QA197 QUESTION: In an old lecture [Lecture #71 Reality and Illusion – Concentration Exercises], I found your description of concentration exercises for trying to be in a state of not thinking of anything in particular. In doing this, I felt as if I were going into some kind of a state. Maybe you can help me by telling me what it means?
ANSWER: Can you describe how you felt that state? How you experienced that state? Did you experience fear about it? Did you experience resistance about it? What particularly did you feel?
QUESTION: First my breathing became very labored and deep, and then I felt as if I were pushing against something, as if I wanted to break through something and I couldn’t. I almost could say it was like going into a trance, but I didn’t go through it.
ANSWER: In the first place, there is fear in you of letting go into the involuntary processes. You know that. It is much less. You have made indeed a very, very great progress this last year, particularly the last few months. So you did break through one aspect of your wall that was inaccessible until a few months ago.
But there is more to be broken through, and if this fear, this inner holding, this unconscious holding, still exists – even though you may consciously express your desire to let go all the way, to trust in the spiritual forces – it is because you still hold on to some negative patterns – much less than before, but you still do.
It is important that you really see in what specific way you do this, and then to the degree you can make a total commitment to give up the negativity, the negative intentionality, and make a commitment to the opposite positive intentionality, to that degree your fear will go.
Some processes will take place in you in which, in your own individual way – and this is different for every human being – you will experience ultimate reality, or snatches of it, to the degree your consciousness can experience this. Out of this, eventually a new expression will form, where again in your own individual way, the channel will be instituted by which you, for your path, can help other people in a more specific way.
That is what awaits everyone who is truly working on the Path. Not one is better than the other; not one is superior or inferior. All the various ways in which spiritual truth comes through into the Earth life and manifests creatively in the channel being cleared, more and more and more, that is exactly what is needed; for many different ways are needed to help people in different ways.
Even for people in this one nucleus – in this one group – many, many more wonderful things will come. You have already seen in the last few years how this group is constantly expanding, because fortunately you are not closing yourself up. You are truly growing. You are truly open, so that it does not remain a stagnant closed thing, where only that what you have already discovered is the valid thing.
For whatever validity it may have at the moment, it ceases to be valid if it remains stagnant on that point. This is the fate, unfortunately, of organized religion, or even of many other philosophies. They stay with what they have, and which was valid, but which becomes stagnant if it does not move on. And so far, thank the Lord, you have moved and grown. Therefore, you expand.
When I speak of expansion, I do not mean this merely numerically. That is the much less important thing, for numerically growing could also happen when spiritual stagnation exists. But as you really grow in caliber and the depth of your own path, to that extent you will open channels in the individuals, and so also in you. In individual ways, you will help other people and let the spiritual reality come through.
QA249 QUESTION: I have been doing the meditation you suggested that stops the thinking process. Recently, I have gotten much more energy from this meditation. The energy that surges can be very strong. I would like any suggestions you might have on how to handle and not misuse this energy. Also, do you mean to just try to stop the thinking for five minutes, twice a day, or to actually spend more time in getting the thinking stopped for five minutes?
ANSWER: You do not need to do this exercise more than about five minutes per day. Consider this merely as an exercise for the purpose of opening your channel. The energy released from this exercise should be intended for purposes of service to God’s plan, to God’s will, to purification and transformation of self.
It would be advisable to make a commitment to this effect every time you are about to do this exercise. State your intent to be in total truth, to remove all obstacles to truth, to give up all false ideas and fixations. There are some in you, still now. They are so firmly entrenched that you do not even consider them, and your progress goes around them, as the water circumvents the rocks in a stream.
But the time comes when this blockage must catch up with you, unless you freely choose to direct your gaze deliberately to all areas of your life, even those that you have kept inviolate until now. The more you free your soul in this way from encumbrances – false ideas, prejudices, fixations – the more this energy will nourish every particle of your soul and of your entire being.
This will enable you to become whole and to fulfill the utmost of your potentials in this incarnation. The released energy stream needs to be directed purposefully and wisely where it is most needed, where you possibly can still not see this need. But God knows and will guide you once you open your mind to this possibility.
