A.R.E. Meeting for 11/30/20

Leader: Greg Lenihan

Both books: A Search for God Book I
and Mark Thurston’s Experiments in a Search For God
 
Thank you Greg for a fine job leading this group, and serving an extra meeting time, the 5th Monday.
 
Experiment:
 
Use the “Prayer of Protection” given in the readings each time you meditate. (ASFG p. 17 or Experiments p. 14) Desire to experience and determine to realize the inner meaning of the prayer as you use it, not just going through the motions and saying it by rote.
 
Prayer of Protection
 
“As we open ourselves to the unseen forces that surround the throne of Grace, beauty, and might within ourselves, let us throw about ourselves the protection found in the thought of the Christ.” The book continues, “When our minds are on God, the Christ, who is our Ideal, we need not worry about destructive results.” ASFG, p.16, 55th Printing, Oct. 2012.
 
Eight souls gathered to set the ideal with an opening prayer, to discuss results of our last experiment performed thru a holiday week. One seeker went out to a Tibetan Arts and Crafts shop on the busiest street of the West Side shopping district and bought a Tibetan singing bowl. This was used for attunement to meditate. There are future plans to use it daily to take a recommended 10 minute rest break. Another member’s experiment followed recommendations in a Cayce reading recommending someone mediate with a Lapis Lazuli stone. Meditating with lapis in a chest pocket yielded an awareness of a stronger “sense of attunement.” ( Lapis lazuli is a semi precious stone,plentiful in Afghanistan— a softer stone of about 5 - 5.5 medium hardness, easily cut, sawed or broken, of the deep “Royal blue” (or blue color of “King Tuts” gold and blue striped funeral mask. Jewel quality Lapis Leis pure deep blue, or may have flecks of pyrite- also called “fools gold”, which is easily mistaken as a gold nugget especially when seen lying on the ground.)

 
Yet someone else felt more attuned using 7 omm sounds orally, one for each chakra. While speaking at a seminar in Denver years ago John Van Auken had said “omms should be felt in silence inwardly as vibrations.” This seeker needed to create audible omm sounds to feel an inner vibration, or sound lightly by
touch a Tibetan monk’s begging bowl; one that had been created with a prayer every time the metal was struck countless times to form and create the bowl.
  
We began reading in ASFG, on p. 14., C. The Spiritual body, 1. The soul
 
Through meditation we may unlock the door within between our physical and spiritual bodies and become aware of the spiritual forces within. Spiritual faculties of our souls, individual impressions within our physical senses limit and restraint. Through meditation we make possible the spiritual soul’s ever willing expression of its true relationship of with our Creator.
 

I. The Ideal
 
It is more important that our minds be free of resentments, vindictiveness, malice, greed, selfishness and hate than that we do a complex meditation. The ideal is what we meditate on, not fixate on. It is our attunement to the ideal that leads us into peacefulness, into stillness within, and the capacity to raise a higher state of spiritual consciousness. If the ideal is equivalent to the highest aspiration of service, a strong desire that the meeting with the inner self and God be unobstructed, there will be an increase in unity, in oneness, and inner feeling, a as instead of broken points of consciousness
 
II. The Forces
 
The attributes of God, which we come in contact with in meditation, are our soul qualities of the functions of God. We call these intuition or psychic or Universal Forces.
 
We find that holding the right ideal in meditation is when our problems are solved and that we see as obstacles become our stepping stones.
 
We discussed the paradoxical instructions to have an ideal and use an affirmation to raise our consciousness and meet our Creator but not to fixate on the ideal. We concluded it is focusing on the ideal for an attunement that awakens the desire to reach the highest awareness possible, the strong desire of the inner self that the way to oneness with God be open and unobstructed.
 
Other concerns discussed or mentioned as a call to prayer for are the rising suicide rates, large numbers of Covid-19 related deaths by starvation worldwide with potential for people dying by starvation to double, front lines health care workers repeatedly exposed and becoming infected with Covid-19, people and families experiencing grief and loss of family members, prayers and protection for families and loved ones.
 
Our leader for December is June!
 
In Loving Oneness,
Sylvia Raye