Why meditate?

The master Omraam gave many original lectures on meditation and contemplation which I have found really useful in my own spiritual practice. The first one I am sharing focuses on the basic question of why we need to meditate if we want to make progress in our spiritual life:

There are many different degrees to meditation. And we must understand that meditation is more than reflection. To meditate means to focus on a subject, a quality or virtue, on something that you are either lacking, or wish to develop. But you will not have any desire to develop a particular quality or virtue such as kindness, generosity, peace, light, wisdom or love, (there are so many qualities and virtues), unless you cherish a high ideal. But what is this high ideal? It’s to want to become something better than ordinary- by which I mean purer, more perfect, more intelligent, more powerful, in fact, to become a model, an example.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

If you do not have this ideal of becoming an example, of perfecting yourself, you will never succeed in meditating because you will not be motivated to meditate on heavenly, divine subjects. On the contrary, you will be forced to meditate on your worries, how much money you need to pay for your clothes, for the gas and the electricity, etc. Or how to get married, how many children to have, or what you would like to say to such and such a person that has annoyed you..

But that is not meditation because you are not drawn towards something more divine, more heavenly. That is why, my dear brothers and sisters, it is indispensable to have a high ideal, because without one you will have no desire to meditate on divine subjects, on angels and archangels, heaven, light, space, or eternity. You will have no wish to do that. Why not? Because without an ideal many people waste their time in silly, futile occupations. That ‘s why a high ideal is indispensable.

When you want to become something better, more beautiful, more expressive and purer, to inspire others, if you like…then you will meditate on how to attain those qualities, how to become stronger, how to resolve such and such a problem, how to free yourself from things that block your progress… and that is meditation. Meditation is focused on something more spiritual. When it is focused on business or everyday, material preoccupations, it is not really meditation.

So, suppose you succeed in imagining beauty, you love beauty, the beauty that is found everywhere throughout the universe: in flowers, crystals, trees; in men and women and in colors, in everything. You are so amazed, so enchanted, you feel so expanded that you remain like that, in this state of wonder, for a long time. That is contemplation. You are no longer meditating, you have focused your thoughts on one image and you drink the elixir of everlasting life. Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

I experienced this a few weeks ago on Boxing day. I wandered down to the beach near my home before sunrise and found that I had arrived just before the sun was about to rise. So I sat down on the rocks and watched it slowly rise above the stillness of the waves and was enchanted by the shimmering path of sunlight it made across the water. I sat for a long time in silence, completely lost in the beauty and the wonder of the moment. It felt like an unexpected Christmas gift!

Here’s more from the master, as he describes the highest degree of meditation- identification and union with our Spirit, the heavenly father, our higher Self:

Contemplation is above meditation, because the sensations you feel in contemplation are superior to meditation. In meditation, there is not much joy, or expansion of consciousness. It involves thinking of certain problems, trying to resolve them, it is different. But with contemplation your mind is free, you feel liberated, you have inner joy and peace, Then if you wish to go further – because there are degrees – you think about the Lord and you identify with Him, you want to become like Him, as Jesus said, “Be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect”. You wish to become perfect like the heavenly Father is perfect, to identify with Him.

But what do human beings identify with? With their donkey, their horse, their car, in other words, their physical body. They say, “This is me!” Look how ignorant they are! They do not realise they are a spirit, a soul, something immaterial, something that has amazing powers and potential. They identify with their physical body, which is just the body we use to manifest ourselves; it is the donkey, the car, not the driver. The driver is not the car.

So, what are the results and consequences of this? Well, as eternity, eternal youth, power and light has not been given to the physical body it becomes rusty, it becomes weak and ill, it ferments. So these people also ferment, they become stiff, they become weak and then, just like the physical body, they become old, cold and lose all their faculties. You must never identify with the physical body. We are not the physical body. It is only our instrument. From now on you must identify with your Higher Self, which is a flame; it is of the same essence as the Lord. Then you will obtain different results.

All the initiates, all the great masters have verified this. They identify with their Higher Self. And that is why it is written above the Temple at Delphi “Know Thyself” because people don’t know themselves. They say, “Oh, I know myself, I know myself. I know all my weaknesses, all my talents.” No, no, that is not you. You are something else, something that is sublime, divine, extraordinary! But people don’t know themselves. That is why it is said, “Know Thee, Thyself”.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov Audio CD Meditation (transcript translated from French)