by Doug Esse
Have you ever experienced a silent retreat? I’ve done three of them, and just completed one last Sunday. The kind of freedom you experience in silence is true freedom, indeed.
Ra explicitly tells us how important silence of the mind is for psychological and spiritual transformation (see below for Law of One references on silence)
Since 2013, I’ve practiced a form of meditation that is designed to build the muscle of kenosis. Kenosis is a term that means “self-emptying,” which is more of a verb than a noun. It’s a verb because practicing kenosis requires the intentional use of the will in order to will our surrendering to that which transcends us, pure awareness in this the most refined case.
It’s also in the wheelhouse of faith because the practitioner trusts that the process of kenosis yields the desired result: to silence the mind to the point where we can “kenote” all through the layers of Deep Mind right on into the inner sanctum of what Ra calls the second side of Intelligent Infinity…Pure Awareness replete with an infinite plenum (ref 27.7, 76.9, 82.6, 82.10).
Centering Prayer, the name of this type of meditation, is specifically designed to build the “kenosis muscles” so that in everyday life, one learns more to live both in the silence undergirding the music of daily living, as well as embodying the notes that sing out the melodies of our embodied moments.
The practice of Centering Prayer helps me to bring Archetype 21 in an embodied form in order to engage with my life with greater adepthood. (ref 76.9).
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Ra does not advise us which meditation technique can help us do this kind of deep inner work, but they do recommend we choose one and practice it (49.7).
Centering Prayer technique is simple. Here are the four simple steps:
- Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within
- Sitting comfortably with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently and introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s present and action within.
- When you become aware of thoughts, return ever so gently to the sacred word.
- At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.
References:
On the Silence of Mind
5.2 Questioner: We have decided to accept, if offered, the honor/duty of learning/teaching the healing process. I would ask as to the first step which we should accomplish in becoming effective healers.
Ra: I am Ra. We shall begin with the first of the three teachings/learnings.
We begin with the mental learn/teachings necessary for contact with intelligent infinity. The prerequisite of mental work is the ability to retain silence of self at a steady state when required by the self. The mind must be opened like a door. The key is silence.
Within the door lies an hierarchical construction you may liken unto geography and in some ways geometry, for the hierarchy is quite regular, bearing inner relationships.
To begin to master the concept of mental discipline it is necessary to examine the self. The polarity of your dimension must be internalized. Where you find patience within your mind you must consciously find the corresponding impatience and vice versa. Each thought that a being has, has in its turn an antithesis. The disciplines of the mind involve, first of all, identifying both those things of which you approve and those things of which you disapprove within yourself, and then balancing each and every positive and negative charge with its equal. The mind contains all things. Therefore, you must discover this completeness within yourself.
The second mental discipline is acceptance of the completeness within your consciousness. It is not for a being of polarity in the physical consciousness to pick and choose among attributes, thus building the roles that cause blockages and confusions in the already-distorted mind complex. Each acceptance smoothes part of the many distortions that the faculty you call judgment engenders.
The third discipline of the mind is a repetition of the first but with the gaze outward towards the fellow entities that it meets. In each entity there exists completeness. Thus, the ability to understand each balance is necessary. When you view patience, you are responsible for mirroring in your mental understanding, patience/impatience. When you view impatience, it is necessary for your mental configuration of understanding to be impatience/patience. We use this as a simple example. Most configurations of mind have many facets, and understanding of either self polarities, or what you would call other-self polarities, can and must be understood as subtle work.
The next step is the acceptance of the other-self polarities, which mirrors the second step.
These are the first four steps of learning mental discipline. The fifth step involves observing the geographical and geometrical relationships and ratios of the mind, the other mind, the mass mind, and the infinite mind.
The second area of learn/teaching is the study/understanding of the body complexes. It is necessary to know your body well. This is a matter of using the mind to examine how the feelings, the biases, what you would call the emotions, affect various portions of the body complex. It shall be necessary to both understand the bodily polarities and to accept them, repeating in a chemical/physical manifestation the work you have done upon the mind bethinking the consciousness.
