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From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Ten - The Need for Care in Meditation
In emotional types, the trouble is first sensed in the region of the solar plexus. The student finds himself prone to irritation and to anxiety and worry; also, particularly in the case of women, there may be found a disposition to cry easily. Sometimes there is a tendency to nausea, for there is a close [257] relation between the emotional nature and the stomach, as is evidenced by frequency of vomiting in moments of shock, or fright, or intense emotion. The same rules apply as in the first set of cases: - common sense and a careful and slower use of the meditation process. Another result of over-stimulation might be mentioned. People find themselves becoming over-sensitive. The senses work overtime and all their reactions are more acute. They "take on" the conditions, physical or psychic, of those with whom they live; they find themselves "wide open" to the thoughts and moods of other people. The cure for this is not to lessen the meditation periods - these should be continued as per schedule, - but to become more mentally interested in life, in the thought world, in some subject which will tend to develop the mental capacity and so bring about the ability to live in the head and not in the emotional region. Focused attention to life and its problems, and some potent mental occupation will effect a cure. It is for this reason that wise teachers of meditation parallel the meditation work with some course of reading and study, so as to preserve the balance of their students. A rounded out development is needed always, and a trained mind should accompany growth in the spiritual life. There is a third category of undesirable results which should not be omitted. Many students of meditation complain that their sex life has been tremendously stimulated and is giving them much trouble. [258] We have come across such cases. On investigation, it will usually be found that these students are people whose animal nature is very strong, who have led an active and ill-regulated sex life, or whose thoughts are much engrossed with sex, even if the physical life is controlled. A strong mental complex as to sex is often discovered, and people who would regard it as wrong to lead an abnormal sex life, or to practice perversions, are mentally occupying themselves with sex or are discussing it all the time and letting it play an undue part in their thought life. Some most worthy people have also a settled conviction that celibacy must always accompany the life of the spirit. May it not be possible that the true celibacy to which the ancient rules are intended to refer concerns the attitude of the soul, or spiritual man, to the world, the flesh and the devil, as our Christian Scriptures put it? May not the true celibacy have reference to our abstaining from all appearance of evil? This may in one man involve his abstaining from all sex relations in order to demonstrate to himself his control over the animal nature; in other cases, it may, for instance, involve refraining from all gossip and idle speech. There is nothing sinful in marriage and it is probably the way out for many who would otherwise lead an unduly active mental life where sex is concerned. It is needless, surely, to add here that the true student of meditation should not tolerate in his life promiscuous or illegitimate sexual relations. The aspirant to the [259] life of the spirit conforms not only to the laws of the spiritual kingdom but to the legalized customs of his age and time. He, therefore, regularizes his physical every day life so that the man in the street recognizes the morality, the uprightness and the correctness of his presentation to the world. A home that is based upon a true and happy relation between a man and a woman, upon mutual trust, cooperation and understanding, and in which the principles of spiritual living are emphasized, is one of the finest aids that can be given to the world at this time. A relation that is based on physical attraction and the gratification of the sex nature, and which has, as its primary objective, the prostitution of the physical nature to animal desire, is evil and wrong. If the goal of our effort is to demonstrate God immanent in form, then no level of consciousness is more intrinsically divine than another, and divinity can be expressed in all human relations. If a married man or woman cannot attain illumination and achieve the goal, then there is something wrong and divinity cannot express itself on one plane, at least, of expression; to put in terms that may sound blasphemous but which will enable us to grasp the futility of these reasonings: God is defeated in one part of His Kingdom.
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