Meditation

[LukeJTM]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask about meditation. I noticed that I tend to have difficulties staying awake during meditation; I have tendencies to fall asleep during it, and it feels like a waste of a meditation.

I think part of the problem is that I sometimes do it in bed (e.g. the evening), so that could be what contributes to this issue. But I can still get it when sitting in a chair during day to day activities. It can be really annoying to deal with this.

Can anyone here relate to what I am saying? If anyone had found ways of overcoming this issue, please do share, that would be much appreciated.

[Federica]

Hi Luke,

For my part, I can relate to falling asleep while exerting thinking. In my case it's not in meditation, but in the daily retrospective exercise, because that's what I usually try to do in bed in the evening. When it happens, I do feel it's a pity. The exercise has a definite end and, with more will, it should be possible to complete the review. But for meditation, I wouldn't feel the exercise is wasted... Is there a defined end to a meditation, and don't you wake up with a sense of possibility to resume the activity where you left it as you fell asleep? Why does it feel like a waste of a meditation?

I am not finding the exact quote, but I remember Klocek saying in The Seer's Handbook, that even only going with thinking to the idea or purpose of doing an exercise, without actually executing on that purpose, has some usefulness, because it helps create a rhythm for our thinking activity, that connects with the other rhythms we are inscribed into. Not to say that effort is not necessary, of course, and that we can be satisfied with a few quick reminders. But I guess it's helpful to remain positive with regards to our imperfect explorations, as long as we build up on them with the intention to improve.

[Cleric K]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask about meditation. I noticed that I tend to have difficulties staying awake during meditation; I have tendencies to fall asleep during it, and it feels like a waste of a meditation.

I think part of the problem is that I sometimes do it in bed (e.g. the evening), so that could be what contributes to this issue. But I can still get it when sitting in a chair during day to day activities. It can be really annoying to deal with this.

Can anyone here relate to what I am saying? If anyone had found ways of overcoming this issue, please do share, that would be much appreciated.

Hi Luke,

meditating while lying is not recommended. Not only that it triggers our bodily response for going to sleep but there are still deeper reasons. Now I beg you not to take this in literal sense but as a metaphor. Wave phenomena have a direction of oscillation:



In electromagnetism this is called polarization. For example, vertically polarized EM waves can only be received properly by vertically aligned antenna. If we turn the antenna horizontally it wouldn't catch anything (like the slit in the above image).

Now in our inner life there are also polarizations, which we can imaginatively present thus:



We can picture our consciousness as centered in the Earth yet expanding through concentric shells into the Cosmos. In this sense the Sun, for example, is not simply a fiery orb but the whole encompassing sphere. We can draw some analogy here with the wavefunction and the electron cloud but let's not go that far.

Our ordinary secular life can be thought of as moving along the surface of the Earth sphere. This is not only physically true but our whole inner life moves into that plane (it's a sphere but up close it looks like a plane, just like the surface of the Earth). So our general activities - provide food and shelter, meet basic needs, pursue some pleasures - all take place in such a flat shell of existence. These are pretty much the same activities that any animal on Earth pursues. That's why in general the spine of the animal is parallel to the Earth surface. The animal's soul life moves in the horizontal plane. It's spine, line an antenna, is aligned with the waves that run along the surface, thus it is insensitive to waves perpendicular to the shells, like radii that pierce them.

The animal becomes a man when through thinking, the vertical aspect of the spirit manifests in consciousness. This is connected with man's upright posture (the spine is like an antenna aligned with the radii that pierce the shells). Only through this verticality can the concept of God arise and this is what distinguishes the animal from man. The animal is complete in its soul existence but as man awakens in the thinking self he has to determine his bearings in the world. Instinct alone is not sufficient, we need to understand the Divine within ourselves and act in freedom. The animal becomes man when the Divine Spirit shines perpendicularly into the soul shells and kindles self-consciousness.

In meditation this posture is important because we need to realize this vertical aspect of spiritual life. Our activities in the shells must be guided by the gradient of the spheres. This is more difficult to do while lying down because our spine is more aligned with the soul currents that run in the shell. If we observe ourselves we'll find out that our mind easily drifts in quite prosaic directions which are connected with our personal life but very rarely with the question of how to place our life in harmony with the Divine Cosmos. It is not easy not to be egocentric while lying down. When upright we can always think about God above, which manifests the verticality.

