Recording 58A, “Treatment, Meditation, and Prayer and Note from Hawaii,” from the 1953 Chicago Lecture Series, was used as source material for Chapter 3, “The Practice,” and Chapter 5, “The Difficulties,” in The Art of Meditation.
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In the previous sessions of our meditation study program, Joel emphasized that:
In this session, Joel offers a new twist on contemplative meditation, using quotations from Scripture.
Recording 58A is one of many recordings used as source material for Chapter 3, “The Practice,” and Chapter 5, “The Difficulties,” in The Art of Meditation. However, because there are so many sources for each of those chapters, neither chapter fully captures the lessons in this recording.
As with previous sessions, if you find a summary of the lesson helpful for review, you can create one of your own or use the one below. If you would like to have the full transcript, you can order it here. Either way, as Joel says, “Pick out the pearls.” Annotate the summary or the transcript with insights or additional key points that resonate with you.
God Is Your Capacity
“I and the Father are one.”[1] This is the nature of our relationship to God, and it can be realized through meditation and prayer.
God is infinite, and since you are one with God, God is your capacity. God is eternal life, and since God is your life, your life is eternal because it is the same life. There is no limitation to your capacity for life. Since God is the mind of the individual, no one is limited by education or a lack thereof. There is only one universal Intelligence, and anyone can open their consciousness and receive the fullness of that mind, the mind that was in Christ Jesus, or the mind that was in anybody who ever lived. You have no limitations whatsoever.
The only way an individual can be limited is to be in ignorance of the truth that God is their capacity, that God is their being, life, mind, soul, and spirit. As Browning said, “Truth is within ourselves, and we must open out a way for the imprisoned splendor to escape.” Everyone can draw on the entire infinity of God; it is only a question of knowing how to open up to let that infinity flow.
That “truth that is within ourselves” is spiritual truth, but it is also mathematical truth, languages, art, literature, and music. Everything is embodied within you; if it isn’t flowing, it is because you do not know how to open out a way.
Making Truth Practical in Our Lives
Truth must be made practical in our affairs. While there is a belief today that truth, God, or religion is not practical, for over a century, Christian Science, Unity, and others have proven it is. The Word does become flesh, and Spirit, or God, “dwells among us.” Truth becomes tangible and evident as your health, your wealth, and the harmony of your life. In The Infinite Way, we have made God, or Truth, available, tangible, and practical through healing work in matters of health, supply, business, and relationships, including capital and labor relationships.
“The kingdom of God is within you.”[2] If there is any inharmony or discord in your experience, it is only to the degree that you do not know that truth, and you do not know how to tap the kingdom within you and draw forth its power. Once you know that the kingdom of God is within you and that the issues of harmony must come forth from within your own being, the question is: “How do we do it?”
The answer is through meditation, treatment, and prayer. In treatment (contemplation), we use the mind to contemplate spiritual truth. This helps bring us into silent receptivity (prayer). Meditation can include both treatment and prayer and ultimately leads to an experience of God’s presence and then to the state of conscious communion with God, the experience of oneness.
Two Steps in Preparation for Meditation
Meditation is not simple for the Western mind because we have learned to live by the external. One who lives by the external draws his good from outside himself; he lives by bread alone, by labor, by the sweat of his brow. Westerners have been taught to be go-getters and to be self-reliant—and not self-reliant with a capital “S.”
By contrast, meditation requires a deep sense of humility, the recognition that a human being, regardless of his learning or devotion, can of himself do nothing. Humility acknowledges that there is an inner power, what Jesus called “the Father within” and Paul called “the Christ.” There is a letting go of that personal selfhood with its claims to power, wisdom, human goodness, or spirituality. This sense of humility is the first step in preparation for meditation. The second step is accepting that this power called “the Father within,” or “Christ,” is already within you.
When you have that sense of humility and have recognized that the All-power is within you, you are ready to meditate—to shut out the world, go within, and say, “Somehow, from within my own being, this power must come forth, the power that is to heal my body, the power that is to make my business successful, the power that is to go before me and make the crooked places straight, to prepare a place for me, and to establish harmony in my experience. In other words, you are going into meditation to allow that power to come into expression.
