Thoughts on "The Art Of Meditation"
Introduction
This post is intended as a study guide, an aid offering points for contemplation as you read through Joel's work.
As we read through each chapter of this book it maybe helpful to consider:
1. What is the main message of this chapter?
2. What are the spiritual principles Joel is pointing to?
3. How does this chapter speak to me?
Suggested keys to "The Art Of Meditation":
1. The need to live consciously and continuously in the realization of Presence.
2. Living without an awareness of Presence, we are living in the delusory mind of this world.
3. By keeping an awareness of Spirit alive in Consciousness, you are practising the principles of spiritual living. This is how to restore the "lost years of the locusts".
Each section of this guide is not intended to replace a full reading of the original work of Joel Goldsmith. It is simply intended as pointers for contemplation.
Chapter One
1. From the moment that we know Consciousness through experience, life changes for us, because there is a relaxation of our personal selfhood.
2. The purpose of this book is to help students practice the art of meditation by which the Word takes root, so that they come into an actual awareness, an actual consciousness of living in the Spirit.
3. In achieving conscious contact with the sea of Spirit, we find divine Love pouring Itself into expression.
4. It is only as we learn to look within to this Infinite Invisible, the universal centre of being within us, that we begin to understand the nature and secret of grace.
5. The Infinite Unseen.
6. The awareness of the Presence of Consciousness is developed by patience and perseverance, in quietness and stillness, and by abstaining from the use of mental power or physical might, so that It may function.
Chapter Two
1. The purpose of meditation is to attain the awareness that takes over our experience and lives our life.
2. Meditation is never for attaining things. It is for the purpose of realising Consciousness.
3. In achieving the experience of Consciousness, our good appears as whatever the need may be.
4. We have no demonstration to make except our Spiritual Selfhood.
5. We give up the world, not by removing ourselves to some remote spot, but by giving up our desires for that which the world can give.
6. In meditation, we seek Consciousness and nothing but Consciousness. This grace is not found in the human mind, not in the peace the world gives.
7. We cannot be separated from the Good of Consciousness anymore than a gold ring can be separated from the gold it is formed of.
8. There is no consciousness 'and' me. Consciousness constitutes our life, mind, soul, law, activity and being.
Consciousness is the substance; the individual is the form AS which Consciousness appears.
9. We are not human beings as we seem to be; we are pure spiritual being.
10. We cannot be separated from Consciousness, but we can entertain a 'sense' of separation from Consciousness.
11. The spiritual light is easily detected. We see it in the eyes; we hear it in the voice; we observe it in the vitality and vigour of the body.
12. The whole purpose of our existence is to be a fitting instrument through which our Reality can shine through.
13. Our vision is always on the one invisible Presence at the centre of our being, here and now.
14. As we learn to turn within and let this imprisoned perfume escape, then does it come into visible being.
15. Once we have achieved this contact with our inner Being, we are free.
Chapter Three
1. Meditation requires a letting go of personal selfhood, with its egotistic claim to possessing a wisdom of its own, in order that the Power of Consciousness within can take over.
2. This Power is not within our body, but within our Consciousness.
3. When the conscious thinking mind comes to a stop, the invisible Presence is given an opportunity to function.
Until then, we are merely functioning on the mental level.
4. The human mind cannot be the avenue for the activity of the Soul: a higher consciousness must be reached.
5. In meditation we do not think about our problem; we turn within and wait until we feel a response, a stirring within ourselves.
Chapter Four
1. How many have felt the flow of Consciousness in their minds, within their souls, in their bodies?
2. Consciousness is forever being life, forever being love, forever expressing It's life, love, intelligence.
3. Consciousness is a state of being, a state of infinite intelligence and ever-present Love. Watch what happens when you merely stand still in being.
4. Consciousness is One: One Power, one Law, one Substance, one Cause.
5. There is only one Substance and one Law, and because if this, there is no substance to be destroyed, to be healed, or improved.
6. Consciousness cannot be known with the human mind, but if we listen and are still, in that stillness, Consciousness reveals Itself.
7. The presence of the Infinite Invisible is within our consciousness.
8. We realize that consciousness is within our own being, but not confined within the limits of our flesh.
9. No surgeon can operate and find out Consciousness and yet it is within us, nearer than hands and feet.
10. The activity of Consciousness maintains every individual, supports it, feeds it, sustains it.
Stand still and be directed by this invisible Force.
11. The nature of Consciousness is I, that I which dwells in the midst of us, that I which we recognize to be individualised as our own being.
12. This I is not the body we see with our eyes. It is the gentle I which looks out from the centre of our being.
13. The human self-centred 'I' must "die daily" to the Inner I.
14. Consciousness is my individual being. Consciousness constitutes my being.
Consciousness is the life, the soul of my being.
Consciousness is the substance of which my body is formed.
Consciousness is the only law governing me.
15. The temptation is to believe we have a being separate and apart from Consciousness.
Chapter Five
1. This is the way - constant, constant meditation, a constant turning within so that the inner impulse is kept fresh.
2. At every stage of our unfoldment we are tempted to believe that something we do or think in the human realm will help us in the development of our spiritual awareness.
3. Psychic visions are entirely in the psychic level or in the mental realm of consciousness. They have nothing to do with the world of Spirit.
4. • Thoughts are world thoughts.
• We are like antennas picking up all the broadcasts of the world.
• if we disregard these world thoughts they will die for the lack of feeding.
• Only as we accept them as our thoughts, do we feed them.
5. In the moment of silence, we begin to understand that Consciousness is an infinite Intelligence imbued with love, and It functions as our being, when conscious thinking has been stilled.
6. In our everyday life, we may have one plan in mind and the Cosmic Mind may have another, but we shall never know It's plan so long as we are busily engaged in thinking, scheming, and reacting to the activities and distractions of the world.
7. This human mind, this reasoning, thinking mind is not Consciousness, but it is a facet of consciousness, an avenue if awareness through which we receive knowledge and wisdom from Consciousness.
8. Most of us have periods of gradual progression, punctuated by interludes if desolation, when we feel we have lost the way and are wandering in a maze of conflict and contradiction. Often we find that, after these valley experiences,vwe go forward to new heights.
