“Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me. I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded” (Isaiah 45: 11 & 12). People around the globe practice meditation with various methods, and for various reasons. Some use it as a relaxation technique. Others meditate as a problem-solving practice; and still others approach meditation to mentally connect with the higher consciousness of the infinite One we call God, Allah, and other deific names used in the world’s diverse cultures, in order to find spiritual enlightenment. One thing which these various approaches all have in common is that, usually, a preparation period is required to lift one’s human thoughts and anxieties above the ‘noise’ of the world’s collective anger, fear, and depression. Thus, someone practicing Yoga, for example, might find a quiet place to shut out audible sounds, and then assume the lotus position of receptivity to the inner voice. Religious persons often seek a sanctuary in a church, or possibly an altar area in the home, to mediate in a prayerful way which speaks to God, in a place that shuts out distractions. All these preparation methods are good. Whatever works to lift one’s consciousness out of the chaotic thoughts of the material environment is a needed prerequisite to quiet the fears and worries that crowd the human mind. Meditation will be utterly non-productive when our thoughts are fastened upon these anxieties, because riveting fears allow nothing else to enter our consciousness. As a metaphysical Christian, I’ve gravitated to a form of meditation that has been highly productive for me, in more ways than one. It has resulted in healing and a new enlightenment, almost each time—not to mention the human problems that have been solved by it. At its base, it brings into play two teachings of the apostle Paul: 1. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2: 5). 2. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; "(2 Corinthians 10: 3-5). Let me show what I mean by one such example: For nearly twenty years, I was plagued by a repetitive dream. To skip the details, it was a type of insecurity dream that affected my emotions quite vividly. This dream reoccurred every five or six months, and then bothered me for a few nights, only to disappear for another six-month or so interval. I’d often awake from this dream with a sense of threat to my well-being and a conviction that something must really be mentally wrong with me, or I wouldn’t keep having this repetitive experience. Now the threat I would dream about wasn’t real, even in my daily life. Yet, whenever this dream occurred, I’d awake in the morning with a sense of foreboding. I’d then have to acknowledge God’s loving presence and my own safety in it, which would cause the anxiety to leave. But I wanted the dream, itself, to cease. It was like I kept treating the symptoms and not the disease. So I decided to meditate, to connect to the universal, Christ Consciousness, that’s within us all, to see if I could, once and for all, ‘heal’ the dream—or at least stop my own reaction to it. When meditating, my preparation time is nearly always the same. I sink into a warm bubble-bath (around twilight time of day, when the world is quieter outside) and I light a candle for its soft, soothing glow. I don’t turn on any other lights, which can be harsh and disturbing to the senses. The warm water covers me to the neck, and within about five minutes, I’m usually more relaxed. The anxieties of the day slip away, and I’m safe and alone in a sanctuary where I can stop needless thinking and open myself to letting ‘that mind be in me which was also in Christ Jesus.’ So, in this instance, my meditation was to open all my mental doors and windows, and declare that the mind which was in Christ Jesus was also in me. I knew that this was so, because, in our own Christly identity, our spiritual identity, we’re all at one with the divine Intelligence, God, even though our human memory seems to have erased this spiritual fact. Our human consciousness is at a lower level of awareness than our spiritual consciousness. This spiritual consciousness, the Christ Consciousness, is our higher, enlightened level. By reminding myself of these spiritual, rather than physical, facts, I was letting (calling forth into my awareness) ‘this mind that was in Christ Jesus’. I was recognizing its existence and presence with me. Then, by turning to all the spiritual truths (or enlightenments) I already knew, I was calling the Kingdom of God into my human experience, to help me banish this disturbing, chronic dream I’d experienced for so long a time. So, being relaxed enough to focus, I asked this Christ Consciousness within to come forward and enlighten me about this dream. Why was I having it? What did it mean? Why had it plagued me, every few months or so for twenty odd years? My next step was to cease asking or thinking anything, but just to wait and listen within. I only listened for seconds, before a quiet voice within my own thoughts began to say something like: “Go back to that bad emotional time you experienced twenty-two years ago; do you remember what you said to your human sense of self that was suffering so much pain and anxiety? You said you’d never allow such a thing to happen to you again. You would insulate yourself and be on guard, if you saw it (the bad situation) coming into your experience again.” As these words came to me, I did remember some conclusions I’d made to protect myself emotionally in the future. I was like Scarlet O’Hara after her poverty period during the Civil War, when she said something like, ‘As God as my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!’ Then she took a more hard, determined and protective path in the future. In my own way, I’d done the same. The Christ Consciousness within then told me, without a hint of condemnation, that the dream I was experiencing from time to time, was like a message I’d programmed myself to receive, to remind myself to stay on guard. That’s all the dream was. I was not to be afraid of the dream, but when it came again, just know that I’d programmed it merely to keep my need for emotional protection in the forefront of my human consciousness. It was my way of staying on guard. But there was more to this mental enlightenment: The voice within said that I could tell my human self to stop the dream now, for there was no longer a need to stay on guard. The divine Intelligence and Love of God is, and was, always with me; not just within my inner being, but in what seems like a material environment outside of Spirit. And (the inner voice reminded me) even during that extremely bad time, I’d always been protected in my spiritual identity. So, just as I had experienced back then, the humanly bad situation would be turned away and I would come out of any danger, just as soon as I turned in unconditional trust to God for deliverance. This is true for everyone. By bringing our thoughts back to the Christly, spiritual identity (who we really are) and the invisible, Kingdom of God (where we really exist) we