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Discipleship in the New Age II - Teachings on Meditation - Part IV
Part IV As I have studied the meditation work of each of you (and both you and I know whether it has been faithfully followed or not), I have become aware of a basic need and that is the need for Alignment. You need a more direct contact between heart-head-soul. This, necessarily, in preparation for a still higher contact. The two parts of the exercise you have been following since the new seed group was organized have not done what was intended and only three of you have profited adequately from that work. I am, therefore, giving you a very simple alignment exercise which I would ask you to follow together until further notice. I emphasize the word together and shall continue so doing in the hope that the group [129] will move forward with a uniform procedure for this will produce the greatest and most rapid results. It is good for you to have in mind that the better you do this exercise and the quicker and closer your alignment, the better will be the group alignment. The exercise is so short and simple that you may regard it as too elementary. I assure you that it will reward any constant effort. It had been my intention to give another meditation, involving another center, but the results of the work done do not warrant this. Perhaps a better alignment may lead to a more constant application and a more direct and understanding occult obedience. I would ask you, therefore, to do this simple alignment exercise every day. I. Start with the point of soul focus of which you know much theoretically and can know more practically. This falls into three stages: Raise the consciousness into the head. Carry the thought or consciousness upward through the astral body and the mind to the soul. Identify the personality consciousness with the soul consciousness, and realize that they are one. II. From that point, definitely and consciously, assume the attitude of the Observer. This also involves three stages: Observe the personality and consider it from the angle of the etheric body. Consciously throw soul energy down into the center at the base of the spine. Then raise it slowly, via the five centers and the two head centers (ajna and highest head center), tip into the soul body. This produces, when correctly done, a vivifying of the sutratma and links the personality and soul into one blended unit. It is what might be called the acme of alignment. Then endeavor to throw the attention of the united soul-personality toward the Spiritual Triad. [130] III. Reflect upon the antahkarana and its relation to soul personality and the Monad. In your personal instructions this year, I am not going to be explicit nor am I going to give you each an individual meditation. The time for that is past. You have had much along that line. I am going to revert to an aspect of the old system of training and give you hints and brief injunctions, leaving you to do your own interpreting, to make right application and to profit or fail to profit as seems best to you. These injunctions will take the form of six statements, sentences or aphorisms which will contain for you a particular message at which you can arrive if you will take each of them into your daily meditation. You have a year in which to do this and can, therefore, make the six statements into six seed thoughts for meditation, or reflective brooding - one for each month for six months. Then repeat with the thought in view that during the second six months you will do what you can to make the effects of the previous period of reflection, a dynamic factor in your life. Thus you will externalize the results of the preceding cycle of spiritual and mental brooding. In this way, your subjective realization can become an objective happening. Do this exercise each morning at the close of the alignment work, endeavoring to hold the mind steady in the light and to achieve as far as you can the brooding quality of the soul when in deep meditation. This will not be easy at first, but if you adhere faithfully to instructions, you will consciously realize sure gain. I suggest ten minutes' brooding each day (with pencil in hand if you so prefer) and then - during the day - keep the seed thought or statement in what is called "the back of the mind." There it can gestate. In this way you will not only arrive at the meaning of your personal injunctions, hints or instructions (for that is what they may prove to be when you arrive at their intended meaning), but you will at the same time learn to cultivate the "double life pattern" of the pledged disciple. He carries on with the lower mind and the higher mind simultaneously, and the stream of spiritual [131] thought and activity consciously flows whilst the outer pattern of his life proceeds with increasing usefulness. Here are the six statements (NOTE: The "six statements" appear in the Personal Instructions dated August 1942.) for each of you, and I will take you alphabetically as usual. One word I would add: Seek not to interpret and understand your brother's instructions. Telepathic interplay, unrealized, naturally exists among you and your thought and interpretations (based on insufficient knowledge) would undoubtedly impinge upon your brother's mind. This could not fail to have effects. You might interpret wrongly and in any case you know not my intentions where your brother is concerned. Your thought might emphasize a concrete meaning whereas I might have in view a totally different application. Keep your mind, therefore, off your brother's instructions. Your duty lies in the daily releasing of steady illumined love, free from all criticism. It is not your duty to aid your brother to become a better occultist and disciple. That is his concern, his soul's concern and mine. Many of the hints given and the sentences in which they are embodied are taken from an old Book of Rules for disciples. Some are directly from me, your Master, and are applicable to your problems or your duty.
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