Falling asleep while meditating is quite normal in the beginning. There can be different reasons for it. One of them is simply fatigue. But another important one is that we still try to feel as the top authority of everything that we experience. We try to feel 'in control' at all times. We imagine that the spiritual world will emerge simply as some additional shapes on our imaginative screen and we'll still feel as an independent ego that contemplates and thinks about them. This however is not what happens as we approach the threshold. Then our very ego container is threatened of being ripped apart. Then we find ourselves in a very disturbing situation where our inner world is filled with the thoughts and activities of many beings. This naturally clashes deeply with our desire to feel in control. The one place that we have considered to be our private space, turns out to be a collective manifestation.

Normally, as soon as we approach this state, we lose consciousness, we fall to sleep. We need a way to retain our cognitive coherency even when our inner world becomes spread out and dismembered. By the way, this is another aspect of why the superficial clinging to oneness is actually an obstacle for actual experience of deeper reality. When we meditate on oneness only we simply inflate our ego and secretly try to feel the whole Cosmos as our inner possession. But in this way we can never cross the threshold. We simply stay there and resist the dismemberment of our being. This dismemberment has nothing to do with dualism and feeling as a separate self. What is dismembered is only the illusion of being a monolithic authority in our lone private world.

So we can't avoid this multiplicity in the spiritual world. No matter how we repeat oneness, oneness, oneness, as soon as we have our first experiences of spiritual reality we find our inner world to be the interference of quite independent beings. Yes, these beings are all of the same Divine essence but repeating that as a mantra has little value when we're in that state. Instead, what is then important is to find our musical relations with the beings and forces.

Thus, overcoming sleep in meditation is not simply a matter of technique. We have to reflect on the fact that this falling to sleep is actually the protection of our intellectual self, from the experience of our higher nature. That's why it is so important to acquaint ourselves with ideas like the Guardian at the Threshold. If we can't harmonize our thinking with these ideas, we'll instinctively resist the higher experiences, we'll fall asleep and then seek mechanical reasons for it. So before complaining that we're falling asleep we have to investigate ourselves and see if we're honestly seeking entrance into the higher experiences. If we do that with the attitude "I'm just curious, I want take a peep through higher consciousness and then decide if it is worth pursuing further", then we simply have no chance to make that entrance. Our desire to keep our intellectual ego intact, which will be the final arbiter over the matters of the higher worlds, ensures that we can't make the step across, simply because the intellect exists as multiplicity from the higher perspective. We can't simply say "my thoughts, my ideas" even from the Imaginative state. Instead. Our thoughts become spread over the world. Then every thought is seen in its living context. For example, if we have a profession, if we have a lot of knowledge about it, in our normal consciousness we feel as if we possess that knowledge, it is ours. But in the Imaginative world our knowledge is spread out and we see how it would never be what it is if there weren't all the human and other beings who in some way work on that knowledge. For example, if we're a scientist, we may believe that our knowledge of the Newtonian laws of motion is our own possession, that we have private copy in our brain. And to an extent this is so but in the Imaginative state we can't see our knowledge as being independent of the soul of Newton, which was in turn inspired by the Spirit of the Age. These are all living beings and processes onto which our own being is spread out. If I may say so, the soul of Newton acts like a vital organ in our spiritual being. That's how interrelated everything is. If we're not ready to know our being in such a dismembered way, we can't overcome sleep. I repeat that 'dismembered' here doesn't mean to fragment in chaos but actually to find the real way in which we're all one. Oneness as the intellect conceives it is only an inflation of the ego. Oneness becomes real only when we find how our being is weaved of the members of the Cosmos which are quite independent.

If we're ready to pursue this path, then in practical terms, our meditative concentration should first shrink into a point - normally felt in the head. In this point we should feel the intense light of our cognitive focus. At the same time everything in the periphery should be relaxed, surrendered. When we concentrate in this way, it shouldn't feel strenuous. It is very intense but not exhausting. In fact, we soon should be able to distinguish that meditation is exhausting only because we try to control everything, similarly to the way we get exhausted when we try to control several children, which run around.

In this way, we soon are able to go through a very characteristic experience. We keep our intense concentration while we feel that our body and ordinary conscious patterns fall to sleep. This is often accompanied with a buzzing feeling spreading from the head, filling the body and then becoming like boundless space. This might be scary at first because we feel that we loose the ground under our feet, so to speak, but with repeated experiences we get familiar with it. The most important thing however, is that we hold on to the Sun Being. Everyone can verify that even while in this point of concentration, we can still wordlessly pray that we're supported and guided. It is a good milestone when we feel how we can live in this prayerful state without this breaking our concentration - in fact, it even makes it stronger and more luminous. This inner connection is what helps us to overcome any fear that may arise when we feel our senses loosen.

