Even though humans have developed the ability to gain material abundance, we stagnate, sink backward, and imprison ourselves in material existence unless we permeate our lives with the spirit. We must learn how to rejuvinate our atrophied spiritual senses, dormant through generations of neglect.
It is all very well to say "let us be more spiritual," but precisely how do we go about this? The average person is understandably repelled by airy-fairy theories about "spiritual contact" and "virtuous living." Religious teachings speak of communion with the Divine, but always as something that was realized by special persons but is no longer possible for mankind in general.
Reality Check"In dealing with the higher consciousness this time comes when we feel the urge to pass it on to others. We have discovered what to us is new country; we have gained possession of something fresh and exciting. We are convinced of its value. We are wildly enthusiastic about it. . . . That is a danger spot. That is how bores and nuisances, zealots, fanatical reformers come into being. Those are not pleasant or welcome persons. Even when they are right, they are wrong; for their very overenthusiastic persistence fills the average man with a perverse desire to go the other way."
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Especially in an unfamiliar endeavor such as this, the amount of success we achieve depends on the amount of energy we put into it. These principles about how to contact spiritual forces about us must be made manifest in our lives. Actual reawakening of our dormant spiritual faculties is the goal, not merely a mental acceptance of ideas. We must soak up these prescriptions, live them, let them permeate us, let them control our lives.
We begin by recognizing and acknowledging the spiritual forces encompassing us, allowing them to permeate us. We exist in a Reality composed of many dimensions, with invisible, spiritual entities and substances surrounding us.
But we lead our lives as though encased in space suits which do not allow a single drop of the life-giving spirit to enter us. On rare occasions, when we are unaware, the spiritual forces break through in an instantaneous spark of inspiration or epiphany. But we soon return to our mind- absorbed preoccupation with ordinary realities.
We can learn to activate this contact and permeation through definite procedures, consciously developing our capacity to discern subtle essences. To make safe and effective contact with these elusive realities we must have some rudimentary awareness of them and we must have a genuine, suitable desire to make contact. Our humble but unwavering aspiration for contact provides our spiritual impetus, for the force of our desire calls forth its complement in the higher dimensions.
The kind of contact with spiritual forces we're seeking is not a self-absorbed search for "psychic powers." Trying to develop extrasensory "gifts" for personal aggrandizement can be dangerous. Many people go off on occult tangents and wind up in psychotic or cultish detours.
We seek to create a dynamic channel between spiritual realities and earthly concerns. We're not trying to contact a spiritual current so we can fill up a pond for our personal enjoyment; such a dead pool soon stagnates. It must be a stream which originates in the higher dimensions and flows continuously to become transmuted into an effective life force.
Contacting the spiritual forces about us is not as difficult as we might think. We actually do it quite often, unawares. Our usual state is one of mind-absorbed preoccupation--living in our thoughts and desires. Our self-absorption makes us blind and deaf to realities about us. We focus on our worries or our hopes and fail to hear the birds singing in the trees or see the breath-taking cloud formation ahead of us or hear the haunting melody of the Bach piano concerto on our stereo. But once in awhile we open ourselves to the beauty and wonder about us: we see the grandeur of the stand of redwoods by the stream, we smell the lucious odor of food being prepared by loving hands, we discern the deeper meanings in a Wallace Stevens poem, or we hear the mystic clap of thunder in the distant clouds.
So this is our first exercise: a shift from a busy mental concentration within to a voluntary, wide opening to realities from without. That is an elementary and vital form of spiritual contact. As we expand with our heart we come in contact with spiritual essences which surround us. It is a mixture of energy, the desire to reach higher, and the intense happiness and serenity that beauty gives us. Beauty in all its guises is a great and quiet revealer of spiritual realities. This out-going expansion and familiarity with the wide-hearted feeling is the first stage of spiritual contact.
When we gain a sensibility for this elementary enlargement and open-heartedness we seek it for its own sake. It teaches us that all reality about us vibrates with hidden meaning, that there are subtleties which a mind-absorbed or ego-obsessed consciousness is simply incapable of registering.
Having gained a feeling for expanded consciousness, our next step is to achieve the first dead lift to gain a new level of contact with the spiritual forces about us. Emanations from the spiritual dimension are direct responses to the impelling force we create within ourselves. Whatever inspirational force we experience is the issuing forth of energy from a higher dimension in direct proportion to our self-invigoration. We acquire spiritual contact in direct proportion as we arouse ourselves to take. This first step, then, is our responsibility alone; spiritual forces can only respond to genuine effort on our part. We must achieve that first breakthrough for ourselves--and then we will receive assistance in abundance according to our capacity to receive.
To develop a new center of consciousness capable of spiritual contact, we must learn a special kind of meditation. This involves a distinct form of physical and mental relaxation combined with spiritual alertness and determination. We learn to relax physically by imagining ourselves free from tension, picturing to ourselves the condition of serenity as though it already existed.
We remove mental tension by turning our attention to casual sense impressions, without regard to their significance. Thus we empty the foreground of our consciousness, usually teeming with thoughts, and replace them with little discontinuous sounds, passive and placid scenes of beauty, anything not actively stimulating. Focusing on these unremarkable sense impressions our compulsive intellectual and emotional proclivities quickly subside, leaving the consciousness like a calm lake.
Reality Check"It is most important not to think of this as a pious, posey, parsony sort of thing. There is nothing at all of the See-how-holy-and-calm-I-am idea about it. Nor is it any affectation of a benign pussy-cat smile towards all humanity."
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Spiritual contact is at first so subtle and so unaccustomed that it seems to be a groping for the intangible and the unachievable. It's easy at this point to become discouraged and turn away from the effort.
The first experiences of spiritual connection grow in us from so subtle a beginning that they do not even reach our watchful consciousness for some time. An inspiration related to something we're writing or planning or doing may come to us so subtly, so enigmatically that it will not register at once. An event may occur which hints of arcane purposes beyond our ken.
What we're after is habitual consciousness of spiritual association, the steady habit of keeping open to the subtleties about us. We learn to avoid settling down into a mind-absorbed, ego-obsessed insensibiliity. We gain a steadfast desire for companionship of the spirit through habitual wide heartedness and receptiveness.
Our development of spiritual sensitivity must be natural, vital, and continuous; we're not seeking to become "Superior Beings" over night. Our efforts can easily slump into a kind of mechanical ritual, conscientiously and laboriously performed for the good of our soul. We must persist in our efforts for months, perhaps years, until we become saturated, permeated with the energizing vitality of spiritual contact.
Reality Check"There is a difference beetween the sloppy, sentimental, emotional thing commonly known as feeling, and the feeling of strength and stability that is absorbent of wisdom."
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Persistence is essential because we are learning to use a new faculty: spiritual sensibility. Our ordinary senses go after something by first seeing it clearly and then striving toward it. Spiritual perception operates by struggling for something dimly sensed which is seen clearly only after it is attained. Each insight we attain then provides strength for further effort toward a subtle, inchoate element tenuously discerned.
As we gain a stabilized wider consciousness it gradually develops in us a spiritual body whose senses advise us of our needs.
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