Meditate | Expansion

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

Before we are reborn, we do not know even that an inner being exists, let alone what it is, imagining there is no difference between the two selves. This is because we are absorbed by bodily and worldly interests and merge the concerns of the inner being with those interests. Out of distinct and separate planes we make one confused whole. Therefore the first verse says that there should be an expanse in the middle of the waters, then that it should exist to make a distinction…The second thing we begin to notice while being reborn, then, is that the inner self exists. We become aware that the attributes of the inner self are good feelings and true ideas which are the Lord’s alone. (Secrets of Heaven 24)

Madyama vikasha cittananda labah…The bliss of Consciousness is attained through the expansion of the center. (Pratyabijna Hrdayam 17, trans. Swami Shantananda in The Splendor of Recognition)

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Angels are in the Lord and the Lord is in them…God—that is, the Lord—is in the sun above the heavens and is in the heavens by means of his presence in warmth and light…Further, even though the Lord is present in heaven in this apparently distant way, he is still also intrinsically present there, so to speak, since…the distance between the sun and heaven is not a distance but a virtual distance. Given the fact that this distance is only apparent, then, it follows that the Lord himself is in heaven. He is in the love and wisdom of heaven's angels. (Divine Love and Wisdom 113)

Okay, that’s a lot of quotes. But all of these played a part in my meditation this week. Meditating on the idea of the expanse in the middle of the waters, my mind immediately brings up the sutra from the Pratyabijna Hrdayam, about expanding the madya, the center, or the middle. So I found myself in this meditation going through several opposites or dichotomies that surfaced in my awareness and I practiced holding them together in my mind, while I breathed and focused on just being present to their existence—focusing my awareness not only on the expanse that might be between them, but also the expanse within and around them, in other words, holding them in the atmosphere, so to speak, of the Lord’s love and wisdom.

“The bliss of Consciousness is attained through the expansion of the center” between…

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Meditate | Life After Death

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments, or better yet, your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

“The Lord enters us only from the inside, that is, by means of the Word and by lessons and sermons based on the Word.” (Divine Providence 131)

“I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now onward; their works follow them.”’” (Revelation 14:13, as quoted in Divine Providence 128)

The Contemporary English Version gives a clear sense of the literal message of this verse:

“Then I heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Put this in writing. From now on, the Lord will bless everyone who has faith in him when they die.’ The Spirit answered, ‘Yes, they will rest from their hard work, and they will be rewarded for what they have done.’”

But that is far from the message I get when I contemplate it.

For me this passage speaks right to the state of my life now. “Dying in the Lord” happens almost every day for me.

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Meditate | Blessed

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments, or better yet, your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

When I read Psalms, I often find myself identifying with the psalmist in ways that I wouldn't expect with a sacred text. Psalms that express lamentation of his situation or a wish for revenge on his enemies sound petty and whiny. One way that I come to terms with this is in thinking of it not as a literal prayer, but as an expression of spiritual state. The destruction of my enemies makes more sense if it refers to the evils I struggle with, as opposed to my neighbor.

But in this Psalm, I think there is value in a surface reading. It outlines a process that is humbling, but helps with a lot of frustrating self-talk.

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Meditate | Free Sunlight

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments, or better yet, your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

Our whole spirit is desire and its consequent thought; and since all desire is a matter of love and all thought a matter of discernment, our whole spirit is its love and its consequent discernment. This is why our thinking flows from the desires of our love when we are thinking solely from our own spirit, as we do when we are in reflective moods at home…We are drawn to what is evil (which amounts to a compulsion) if our love has been a love for what is evil, and we are drawn to what is good if our love has been a love for what is good. We are drawn to what is good to the extent that we have abstained from evils as sins; and we are drawn to what is evil to the extent that we have not abstained from evils.

Since all spirits and angels are desires, then, we can see that the whole angelic heaven is nothing but a love that embraces all desires for what is good and therefore a wisdom that embraces all perceptions of what is true. Further, since everything good and true comes from the Lord and the Lord is love itself and wisdom itself, it follows that the angelic heaven is an image of him. (Divine Providence 61)

No one can become an angel or get to heaven unless he or she arrives bringing along some angelic quality from the world. Inherent in that angelic quality is a knowing of the path from having walked it and a walking in the path from the knowing of it. (Divine Providence 60)

Meditating on these passages, I recognize clearly in my experience how evil is compulsive. In my interactions with my kids, I am powerless over my negative reactions to their behavior. “Knee-jerk,” like a reflex, is a good description for how this negative reaction feels compulsive.

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Meditate | Lost Sleep, Gained Hope

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments, or better yet, your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

The Lord's divine providence works things out so that what is both evil and false promotes balance, comparison, and purification, which means that it promotes the union of what is good and true in others...

The Lord provides for the union of what is good and true in others by purification. This happens in two ways, by temptations and by fermenting. Spiritual temptations are simply battles against the evil and false things that breathe forth from hell and affect us. These battles purify us from things that are evil and false, so that goodness in us is united to truth and truth to goodness.

Spiritual fermenting happens in many ways both in the heavens and on earth, but people in our world do not know what these processes are or how they happen. There are things that are both evil and false that are injected into communities the way agents of fermentation are injected into flour or grape juice. These serve to separate things that do not belong together and unite things that do, so that the substance becomes pure and clear. (Divine Providence 21, 25)

When I was in high school, I remember staying up until four in the morning and somehow enjoying sort of falling through the day, functioning as I could on less than four hours of sleep for days and days on end. I think back to that now and wonder why I ever did. As a teenager, I think there was an attraction to the sort of drugged-stupor you live in when you haven’t gotten sleep—a form of escape, a way to dull the senses, without the need of actually taking drugs or drinking alcohol! It felt good—when I was a self-absorbed adolescent, not responsible for the care of any other human being.

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Meditate | The Essential Ingredient

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments, or better yet, your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

Outward worship is described as corresponding to inward when it contains the essential ingredient, which is heartfelt reverence for the Lord. Such reverence is not possible in the least except where charity, or love for one’s neighbor, exists. Charity, or love for our neighbor, contains the Lord’s presence. With it, we can adore the Lord from the heart. When we have charity, our reverence comes from the Lord, since the Lord gives us all the ability to revere him and all the vital essence of our veneration. It follows, then, that the kind of charity we have determines the quality of our adoration, that is, the quality of our worship. (Secrets of Heaven 1150)

How do I live worshipfully? This passage seems like the most basic teaching, pointing to the essentialness of love for our neighbor to life, for opening ourselves to the Lord’s presence. It is very useful for me to get reminded, to revisit the idea again and again. It is so simple and yet so easily navigated away from.

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