The body is a creature of the mind’s creation. It has its biases. The biological bias must be first completely understood and then the opposite bias allowed to find full expression in understanding. Again, the process of acceptance of the body as a balanced, as well as polarized, individual may then be accomplished.
It is then the task to extend this understanding to the bodies of the other-selves whom you will meet. The simplest example of this is the understanding that each biological male is female; each biological female is male. This is a simple example. However, in almost every case wherein you are attempting the understanding of the body of self or other-self, you will again find that the most subtle discernment is necessary in order to fully grasp the polarity complexes involved.
At this time we would suggest closing the description until the next time of work so that we may devote time to the third area commensurate with its importance.
We can answer a query if it is a short one before we leave this instrument.
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49.8 Questioner: Is it better, or shall I say, does it produce more usable results in meditation to leave the mind, shall I say, as blank as possible; let it run down, so to speak, or is it better to focus in meditation on some object or some thing for concentration?
Ra: I am Ra. This shall be the last full query of this work time.
Each of the two types of meditation is useful for a particular reason. The passive meditation involving the clearing of the mind, the emptying of the mental jumble which is characteristic of mind complex activity among your peoples, is efficacious for those whose goal is to achieve an inner silence as a base from which to listen to the Creator. This is an useful and helpful tool and is by far the most generally useful type of meditation as opposed to contemplation or prayer.
The type of meditation which may be called visualization has as its goal not that which is contained in the meditation itself. Visualization is the tool of the adept. Those who learn to hold visual images in mind are developing an inner concentrative power that can transcend boredom and discomfort. When this ability has become crystallized in an adept the adept may then do polarizing in consciousness without external action, which can affect the planetary consciousness. This is the reason for existence of the so-called White Magician. Only those wishing to pursue the conscious raising of planetary vibration will find visualization to be a particularly satisfying type of meditation.
Contemplation or the consideration in a meditative state of an inspiring image or text is extremely useful also among your peoples, and the faculty of will called praying is also of a potentially helpful nature. Whether it is indeed an helpful activity depends quite totally upon the intentions and objects of the one who prays.
May we ask if there are any brief queries at this time?
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50.8 Questioner: Thank you. How does the ability to hold visual images in mind allow the adept to do polarization in consciousness without external action?
Ra: I am Ra. This is not a simple query, for the adept is one which will go beyond the green ray which signals entry into harvestability. The adept will not simply be tapping into intelligent energy as a means of readiness for harvest but tapping into both intelligent energy and intelligent infinity for the purpose of transmuting planetary harvestability and consciousness.
The means of this working lie within. The key is first, silence, and secondly, singleness of thought. Thusly a visualization which can be held steady to the inward eye for several of your minutes, as you measure time, will signal the adept’s increase in singleness of thought. This singleness of thought then can be used by the positive adept to work in group ritual visualizations for the raising of positive energy, by negative adepts for the increase in personal power.
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99.5 Questioner: Finally, of the preliminary questions, one from Jim stating, “For the last three weeks I have often been at the edge of anger and frustration, have had a nearly constant dull pain at my indigo-ray center, and have felt quite drained of energy. Would Ra comment on the source of these experiences and any thoughts or actions that might alleviate it?”
Ra: I am Ra. As in all distortions, the source is the limit of the viewpoint. We may, without serious infringement, suggest three courses of behavior which shall operate upon the distortion expressed.
Firstly, it would be well for the scribe to engage, if not daily then as nearly so as possible, in a solitary strenuous activity which brings this entity to the true physical weariness. Further, although any activity may suffice, an activity chosen for its intended service to the harmony of the group would be quite efficacious.
The second activity is some of your space/time and time/space taken by the entity, directly or as nearly so as possible to the strenuous activity, for solitary contemplation.
Thirdly, the enthusiastic pursuit of the balancing and silent meditations cannot be deleted from the list of helpful activities for this entity.
We may note that the great forte of the scribe is summed in the inadequate sound vibration complex, power. The flow of power, just as the flow of love or wisdom, is enabled not by the chary conserver of its use but by the constant user. The physical manifestation of power being either constructive or destructive strenuous activity, the power-filled entity must needs exercise that manifestation. This entity experiences a distortion in the direction of an excess of stored energy. It is well to know the self and to guard and use those attributes which the self has provided for its learning and its service.
