"What hinders men from seeing and hearing God, is their own hearing, seeing and willing; by their own wills they separate themselves from the will of God. They see and hear within their own desires, which obstructs them from seeing and hearing God. Terrestrial and material things overshadow them, and they cannot see beyond their own human nature. If they would be still, desist from thinking and feeling with their own self-hood, subdue the self-will, enter into a state of resignation, into a divine union with Christ, who sees God, and hears God, and speaks with him, who knows the word and will of God; then would the eternal hearing seeing and speaking become revealed to them." ~ Jacob Boehme (1575-1624 C.E.)
The primary purpose of all meditation is to attain clarity of mind and union with one's Beloved. This attainment of Absolute Mind is called Bliss, Nirvana, Orgasmic Release, etc. To experience this means one needs to subdue the clattering, chattering conditioned mind of Ego and surrender to the profound silence inherent in the Greater Mind. This Mind is beyond the Bible thumping preacher. Often, the preacher does not act as a catalyst to salvation; indeed, through his theology-philosophy he oftentimes hinders it and keeps us stuck in ego--his ego and our own.
Dare we go deeper while letting go of preachers, politicians and corporate heads?
In Christian Alchemy, the process of deepening or transforming entails moving beyond the philosophy of the ego by the methods of :
Calcination: the identification of the ego process by recognizing and watching the egoistic mental, emotional and physical attributes that bind us.
Dissolution: the process by which we burn our egoistic pains and fears in fire creating ash, washing away those long held beliefs that joined us with the ego mind.
Separation: the stage whereby we see ourselves in two parts, the upper conscious higher mind and the lower temporal worldly body. Here we see truth from falsehood because of our new expanded view.
Conjunction: the point at which we encounter the limitless and infinite greatness of the entire reality. It's where we find our Path of illumination in the All and see that the gift of growing never ends. Here we begin to climb the "Ladder' of the spiritual ascent and start entering new realms of conscious awareness.
Putrefaction: the stage at which the anchor of the temporal bodies decays and we're faced with its shadow. Here we clearly see the attributes that limit our attainment and we face them, finally healing and accepting the "who we are' here in this world -- joining the upper and lower together.
Distillation: the process by which we embrace a new form of existence, connection and revelation that was not available before, also called the Philosophers Stone. This stage is very advanced; it creates within us a sense of true love and All. Here we become embedded into the structure of everything and we see ourselves in others. We "Love our Neighbor as Ourselves' because we truly don't see a separation any longer.
Coagulation: the Phoenix rising, the enlightened state of Buddha-hood, or the Holy Grail. This state of Oneness transcends anything that can be explained by words and is the true merging with the Creator Force as One -- the Elixir of Immortality. (See Alchemy link below)
Oneness can be experienced through various means, including walks through Nature (which is walking within the Mother's body), meditation, chanting, yoga, etc. Ultimately, the objective is to enter into the Primordial Realm from which we emerge, the Unmanifest. As such, Paracelsus states: "He who wants to enter the divine realm, first must enter his Mother's body, and die herein."
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