Meditation refresher
[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
In our Teacher of Pupils Training, I did a class this past Monday on Course meditation. What’s odd is that while I didn’t learn anything new, it was still extremely helpful. Let me try to explain why.
What the class reminded me of is that in Course meditation, the whole story is how much of our attention we are putting on the object of meditation (which can be God, or our true Self, or the “quiet center” of our mind). After all, as the Course says, “To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it” (T-7.III.4:1). This means keeping our attention as much as possible on the object. It means drawing our mind back to focus every time it wanders. And it means bringing our full attention to bear, which can only be done when we hold an attitude of confidence and desire, and carry a feeling of the importance and holiness of what we are doing. Each one of those qualities brings forward some part of us that otherwise would simply be checked out.
I already know all this, but I’ve been letting my mind be lax in actually carrying it out. Being reminded of it has made for a definite improvement in my meditations. Now I sit down and think, “OK, this is it. I’m going to bring forth all of my attention and put it on God, and then draw it back every single time it wanders off. I don’t need to do any more than that, but also nothing less.” Strangely, just that simple intention makes quite a lot of difference.
Overall, it has been reminder about the path of the Course generally. The whole journey is like meditation—simply an act of exercising our choice of what we elect to have. If we choose to have the experience of God in meditation, then we just have to choose to put our attention on God, fully and steadily. In short, we just have to place our choice in that direction. On the larger level, if we want to wake up, we just have to place our choice in that direction, not once, after which we just go about our day like normal. Rather, we have to exercise that choice, over and over, and keep on exercising it.
What we reach for fully and consistently is what we are really choosing. And what we choose, we have.