In a nutshell, to overcome sleep, we have to be upright (even more importantly in a spiritual sense than in physical). We need clear heartfelt idea about what we're doing. We need to find the point of concentration of our spirit and surrender the periphery to the Divine. The first achievement on this path is that even though we feel how our body and ordinary consciousness fall to sleep, we continue to be awake in our point of concentration - even if it is only our wakeful prayerful state that we find there.

[LukeJTM]

Hi Luke,

For my part, I can relate to falling asleep while exerting thinking. In my case it's not in meditation, but in the daily retrospective exercise, because that's what I usually try to do in bed in the evening. When it happens, I do feel it's a pity. The exercise has a definite end and, with more will, it should be possible to complete the review. But for meditation, I wouldn't feel the exercise is wasted... Is there a defined end to a meditation, and don't you wake up with a sense of possibility to resume the activity where you left it as you fell asleep? Why does it feel like a waste of a meditation?

I am not finding the exact quote, but I remember Klocek saying in The Seer's Handbook, that even only going with thinking to the idea or purpose of doing an exercise, without actually executing on that purpose, has some usefulness, because it helps create a rhythm for our thinking activity, that connects with the other rhythms we are inscribed into. Not to say that effort is not necessary, of course, and that we can be satisfied with a few quick reminders. But I guess it's helpful to remain positive with regards to our imperfect explorations, as long as we build up on them with the intention to improve.

Hi Federica,

Yes, you are right I should be more positive about my "wasted" meditation. I've done the review and fell asleep yes, but I think Steiner mentioned falling asleep is ok during that because the effects will continue into sleep and the following day.

[LukeJTM]

Hi Luke,

meditating while lying is not recommended. Not only that it triggers our bodily response for going to sleep but there are still deeper reasons. Now I beg you not to take this in literal sense but as a metaphor.

Hi Cleric

Your answer makes sense. It makes sense that I should try not to meditate lying down. I will confess that I tend to do that if I feel fatigue. I have been feeling fatigued more than normally lately, which I will take as an opportunity to examine what needs balanced in my life.

I also think you're right about the desire to control the meditation too much. I sometimes assume it should be done a certain way, a rigid type of attitude like that. Or wanting to control how the meditation goes rather than just letting it unfold naturally. It can be a case of that, or a case of I just lose the will to continue and that can cause me to fall asleep. So you are right, there is definitely a few areas I should look at inside myself.

I also appreciate the reminder to re-examine my own intentions, such as what am I doing, what is my goal with seeking higher knowledge, why am I doing it, etc. That is something I will take a look at as well.

Thanks.

[AshvinP]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask about meditation. I noticed that I tend to have difficulties staying awake during meditation; I have tendencies to fall asleep during it, and it feels like a waste of a meditation.

I think part of the problem is that I sometimes do it in bed (e.g. the evening), so that could be what contributes to this issue. But I can still get it when sitting in a chair during day to day activities. It can be really annoying to deal with this.

Can anyone here relate to what I am saying? If anyone had found ways of overcoming this issue, please do share, that would be much appreciated.

Hey Luke,

In connectection with your question, and with what Cleric wrote, I want to also connect it with what we had discussed briefly on Discord.

I've noticed how the way I gain knowledge affects the way I feel and think. For example, knowledge gained through the abstract domain, theory, etc, tends to more easily inspire egotistical desires, feelings, or thoughts. Which can be a desire to be 'right' and "proving others wrong", or arrogance, or even dogmatic mentalities, wanting to reach conclusions personally preferred, or something like that. Whereas, on the other hand, genuine knowledge that I have acquired myself from experience or from within myself, this produces totally opposite feelings like humble-ness, or reverence/respect.

I then shared a quote from Steiner:

What then is the educational effect of these two kinds of truth on the human soul? It makes a great difference whether a man devotes himself to truths that come from reflective thought or to those that come from creative thought. If we steep ourselves in the wisdom of Nature and create in ourselves a true reflection of it, we can rightly say that we have in ourselves something of the creative activity from which the life of Nature springs. But here a distinction must be made. The wisdom of Nature is directly creative and gives rise to the reality of Nature in all its fullness, but the truth we derive from thinking about Nature is only a passive image; in our thinking it has lost its power. We may indeed acquire a wide, open-minded picture of natural truth, but the creative, productive element is absent from it. Hence the immediate effect of this picture of truth on the development of the human Ego is desolating. The creative power of the Ego is crippled and devitalised; the Self loses strength and can no longer stand up to the world, if it is concerned only with reflective thoughts. Nothing else does so much to isolate the Ego, to make it withdraw into itself and look with hostility on the world. A man can become a cold egoist if he is intent only on investigating the outer world. Why does he want this knowledge? Does he mean to place it at the service of the Gods?