Remember that this power is not in your body; it is within your being, within your consciousness, within your awareness, and you are going to let it escape. You are not going to pray to a God “out there” to do something. You are going to let a God-power flow forth from within you and act upon your body, business, home, family, and all your affairs.
You cannot bring this power into your experience through knowing the letter of truth and making statements and affirmations. The kingdom of God is not in words: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”[3] It is “My” thoughts that have power. The Master said, “My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth,”[4] not the peace that comes from comforting words, statements, and affirmations, but “My peace,” which flows from the Father within. It is through meditation, treatment, and prayer that this inner power flows forth and operates in your experience. We simply become beholders of the flow. We behold God at work; we do not do God’s work.
Handling Extraneous Thoughts in Meditation
Sometimes, when we start to meditate, we close our eyes to get silent and find a boiler factory inside us. Practical thoughts may intrude, like “Did I turn off the gas?” or “Did I put the cat outside?” But sensual, fearful, or doubtful thoughts can also arise. Some people who believe they are good human beings have thoughts that make them think there are evils in them that they haven’t discovered. All kinds of thoughts come in because we are not accustomed to finding inner stillness and silence.
Do not be afraid of those thoughts; don’t try to stop them because you won’t succeed. Those thoughts are not your thoughts. We are all picking up the broadcasts of this world—sin, disease, fear, lack, and limitation—and when you stop being busy out here, you become aware of the things that volley back and forth in you. You are apt to think, “These are my thoughts. Do I really think thoughts like those?” No, you don’t. They are not your thoughts; they are thoughts entertained by the human race, or world beliefs that are just going around in your mind.
Just let them go; disregard them, and you will find that shortly, they will no longer come. They will die because you do not feed them. They will persist if you feed them and own them by using the words “I” or “my,” saying, “I can’t get rid of them,” “I am trying to get rid of them,” “I can’t stop them,” or “These are my thoughts.” So, withdraw that “I,” “me,” and “mine” and say, “No, these are the thoughts of the human race, and they have nothing to do with me, so I won’t be concerned with them.” Then, let them go.
Using Scripture As a Basis for Contemplative Meditation
[At this point in the class, Joel leads a contemplative meditation based on using quotations from Scripture. Should you wish to repeat the meditation as Joel led it, you can find it in the recording posted on the website beginning at 29:01.]
Speaking about the Scripture meditation, Joel points out that if the quotations that came up for you had something to do with your experience, and if they followed a pattern or were related, there must have been an intelligence and love behind them. They came from within your own being to your awareness. These unfoldments were God, or Truth, revealing Itself, and because they came to you as the word of God, they are quick and sharp and powerful and carry a healing influence.
If you use the scriptural meditation in the morning, it can give you guidance for the day because you are opening yourself to divine intelligence and love. Even if you receive just one impartation of truth, it is evidence that you have contacted God, and you can be assured that the presence of God is with you. Throughout the day, you can go anywhere and have divine wisdom and love guiding, directing, and protecting you. But first, you must have felt that flow from within and had at least one statement of truth come to you—not one that you willfully called from your memory, but one that came from within.
Do the Scripture meditation again in the middle of the day and in the evening. Soon, you may find that you will awaken during the night with the demand from within to meditate. At those times, you can receive guidance, direction, protection, support, and daily manna. Then, you no longer live by bread or sleep; you live by the Spirit of God that flows forth from within. You have opened out a way for the “imprisoned splendor” to flow. Your needs will be met because divine wisdom and love have come into expression. “I live, yet not I. Christ lives my life.”[5]
This form of meditation opens consciousness to permit God to take over your life, to allow the Christ to flow in and through and out from your being and prepare a place for you, make the crooked places straight, and be your healer, savior, and redeemer. Then, you can never be in bondage to person, place, or thing. You are free. You are governed by the divine spiritual power that the Master preached, the power that does everything for you without your human crusading. You are permitting the Christ, the Father within, to take over.
[At this point, Joel asks the students to repeat the Scripture meditation without him leading them.]