find our eternal protection in divine Love, which brings the kingdom of God down to earth, into the human experience. While meditating on all this enlightened information, I realized that this is what Paul meant by ’bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’. (See full quote at beginning of article.) Paul was telling us to remember our identity as the Christ—the spiritual identity. This Christ identity, our higher true Self, has never left the Kingdom of God. This true kingdom is within us; it’s within our own, invisible divine consciousness to remember, call forth, and know. It’s like the sleeper within. This was one of my most productive meditation sessions. I was shown how and why some repetitive dreams come to people. We set them up ourselves out of fear. They are reminders of something, but often the dreams themselves are symbolic, not just a repeat of some event that took place. I hadn’t connected my dream to a past event at all, until I was shown the dream's purpose, and then it made sense. I’d wanted a way to stay on guard, as a human way of protection. The repetitive dream filled this purpose, however unnecessarily. On other occasions, an hour or so of meditation has healed physical injuries and disease conditions. Always the healing comes forward into our thoughts as words and explanations of spiritual truth. That’s what enlightenment is; it’s the spiritual facts of being, that we don’t perceive humanly. These truths from within wipe out our beliefs in the billions of human conditions that the human consciousness clings to. Fleshly world beliefs don’t stay and take physical form when we meditate in the way that calls upon our Christly link to God within, and mentally perceive our spiritual existence, still at one with God. During meditation, we often find the truth of spiritual, rather than material existence; and our condition as a beloved, child of God comes forward into consciousness, giving us a spiritual knowledge of health, wholeness and safety we hadn’t perceived before. So, meditation is productive when we take a more spiritual approach to it—one which centers on the Christ identity and Christ Consciousness within. I’ve found that if the basis of our quest is to find our link with the infinite, we must first know who we really are—a child of God, not Adam and Eve. To meditate from the standpoint of a material mortal in a material universe who’s trying to find enlightenment doesn’t get us very far. But to approach meditation with the desire to rise above the human, to the divine self within, brings all things to light. To ‘bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’ actually means to always identify ourselves as the Christ (spiritual off-spring of God) and then see where and how we are a valued part of the divine kingdom of heaven, always invisibly present. We find God’s eternal love for us. We find our divine circumstances, untouched by worldly beliefs, untouched by the lack of health, lack of income, lack of harmony in the human scene. We find the ever-present power of God that can change all that back to health, harmony and abundance; for lack of any good thing is unreal—God is caring for us eternally, whatever we’re believing, or experiencing, on this material level of thought. Enlightenment is already within our true spiritual being, and that’s the only place we’re going to find it. It’s not in a mortal, material self that doesn’t really exist; nor can we be enlightened about a physical realm that doesn’t really exist outside of the illusion of materiality. Enlightenment has to come from the realm of Spirit. Physical scientists will forever search the realm of material forms and seeming forces to find enlightenment. But all things material are temporal; they don’t belong to Spirit’s creation. Physical so-called forces and law will fail; spiritual substance and laws are eternal. Matter is the shadow-belief of the real. It’s the Adam dream of a creation and creatures apart from God. “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Corinthians 15: 21-22). Meditation is productive when it conquers the ills of the flesh we’re all susceptible to, due to material belief. Not only in healing, but in his resurrection from material death, did Christ Jesus show that both disease and death are physical, fleshly beliefs of existence and conditions, not the truth of being. The truth of spiritual being, comprehended, can banish both from one’s experience. But he did warn that death was the last enemy to be destroyed by spiritual awakening to truth. We should handle the easier claims first. When this voice speaks to our waiting thought during meditation, it reminds us of who we really are (spiritual rather than material beings), and where we really are (the spiritual Kingdom of God rather than a physical realm). It enlightens our materially darkened understanding with the truth of our eternal, spiritual selves that can have no injury, no diseased condition—for our only condition is spiritual, and that condition is whole, sufficient, sound, balanced, and divinely ordered. No spiritual quality of health can be missing. Even the beliefs of aging (a claim of insufficiency developing over time) can be retarded and humanly healed in great degrees when one realizes that, as spiritual beings, we are at one with our spiritual Source, and no deficiencies to our spiritual substance can occur. Spirit doesn’t age. That’s why we’re immortal. It’s our acceptance of worldy, fleshly beliefs about ourselves that make us expect to deteriorate over time. Paul the Apostle taught, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” (I Corinthians 15: 53). Accepting the world belief of deterioration with time passing causes the physical form to change, in accordance to the degree of which an individual believes in such a phenomenon. Just so, accepting other beliefs in physical law, such as the law of fleshly heredity, also brings a mental acceptance, rather than mental rejection, of a diseased condition, if it manifests into physical form. It fulfills what Jesus once told a centurion concerning the health of his servant, “As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” (Matthew 8: 13). This highlights the role which belief plays in the material experience. To the extent an individual expects to be affected by time, or anything else in the physical environment, the manifestation of a fleshly body will obey. We control our own manifestation, sort of like a holograph. The physical body is an image of our material sense of self. But we never had physical substance to begin with. That’s the illusion of the lower level of material consciousness, which believes that the vessel is the passenger. It takes time to reject all the sensations of the flesh as belonging to us, and all the worldly beliefs we’ve acquired from our birth into the human illusion. Yet, whatever our beliefs, we are spiritual beings, without any connection to the fleshly form. However much this seems wrong, it’s one of the highest rights you’ll ever love to know.
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