We can practice developing this inner disposition, not only when we sit down to do meditation, but also while we study philosophy or phenomenology of spiritual activity aka spiritual science. Our modern instinctive habit is to simply consume information and accumulate pieces of knowledge which we can then claim our own, as our private possession. Instead, we can try to adopt the disposition Cleric highlighted, where we are freely allowing Cosmic wisdom to pass through our be-ing so it can straighten the twisted currents of our soul-life, allowing unimpeded access to the universal Spirit, and therefore we can be of better service to the Divine intents which need to be fulfilled for humanity and for the Earth in the upcoming years, decades, centuries. Of necessity this requires the sacrifice of 'knowledge/experience as my private possession' and for us to remain open that our entire inner life is woven of activity from many different spheres.

I mentioned on another thread how the modern "I" awakened in the isolated consciousness soul fiercely resists this service to the Divine guidance of humanity. That is equally manifested in materialism and 'nondual' mysticism, and practically all other world outlooks in the West. And because these influences which contextualize our first-person spiritual activity remain in the blind spot, everyone feels they are immune to it. The mystics feel they are immune to it when they sit down and do 'oneness' meditation. So they simply have no awareness of the inflated ego condition which Cleric mentioned. All the little things we can do throughout the day to increase our self-awareness are, because of that inflated ego condition, then ignored or viewed as 'beneath' us and not worth the time. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle in which we become increasingly blinded to our egoic tendencies which thrust us further onto the horizontal plane. 

I have noticed in my own practice how often I self-sabotage in subtle ways. We can try to remember that it is our desires and intents which lead us to decide to try and meditate while lying down, for ex., or when we are fatigued, or to be fatigued in the first place. Every time we forget how the state of our current be-ing has resulted from our own choices, we further hunch over onto the horizontal plane and forsake our upright stance. Of course this forgetting will continue to happen to some extent, so it's not a question of avoiding it, but letting these tendencies and living experiences gradually become our teachers. We can become more self-aware and slowly accustom our organism to keeping its own spiritual activity in sight throughout the day, even with the most trivial occurrences. Anything which happens to us, any inner state we are experiencing, can be linked to our choices. That helps us stay upright and should carry over into meditative practice. 

In the evening after a certain time (perhaps 6-7 pm), I no longer do focused meditation but try to cultivate that inner disposition, via prayer, formulas, reading scripture, or spiritual scientific material (preferably in a book, rather than on a screen). I found my focused meditation is most effective in the early morning or sometimes the early afternoon if I have the opportunity. That's just my current approach based on the feedback I have received, and everyone needs to tailor their approach based on their own feedback. When I am going to sleep, I remember that all the knowledge I have accumulated during the day, the teaching experiences, are returned to the soul-spirit worlds to be worked over by the beings of the nested Spheres so they can become forces and impulses which actually work towards fulfilling the Earth evolution. They will become my teachers for perfecting my inner qualities and capacities the next day, hopefully giving me the strength to accept more creative responsibility for my individual and collective destiny. This rhythmic alternation is how the entire Creation has unfolded from time immemorial and we are now tasked with carrying the torch further, back upwards from the densest strata into more spiritualized streams of becoming.

[Stranger]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask about meditation. I noticed that I tend to have difficulties staying awake during meditation; I have tendencies to fall asleep during it, and it feels like a waste of a meditation.

I think part of the problem is that I sometimes do it in bed (e.g. the evening), so that could be what contributes to this issue. But I can still get it when sitting in a chair during day to day activities. It can be really annoying to deal with this.

Can anyone here relate to what I am saying? If anyone had found ways of overcoming this issue, please do share, that would be much appreciated.

Just adding my 2 cents to what Cleric wrote. This tendency of falling asleep during meditation has been known in Eastern traditions rooted in meditation for millennia, and there have been many practical techniques developed to overcome it. One example is the Zazen meditation method from Zen tradition which is easy to learn. A few practical points:
- It is best to meditate after having a good sleep, such as in the morning or after a midday nap. I wake up early and always do my main meditation session in the mornings. It is ok to meditate while laying as long as we do not fall asleep.
- Upright position with straight spine helps to avoid falling asleep and also avoid falling into daydreaming because as soon as we lose mindfulness we also lose the awareness of the body, and then the spine will bend down.
- Having the eyes open also helps to avoid falling asleep. When we keep the eyes closed the body starts producing melatonin which causes sleepiness.

