“The Lord created us to be capable of communicating with spirits and angels while still living in our bodies, as people actually did in the earliest times. After all, we are one with spirits and angels. In fact we ourselves are spirits clothed in flesh.
Over time, though, people have immersed themselves so deeply in bodily and worldly concerns that almost nothing else interests them, and so the path has closed; but as soon as the body-driven concerns that absorb us drop away, it opens and we find ourselves among spirits, living life together with them” Secrets of Heaven 69.
I don’t have thoughts, per se, for this meditation. I share instead my experience. It happens to relate to the passage indirectly.
During my meditation, I focused on the space between the breaths: the space or moment between the in-breath and out-breath, and the opposite space or moment between the out-breath and in-breath. The latter moment gets to feeling so peaceful and it lengthens each time I get there; both lengthen and increase in peacefulness, but the second one more so. As I cycle through breaths, my breath softens and my mind becomes completely still. When I do start to “think” I can feel a pulsation begin in my head that wasn’t there before, like a simple wave on what was, to use the common analogy, a still, windless lake.
I often am prey to the idea that I always need to think in order to have thoughts; but I think that’s because I have a hard time believing in the fullness of the stillness I go into. The truth is the Lord is present in the stillness, with insights to offer me, but so often I don’t go there because my small mind (or my outer self), that is so used to thinking to get thoughts, thinks that that space or moment of stillness is empty. Oh but it’s not; it is so full and full of peace.
To connect this to the passage I read in Secrets of Heaven, I wonder if this space or mental state of being is one in which “body-driven concerns” drop away. It certainly feels like my body-driven concerns drop away. Perhaps this is the beginning of the “path” opening. It doesn’t really matter to me; communication with spirits or not, being in this state is enormously relaxing and comforting.
I am reminded of a yogic mantra that reflects the experience I have in this state:
Om Purnamadah Purnamidam
Purnata Purnamudacyate
Purnasaya Purna Ma Daya
Purnamevava Sheshyate
Om Shanti Shanti Shantih
Translated as:
“Om, eternal fullness! This is fullness. Fullness emerges from fullness. When fullness is separated from fullness, fullness remains! Om, peace, peace, peace!”