The secret to this form of meditation is that what takes place in your mind is not power. Contemplation helps you concentrate, but the power comes when something wells up from within you, from the Father within to you, and you know that it was not you talking but the Father revealing Itself, imparting Itself within you. So, in your meditations, remember that even though you may voice some truth or state something from Scripture, that only settles you down until you hear or feel something from within.
Joel repeats that with this form of meditation, extraneous thoughts will disappear of their own nothingness if you ignore them. They are not your thoughts, so you don’t have to fear them or be ashamed of them. They are just passing through. Stay with the quotations that come to you and leave these other thoughts alone. And, if you lose your concentration, don’t be disturbed. Just start over and continue until you feel a release.
Treatment
In metaphysical work, treatment is the means of bringing about healing. In treatment, we often use statements of truth and denials of the power of error. It is an intellectual process by which we lift ourselves up to the point where we can spiritually apprehend Reality.
Truth reveals that God is the life of individual being, the mind, soul, and spirit of the individual. In fact, God is the substance of all form. Further, God is the only law and the only power. In truth, there are no other laws or powers. Yet, in our human sense of existence, we have accepted a belief in two powers—in God and something other than God. We also believe that there are laws of germs, infection, contagion, weather, climate, and heredity.
Yet none of these things are law. There is no law of matter, no law of infection or contagion, no law of heredity. These are universal beliefs that are so widely accepted that they operate as laws. So, these world beliefs act in our consciousness as law until we rise above them through some measure of realization. No one is entirely immune from them, even though we may overcome them in some measure. If we are subject to any physical discord, we are under the law to some degree. In fact, many of the diseases that people suffer from today are caused by a theological “law” that there is punishment for sin. This produces a guilt complex that eats them up inside and produces physical or mental discords. Yet, as the Master’s ministry proved, there is no law of punishment for sin.
Ignorance of the law does not protect you from it, either. You may never have heard about a medical law that if you sit in a draft, you’ll catch cold. But if you sit in a draft, you probably will catch cold because that is a universal belief operating in consciousness as law until you have wiped it out. When you go to a practitioner for help, you are really asking the practitioner to nullify these universal beliefs that act as law.
If you are under any material law, in your treatment, you must know that God is the only law and the only lawgiver, and that all these other so-called laws are not law in Reality and cannot stand in the face of truth. But again, stating this, declaring it, or reading it will not demonstrate it. You have to rise higher than your mentality to the spiritual discernment that reveals to you that these material laws really are not laws. Stating that they are not laws may help lift you to a place of discernment, but the statements themselves are not the healing agency. The healing agency is the state of consciousness in which you spiritually apprehend the truth, the truth that is utter folly to the human senses.
The things of God are foolishness with men, and the things of man are foolishness with God. If you tell a doctor that there is no law of germs, infection, or contagion, the doctor will never believe it because there is proof of these laws on that level of consciousness. But in the spiritual realm, there are no powers other than God; there are no laws of matter and no laws of punishment.
Joel continues this class and completes the lesson on treatment on Recording 58B, which we have posted. Should you want to hear it, it is posted on the same page as Recording 58A. To listen by telephone, call 1-641-715-3900 and enter 767432#.
During your study of this lesson, a helpful practice is to do the contemplative meditation with Scripture. Here is a summary of the instructions Joel gave to the students.
As part of the question and answer for the first part of February, Joel leads a beautiful contemplative meditation. We posted the source recording for that question and answer so that you can listen to Joel leading the meditation. Although the source recording is posted to accompany the question and answer, the meditation is an excellent example of contemplative meditation and fits very well with our meditation study program.
The source recording for the question and answer is 359B, titled “A Meditation on the Presence,” from the 1960 New York Closed Class. It is posted on the same page as recordings 58A and 58B. You may want to hear the entire recording, but if you just want to follow the meditation, it begins at time 10:23 and continues through 36:31. (Simply move the slider bar on the player to 10:23.) To listen by telephone, call 1-641-715-3900 and enter 777358#.
[1] John 10:30.
[2] Luke 17:21.
[3] Isaiah 55:8.
[4] John 14:27.
[5] Galatians 2:20.