[Güney27]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask about meditation. I noticed that I tend to have difficulties staying awake during meditation; I have tendencies to fall asleep during it, and it feels like a waste of a meditation.

I think part of the problem is that I sometimes do it in bed (e.g. the evening), so that could be what contributes to this issue. But I can still get it when sitting in a chair during day to day activities. It can be really annoying to deal with this.

Can anyone here relate to what I am saying? If anyone had found ways of overcoming this issue, please do share, that would be much appreciated.

Hi Luke,

meditating while lying is not recommended. Not only that it triggers our bodily response for going to sleep but there are still deeper reasons. Now I beg you not to take this in literal sense but as a metaphor. Wave phenomena have a direction of oscillation:



In electromagnetism this is called polarization. For example, vertically polarized EM waves can only be received properly by vertically aligned antenna. If we turn the antenna horizontally it wouldn't catch anything (like the slit in the above image).

Now in our inner life there are also polarizations, which we can imaginatively present thus:



We can picture our consciousness as centered in the Earth yet expanding through concentric shells into the Cosmos. In this sense the Sun, for example, is not simply a fiery orb but the whole encompassing sphere. We can draw some analogy here with the wavefunction and the electron cloud but let's not go that far.

Our ordinary secular life can be thought of as moving along the surface of the Earth sphere. This is not only physically true but our whole inner life moves into that plane (it's a sphere but up close it looks like a plane, just like the surface of the Earth). So our general activities - provide food and shelter, meet basic needs, pursue some pleasures - all take place in such a flat shell of existence. These are pretty much the same activities that any animal on Earth pursues. That's why in general the spine of the animal is parallel to the Earth surface. The animal's soul life moves in the horizontal plane. It's spine, line an antenna, is aligned with the waves that run along the surface, thus it is insensitive to waves perpendicular to the shells, like radii that pierce them.

The animal becomes a man when through thinking, the vertical aspect of the spirit manifests in consciousness. This is connected with man's upright posture (the spine is like an antenna aligned with the radii that pierce the shells). Only through this verticality can the concept of God arise and this is what distinguishes the animal from man. The animal is complete in its soul existence but as man awakens in the thinking self he has to determine his bearings in the world. Instinct alone is not sufficient, we need to understand the Divine within ourselves and act in freedom. The animal becomes man when the Divine Spirit shines perpendicularly into the soul shells and kindles self-consciousness.

In meditation this posture is important because we need to realize this vertical aspect of spiritual life. Our activities in the shells must be guided by the gradient of the spheres. This is more difficult to do while lying down because our spine is more aligned with the soul currents that run in the shell. If we observe ourselves we'll find out that our mind easily drifts in quite prosaic directions which are connected with our personal life but very rarely with the question of how to place our life in harmony with the Divine Cosmos. It is not easy not to be egocentric while lying down. When upright we can always think about God above, which manifests the verticality.

Falling asleep while meditating is quite normal in the beginning. There can be different reasons for it. One of them is simply fatigue. But another important one is that we still try to feel as the top authority of everything that we experience. We try to feel 'in control' at all times. We imagine that the spiritual world will emerge simply as some additional shapes on our imaginative screen and we'll still feel as an independent ego that contemplates and thinks about them. This however is not what happens as we approach the threshold. Then our very ego container is threatened of being ripped apart. Then we find ourselves in a very disturbing situation where our inner world is filled with the thoughts and activities of many beings. This naturally clashes deeply with our desire to feel in control. The one place that we have considered to be our private space, turns out to be a collective manifestation.

Normally, as soon as we approach this state, we lose consciousness, we fall to sleep. We need a way to retain our cognitive coherency even when our inner world becomes spread out and dismembered. By the way, this is another aspect of why the superficial clinging to oneness is actually an obstacle for actual experience of deeper reality. When we meditate on oneness only we simply inflate our ego and secretly try to feel the whole Cosmos as our inner possession. But in this way we can never cross the threshold. We simply stay there and resist the dismemberment of our being. This dismemberment has nothing to do with dualism and feeling as a separate self. What is dismembered is only the illusion of being a monolithic authority in our lone private world.

So we can't avoid this multiplicity in the spiritual world. No matter how we repeat oneness, oneness, oneness, as soon as we have our first experiences of spiritual reality we find our inner world to be the interference of quite independent beings. Yes, these beings are all of the same Divine essence but repeating that as a mantra has little value when we're in that state. Instead, what is then important is to find our musical relations with the beings and forces.