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104.3 Questioner: The instrument has determined that the unwise use of her will is its use without the joy and faith components and constitutes martyrdom. Would Ra comment on that, please?
Ra: I am Ra. We are pleased that the entity has pondered that which has been given. We would comment as follows. It is salubrious for the instrument to have knowledge which is less distorted towards martyrdom and which is rich in promise. The entity which is strong to think shall either be strong to act or that which it has shall be removed. Thus manifestation of knowledge is an area to be examined by the instrument.
We would further note that balancing which, in this entity’s case, is best accomplished in analysis and manifestation seated with the contemplation of silence, may be strengthened by manifested silence and lack of routine activity. We may go no further than this recommendation of regularized leisure, and desire that the entity discover the fundamental truths of these distortions as it will.
27.7 Questioner: Now I think I have extracted an important point from this in that in intelligent infinity we have work without polarity, or a potential difference does not have to exist. Is this correct?
Ra: I am Ra. There is no difference, potential or kinetic, in unity. The basic rhythms of intelligent infinity are totally without distortion of any kind. The rhythms are clothed in mystery, for they are being itself. From this undistorted unity, however, appears a potential in relation to intelligent energy.
In this way you may observe the term to be somewhat two-sided, one use of the term, that being as the undistorted unity, being without any kinetic or potential side. The other application of this term, which we use undifferentiatedly for lack of other term in the sense of the vast potential tapped into by foci or focuses of energy, we call intelligent energy.
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76.9 Questioner: Is there, in Ra’s opinion, any present-day value for the reuse of the tarot as an aid in the evolutionary process?
Ra: I am Ra. We shall repeat information. It is appropriate to study one form of constructed and organized distortion of the archetypical mind in depth in order to arrive at the position of being able to become and to experience archetypes at will. You have three basic choices. You may choose astrology, the twelve signs, as you call these portions of your planet’s energy web, and what has been called the ten planets. You may choose the tarot with its twenty-two so-called Major Arcana. You may choose the study of the so-called Tree of Life with its ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two relationships between the stations.
It is well to investigate each discipline, not as a dilettante, but as one who seeks the touchstone, one who wishes to feel the pull of the magnet. One of these studies will be more attractive to the seeker. Let the seeker then investigate the archetypical mind using, basically, one of these three disciplines. After a period of study, the discipline mastered sufficiently, the seeker may then complete the more important step: that is, the moving beyond the written in order to express in an unique fashion its understanding, if you may again pardon the noun, of the archetypical mind.
82.6 Questioner: That’s what I thought you might say. Am I correct in assuming that at the beginning of this octave, out of what I would call a void of space, the seeds of an infinite number of galactic systems such as the Milky Way Galaxy appeared and grew in spiral fashion simultaneously?
Ra: I am Ra. There are duple areas of potential confusion. Firstly, let us say that the basic concept is reasonably well-stated. Now we address the confusion. The nature of true simultaneity is such that, indeed, all is simultaneous. However, in your modes of perception you would perhaps more properly view the seeding of the creation as that of growth from the center or core outward. The second confusion lies in the term, ‘void’. We would substitute the noun, ‘plenum’.
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82.10 Questioner: Why does this partaking in the original thought have a gradient radially outward? That’s the way I understand your statement.
Ra: I am Ra. This is the plan of the One Infinite Creator. The One Original Thought is the harvest of all previous, if you would use this term, experience of the Creator by the Creator. As It decides to know Itself It generates Itself into that plenum, full of the glory and the power of the One Infinite Creator which is manifested to your perceptions as space or outer space. Each generation of this knowing begets a knowing which has the capacity, through free will, to choose methods of knowing Itself. Therefore, gradually, step by step, the Creator becomes that which may know Itself, and the portions of the Creator partake less purely in the power of the original word or thought. This is for the purpose of refinement of the one original thought. The Creator does not properly create as much as It experiences Itself.
Building 4th Cosmic Christ 