boiling cauldrons. Why is this such a problem? Well, think about it, if you have a thought and it is going to eventually end up in your brain, how does it get there?  It has to pass through this boiling caldron first. What do you think is going to happen to that thought? It is going to get distorted.

This is where the power of mediation shows its true colours. When you meditate on a subject, the way this is stored in your subconscious is quite different from the fleeting attention we usually give to our daily experiences. The more we feed these higher meditative thoughts into our subconscious, the more likely they are to appear back in our waking consciousness and become the drivers of our lives.  Fictions and illusions can be woven into complexes that are hard, if not impossible, to eradicate, to the extent that they can even show up in subsequent incarnations. I don’t know what Brussel sprouts have ever done to me but I certainly have a complex about them!

I want to leave you with a comment Laurency made and this relates to our relationship to our subconscious. He lamented that deep transcendental mediation is becoming very popular. He stated that no responsible teacher, with a knowledge of reality, would teach such a thing. I leave you to ponder on that thought. 

In the next presentation, I will continue on our current theme and look at the Telepathy of the Unconscious.