Thus, overcoming sleep in meditation is not simply a matter of technique. We have to reflect on the fact that this falling to sleep is actually the protection of our intellectual self, from the experience of our higher nature. That's why it is so important to acquaint ourselves with ideas like the Guardian at the Threshold. If we can't harmonize our thinking with these ideas, we'll instinctively resist the higher experiences, we'll fall asleep and then seek mechanical reasons for it. So before complaining that we're falling asleep we have to investigate ourselves and see if we're honestly seeking entrance into the higher experiences. If we do that with the attitude "I'm just curious, I want take a peep through higher consciousness and then decide if it is worth pursuing further", then we simply have no chance to make that entrance. Our desire to keep our intellectual ego intact, which will be the final arbiter over the matters of the higher worlds, ensures that we can't make the step across, simply because the intellect exists as multiplicity from the higher perspective. We can't simply say "my thoughts, my ideas" even from the Imaginative state. Instead. Our thoughts become spread over the world. Then every thought is seen in its living context. For example, if we have a profession, if we have a lot of knowledge about it, in our normal consciousness we feel as if we possess that knowledge, it is ours. But in the Imaginative world our knowledge is spread out and we see how it would never be what it is if there weren't all the human and other beings who in some way work on that knowledge. For example, if we're a scientist, we may believe that our knowledge of the Newtonian laws of motion is our own possession, that we have private copy in our brain. And to an extent this is so but in the Imaginative state we can't see our knowledge as being independent of the soul of Newton, which was in turn inspired by the Spirit of the Age. These are all living beings and processes onto which our own being is spread out. If I may say so, the soul of Newton acts like a vital organ in our spiritual being. That's how interrelated everything is. If we're not ready to know our being in such a dismembered way, we can't overcome sleep. I repeat that 'dismembered' here doesn't mean to fragment in chaos but actually to find the real way in which we're all one. Oneness as the intellect conceives it is only an inflation of the ego. Oneness becomes real only when we find how our being is weaved of the members of the Cosmos which are quite independent.

If we're ready to pursue this path, then in practical terms, our meditative concentration should first shrink into a point - normally felt in the head. In this point we should feel the intense light of our cognitive focus. At the same time everything in the periphery should be relaxed, surrendered. When we concentrate in this way, it shouldn't feel strenuous. It is very intense but not exhausting. In fact, we soon should be able to distinguish that meditation is exhausting only because we try to control everything, similarly to the way we get exhausted when we try to control several children, which run around.

In this way, we soon are able to go through a very characteristic experience. We keep our intense concentration while we feel that our body and ordinary conscious patterns fall to sleep. This is often accompanied with a buzzing feeling spreading from the head, filling the body and then becoming like boundless space. This might be scary at first because we feel that we loose the ground under our feet, so to speak, but with repeated experiences we get familiar with it. The most important thing however, is that we hold on to the Sun Being. Everyone can verify that even while in this point of concentration, we can still wordlessly pray that we're supported and guided. It is a good milestone when we feel how we can live in this prayerful state without this breaking our concentration - in fact, it even makes it stronger and more luminous. This inner connection is what helps us to overcome any fear that may arise when we feel our senses loosen.

In a nutshell, to overcome sleep, we have to be upright (even more importantly in a spiritual sense than in physical). We need clear heartfelt idea about what we're doing. We need to find the point of concentration of our spirit and surrender the periphery to the Divine. The first achievement on this path is that even though we feel how our body and ordinary consciousness fall to sleep, we continue to be awake in our point of concentration - even if it is only our wakeful prayerful state that we find there.

Hello Cleric,


"So we may soon be going through a very characteristic experience. We maintain our intense concentration as we feel our bodies and our usual conscious patterns fall asleep. This is often accompanied by a buzzing sensation that spreads from the head, fills the body, and then becomes like a boundless space. This may be scary at first because we feel like we are losing our feet, so to speak, but with repeated experiences we get used to it. The most important thing, however, is that we hold on to the sun being. Anyone can attest that even at this point of concentration we can still pray wordlessly for support and guidance. It is a good milestone when we feel how to live in this state of prayer without it breaking our concentration - it even makes it stronger and brighter. This inner connection helps us overcome any anxiety that may arise when we feel our senses dissolving.”
I don't know if it's a universal difficulty or just an individual one, but I find it particularly difficult to hold something in mind when I'm concentrating on mental images. I've tried casually imagining a rose cross in the vowels exercise and holding it around the background of my awareness, but this has only broken my focus and forced me to choose between the two.

