Union with the Divine ! this is a phrase common to human aspiration and the inherent desire we have to realize truths through our own direct spiritual experience.
All of us long for profound, conscious realisation and confirmation of our beliefs. It is natural that we seek to have a direct relationship with our Maker. To have an intimate inner knowledge of the Source of our life energy helps us to feel spiritually secure. Without this inner element, life can remain incomplete.
Most of us seek a degree of spiritual knowledge and understanding and have faith that it is our own spiritual experience that will confirm that knowledge. We have already arrived at some preconception about what constitutes God and Divinity and these are exercised when we start to meditate.
Our concepts of God and our relationship with the Divine are not all identical. Some of us see the Divine as the Great Creative Fire and consider ourselves as little sparks of that same element
“As from a glowing fire, kindred sparkles come forth thousand-fold,
So from the Eternal, manifold beings are born and return also.” Manduka Upanishad
Others conceive God as the Divine Ocean of Life and themselves as a mere droplet of that same element of water
“The dewdrop slips into the shining sea….” Buddha
Some people consider themselves as part of the universe and all manifested natural life and may seek to experience that Oneness by achieving harmony of being amongst the outwardly manifested world of supreme Nature.
Some yearn to identify themselves with the great force of Love and seek only to free themselves from the limitations of personal love to find a new identity as part of the eternal heart -beat that radiates Divine and Infinite Love.
There are of course many approaches to this most important and sacred relationship a human being possesses. Whilst determining our approach, we claim privacy and respect the privacy of others. So our serious thoughts and attitudes to the ultimate Creative Intelligence are rarely expressed to others, until we feel a strong spiritual bond of understanding.
As to our manner of spiritual communing, this is also our private choice. Some of us elect to meditate in solitude, others in groups and formal religious ceremony and church ritual. No matter what way we choose, we find that meditation and prayer are inherent and are required to develop a state of stillness of both body and mind.
Meditation becomes our most vital means of distancing ourselves from worldly matters and identifying ourselves with our higher consciousness. It provides us with the opportunity to put in perspective lesser issues and to gradually elevate our minds much as the direct upward movement of an elevator lifts us to a higher level. In order to do this, we must first achieve body comfort and stillness and so rise above the body awareness to our subtler emotional and mental planes and feel in touch with our soul consciousness.
Following some degree of effort in concentration of thought is the receptive or ‘listening’ stage in meditation. This is a state of awaiting response. It is an effortless time where we experience an influx of new thoughts and experiences associated with our spiritual purpose.
There are good times when this process happens smoothly and difficult days when we cannot elevate to the desired mood. Positive experiences become our encouragement. These moments may come through psychic realization, dreams or times of clear thought and intuition. As with everything else, it becomes easier as we become familiar with our different states of awareness in meditation.
It is through meditation that we arrive at personal experience and absorption in the quality which we seek to strengthen. We have opportunity to discover a proven reality of the ideas we say we believe in. We can find proof of our philosophy or sometimes that which confounds it, to cause us to modify our attitudes towards greater issues of life.
More expansive that prayer alone, meditation offers a two way communication between our lesser self and the higher self and between our personal consciousness and God.
We are free to develop our own life link with our Creator. This is usually established best through a simple mental approach and with patience, bearing in mind that it is our breath that provides the most obvious and ever present line of communication between the physical world and the invisible spheres of the Divine.
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