Everything is a reason for meditation if we learn to meditate. And so, regarding your question, you said that I believe in Mystical Asceticism and that meditation is only for novices. Until we recognize that we are all novices in spiritual life, no matter how many rewards we have, it is challenging to get much out of meditation. What matters to us is that we start doing it because we are perhaps less than novices.
In addition, I still relate this teaching sentence to the following: this course was written right in the principles of Cafh, and even those who would have to teach meditation did not know it well. Suddenly, they needed to teach meditation that they had never done, with no more than a few examples that Don Santiago gave them. So, I am talking about the first years of Cafh.
So, what they did – and I received these texts – were written meditations so that we could learn and recite them because the Sons and Daughters did not know what to say in the invocations or imaginative pictures. In short, they did not know what to say. So, someone took the trouble to do it and wrote invocations, and imaginative pictures, and that's how we learned. And we repeated them. Now that's for beginners. This course was written at this time. In the beginning, this was the way things were. Of course, each one makes a path for those who come.
It is not a question of whether it is a matter for beginners. Meditation is for all of us to prepare ourselves. Of course, the more we walk, and the more we understand and expand, and the more we understand and expand, the more subtle and more open meditation will be. But it's not that one day I'm going to graduate and I'm going to have a title, but there's going to come a day when I don't need to meditate anymore. When you look at the great enlightened masters, how do you see them? Meditating. That is, it is not that they have overcome this, but that they continue to meditate.
I think that perhaps what the course wanted to express is that when we make meditation a habit, it is no longer just an exercise. It's not just a stereotypical thing where here I say this, there I say this, and there I say that, and then I'm done. I go in to meditate on an utterly ordinary state of seeing, in which you do things to finish it quickly. I even do meditation exercises, but only within this state of consciousness. This could be for beginners, but sometimes it happens to people we've been meditating on for 40 or 50 years. It means that there are ups and downs.
The point is not to give grades very well, very severely, 10, 5, 8, but to do the exercise, persevere, and always think about being present when enlightenment comes to us. I want to be present when the Divine Mother has a message for me. I want to be present when my consciousness expands to encompass a greater reality. I have an instrument in my mind and in my heart, and I am present and there. And be prepared to receive it.
All the exercises we do, including the meditation exercises, are preparatory. Someday, the great meditation will come to us, or it may have already arrived someday, or even if it does not arrive followed or not, it is preparatory to being present. Otherwise, the lighting, the light that is always there, escapes me, and I don't even realize it.
In addition, I still relate this teaching sentence to the following: this course was written right in the principles of Cafh, and even those who would have to teach meditation did not know it well. Suddenly, they needed to teach meditation that they had never done, with no more than a few examples that Don Santiago gave them. So, I am talking about the first years of Cafh.
So, what they did – and I received these texts – were written meditations so that we could learn and recite them because the Sons and Daughters did not know what to say in the invocations or imaginative pictures. In short, they did not know what to say. So, someone took the trouble to do it and wrote invocations, and imaginative pictures, and that's how we learned. And we repeated them. Now that's for beginners. This course was written at this time. In the beginning, this was the way things were. Of course, each one makes a path for those who come.
It is not a question of whether it is a matter for beginners. Meditation is for all of us to prepare ourselves. Of course, the more we walk, and the more we understand and expand, and the more we understand and expand, the more subtle and more open meditation will be. But it's not that one day I'm going to graduate and I'm going to have a title, but there's going to come a day when I don't need to meditate anymore. When you look at the great enlightened masters, how do you see them? Meditating. That is, it is not that they have overcome this, but that they continue to meditate.
I think that perhaps what the course wanted to express is that when we make meditation a habit, it is no longer just an exercise. It's not just a stereotypical thing where here I say this, there I say this, and there I say that, and then I'm done. I go in to meditate on an utterly ordinary state of seeing, in which you do things to finish it quickly. I even do meditation exercises, but only within this state of consciousness. This could be for beginners, but sometimes it happens to people we've been meditating on for 40 or 50 years. It means that there are ups and downs.
The point is not to give grades very well, very severely, 10, 5, 8, but to do the exercise, persevere, and always think about being present when enlightenment comes to us. I want to be present when the Divine Mother has a message for me. I want to be present when my consciousness expands to encompass a greater reality. I have an instrument in my mind and in my heart, and I am present and there. And be prepared to receive it.
All the exercises we do, including the meditation exercises, are preparatory. Someday, the great meditation will come to us, or it may have already arrived someday, or even if it does not arrive followed or not, it is preparatory to being present. Otherwise, the lighting, the light that is always there, escapes me, and I don't even realize it.