Recently I came across an exercise in Steiner's archive in which one should imagine one's higher nature and then say a mantram to it in a prayer-like manner (more radiant than the sun...).
Here I begin to come from the essential path in meditation. I'm thinking, should I pray or meditate as I sense a distinction between the two.
Sometimes I say prayers several times an hour, I meditate once or twice a day. Both practices also feel different to me.

Also, during the meditation mentioned above, I realized that I have no point of reference for my higher nature.
Everything I know consciously says nothing about such a nature.
So I try to imagine a light and worship it because I couldn't cultivate such a sense of a higher nature crystal clear within myself. When I try to worship the sun being in the background of the meditation, alongside my focus on the vowels, I get disconcerted. I begin to imagine something that could correspond to this (e.g. a rose cross as a symbol for Christ) but this makes my meditation difficult because, as mentioned, I have no experience of such an idea. It remains just a symbol, without much content.

I've found it much easier to pray than to meditate these past few days, especially when I'm asked to meditate on certain feelings.
I don't know if there are trivial problems that arise, but it is important to me to improve my meditation skills and I am afraid that I will not be able to do this and not progress.

[Cleric K]

Hello Cleric,


"So we may soon be going through a very characteristic experience. We maintain our intense concentration as we feel our bodies and our usual conscious patterns fall asleep. This is often accompanied by a buzzing sensation that spreads from the head, fills the body, and then becomes like a boundless space. This may be scary at first because we feel like we are losing our feet, so to speak, but with repeated experiences we get used to it. The most important thing, however, is that we hold on to the sun being. Anyone can attest that even at this point of concentration we can still pray wordlessly for support and guidance. It is a good milestone when we feel how to live in this state of prayer without it breaking our concentration - it even makes it stronger and brighter. This inner connection helps us overcome any anxiety that may arise when we feel our senses dissolving.”
I don't know if it's a universal difficulty or just an individual one, but I find it particularly difficult to hold something in mind when I'm concentrating on mental images. I've tried casually imagining a rose cross in the vowels exercise and holding it around the background of my awareness, but this has only broken my focus and forced me to choose between the two.

Recently I came across an exercise in Steiner's archive in which one should imagine one's higher nature and then say a mantram to it in a prayer-like manner (more radiant than the sun...).
Here I begin to come from the essential path in meditation. I'm thinking, should I pray or meditate as I sense a distinction between the two.
Sometimes I say prayers several times an hour, I meditate once or twice a day. Both practices also feel different to me.

Also, during the meditation mentioned above, I realized that I have no point of reference for my higher nature.
Everything I know consciously says nothing about such a nature.
So I try to imagine a light and worship it because I couldn't cultivate such a sense of a higher nature crystal clear within myself. When I try to worship the sun being in the background of the meditation, alongside my focus on the vowels, I get disconcerted. I begin to imagine something that could correspond to this (e.g. a rose cross as a symbol for Christ) but this makes my meditation difficult because, as mentioned, I have no experience of such an idea. It remains just a symbol, without much content.

I've found it much easier to pray than to meditate these past few days, especially when I'm asked to meditate on certain feelings.
I don't know if there are trivial problems that arise, but it is important to me to improve my meditation skills and I am afraid that I will not be able to do this and not progress.

Hi Guney. Trying to hold several images is bound to be a complex task and is not really the goal of meditation. We have to remember that the spiritual world won't emerge out of the image of concentration like some bifurcating inner phenomenon. This world is all around us all the time. As said to Luke, through concentration we need to lead our soul to a sacred state of receptivity, where our expanded soul becomes the arena of Cosmic happenings. Yet this shouldn't happen like some drunken state where we're swayed by inexplicable phenomena. Our concentrated state becomes the intuitive kernel in respect to which the Cosmic happenings make sense, the story of existence on all levels begins to make sense. The kernel is not the perceptual mental image but the intuition present in our calm lucid state.

To gain understanding of the higher being it might be useful to reflect on what conscience is. Think about various events in life where you were in front of a moral dilemma and you were leaning to one or another side. Think about the fact that from a certain purer perspective, these dilemmas would be much more transparent. Sometimes we're placed in front of genuinely difficult situations, where it indeed looks like there's no right choice. But more often things are much more prosaic and we're simply not giving up a personal desire. The problem is that we're not always conscious of these things because such desires and tendencies may be so buried in our subconsciousness that we practically feel them as intrinsic part of who we are. We can't even question them because this would require being able to see things from an alternative standpoint. In such cases we can conceive that the force of conscience penetrates into our soul as if dimmed down through layers of smoked glass. Our attitude towards the higher being shouldn't be as towards an idol but towards that being which can inspire the good thoughts, feelings and actions in us, as if filling our soul from the direction of conscience. This doesn't preclude the possibility to symbolize the Divine with the Sun, for example. This is justified because the higher being is infinitely greater than anything we experience in our consciousness at any given moment. So the images of radiance and immensity are adequate. But we have to remember that the worship today happens on the altar of our own soul life. The Sun doesn't need our bows. But we need to make it the inspirer of our life if we desire to be attuned to the lawful Cosmic order and take part in this Grand Work.

[Cleric K]

I've read today this lecture and thought it might fit the topic here. Here is some context for those who are not going to look at the whole lecture.

As we have spoken many times, we need to develop sensitivity for polarities and balance if we are to find intuitive orientation within reality. We have said before how in our inner life on one side we're pulled towards the senses where our thinking life builds a phantom world on top of our perceptions. Our modern scientific thinking is a good example, where we constantly live in concepts that are not directly sense perceptible. Our whole thinking in digital technology is also of this kind. Our concepts of browser, email, text editor and so on are something that exists as a completely human layer of concepts on top of the natural world. Here thinking is subordinate to the sensory world.

On the other hand there's the other pole which tries to extricate us from the sensory world. Every philosophy that looks upon reality as a dream image without any special significance, except the need to overcome it, operates in this extremum. We enter this mood when we live in ideas in our own thinking world, which have no points of contact with the sense world. This also holds for all art which flows from the inner world but has no direct relevance to the sensory world (except that it needs its substances in order to be manifested).

This polarity can also be seen as the axis of thought - speech - written word. In thought we can be lone unity, a purely spiritual being. In speech, thoughts become sense perceptible (heard) and they connect us to other beings. When speech is written down it is preserved in fragments of the sensory world as if mummified. So the Word in the middle is like a bridge.

The first pole is known as that of Ahriman, while the second - of Lucifer.

Benedictus could soon show Professor Capesius also that in lonely thinking there lies the luciferic attraction, whereas in mere listening, or in any other kind of perceiving, there is the ahrimanic element. But one can keep to the middle path and move between the two, so to speak. It is neither necessary to stop short at abstract, introspective thinking wherein we shut ourselves away within our own souls like hermits, nor is it necessary to devote ourselves entirely to seeing or hearing the things our eyes and ears perceive. We can do something more. We can make whatever we think so inwardly forceful that our own thought appears before us like a living thing; we can immerse ourselves in it just as actively as we do in something heard or seen outside. Our thought then becomes as real and concrete as the things we hear or see. That is the middle way.

In mere thought, close to brooding, Lucifer assails man. In mere listening, either as perception or accepting the authority of others, the ahrimanic element is present. When we strengthen and arouse our soul inwardly so that we can hear or see our thoughts while thinking we have then arrived at meditation. Meditation is the middle way. It is neither thinking nor perceiving. It is a thinking that is as alive in the soul as perception is, and it is a perception of what is not outside man but a perception of thoughts. Between the luciferic element of thought and the ahrimanic element of perception, the life of the meditating soul flows within a divine-spiritual element that alone bears in itself the rightful progress of world events. The meditating human being, living in his thoughts in such a way that they become as alive in him as perceptions of the outside world, is living in this divine, on-flowing stream. On his right are mere thoughts, on his left the ahrimanic element, mere listening; he shuts out neither the one nor the other but understands that he lives in a threefoldness, for indeed life is ruled and kept in order by number. He understands, too, that between this polarity, this antithesis of the two elements, meditation moves like a river. He understands that in lawful measure the luciferic and ahrimanic elements must be balanced in meditation.

In every sphere of life the human being can learn this cosmic principle of number and measure that Capesius learned after his soul had been prepared through Benedictus's guidance. A soul that wants to prepare itself for knowledge of the spiritual world gradually begins to search everywhere in the world, at every point that can be reached, for the understanding of number, above all the number three; it begins then to see polar opposites revealed in all things and the necessity for these opposites to balance each other. A middle condition cannot be a mere flowing onward, but we must find ourselves within the stream directing our inner vision to the left and to the right, while steering our vessel, the third, middle thing, safely between the left and right polarities.

In recognition of this, Capesius had learned through Benedictus how to steer in the right way upwards into the spiritual world and how to cross its threshold. And this every person will have to learn who wants to find his way into spiritual science; then he will really come to an understanding of the true knowledge of higher worlds.