Meditation & the Disciplines
The work of the adept: meditation, the disciplines of the personality, and the balanced power Ra calls magic.
Silence opens the door of the mind; the disciplines of the personality decide what the seeker becomes.
In plain language
Ra's inner curriculum begins before any technique, with a single prerequisite: the ability to retain silence of self at a steady state, for the mind must be opened like a door, and the key is silence (). Behind that door the first disciplines are balancing work — identifying what one approves and disapproves of within oneself and balancing each positive and negative charge with its equal, since the mind contains all things and this completeness must be discovered within (). On this ground Ra distinguishes two kinds of meditation: the passive clearing of the mind, which builds an inner silence from which to listen to the Creator, and visualization, the tool of the adept, which develops an inner concentrative power that can transcend boredom and discomfort (). Contemplation of an inspiring image or text is also named as useful, and the faculty of will called praying as potentially helpful — depending entirely on the intentions of the one who prays ().
For daily practice Ra offers four exercises: consciously seek the love contained in the present moment; see the Creator when viewing another mind/body/spirit complex; see the Creator in the mirror; see the Creator in the creation that lies all around (). These exercises carry a stated prerequisite — a predilection toward meditation, contemplation, or prayer — without which the data will not sink down into the roots of the tree of mind (). Ra returns to that prerequisite when summarizing the seeker's material: the path to the heart of self runs through understanding, experiencing, accepting, and merging self with self, with other-self, and finally with the Creator, and without a method of reversing the analytical process the understandings gained cannot be integrated into unity ().
Will, not control
When the questioner summarizes this path as discipline, self-knowledge, and control, Ra corrects the one word: it is not desirable or helpful to control thought processes or impulses, except where they might result in actions not consonant with the Law of One (). Control may seem a shortcut to discipline, peace, and illumination, but it represses a self which is perfect, and that repression necessitates further incarnative experience to balance it (). The path Ra recommends instead is acceptance of self, forgiveness of self, and the direction of the will — a faculty so powerful in the entity as co-Creator that it cannot be ascribed too much importance, and one whose growing strength carries real danger, since it may reduce polarity even subconsciously ().
Even the disciplines themselves are ranked below what they serve. Asked whether anything matters beyond the disciplines of the personality, Ra answers that this is technique, not the heart: the heart of evolution is unity, love, light, and joy, meditation and service are the second-ranking lessons, and the counsel is to always begin and end in the Creator, not in technique ().
The adept and the magical personality
The heart of the discipline of the personality is threefold — know yourself, accept yourself, become the Creator — and its continuation clears the adept's path toward the great indigo gateway to the Creator (). The work assumes a prepared instrument: an adept will have its energy centers functioning smoothly and in a balanced manner, to its best effort, before a magical working (). The working itself turns on two keys, first silence and secondly singleness of thought, so that a visualization held steady to the inward eye for several minutes signals the adept's increase in that singleness (). When the positive adept touches intelligent infinity from within, it becomes a living channel for love and light, able to channel that radiance directly into the planetary web of energy nexi ().
Ra names the instrument of this work the magical personality: to invoke it properly is to invoke one's higher self, making a bridge between space/time and time/space, and it is most central to deliberately take it off again after the working (). Its three aspects — power, love, and wisdom — are so called in order that the neophyte not abuse the tools of its trade, but approach them balanced in the center of love and wisdom, seeking power in order to serve (). Ra is candid about the difficulty of this path: few adepts grasp the light of the sun, and by far the majority remain groping in a moonlight that can deceive as well as uncover hidden mystery (). Yet none of the outer apparatus is finally necessary — once the disciplines of the personality are learned, each configuration of prana is available without the pyramid's aid, and the pyramid at Giza may be viewed as metaphysical training wheels ().
In Ra's words
The correction that reorients the whole practice — direction of the will, not control:
Control may seem to be a shortcut to discipline, peace, and illumination. However, this very control potentiates and necessitates the further incarnative experience in order to balance this control, or repression, of that self which is perfect.
Instead, we appreciate and recommend the use of your second verb in regard to the use of the will. Acceptance of self, forgiveness of self, and the direction of the will: this is the path towards the disciplined personality.
The heart the techniques exist to serve:
Unity, love, light, and joy: this is the heart of evolution of the spirit.
The second-ranking lessons are learn/taught in meditation and in service. At some point the mind/body/spirit complex is so smoothly activated and balanced by these central thoughts or distortions that the techniques you have mentioned become quite significant. However, the universe, its mystery unbroken, is one. Always begin and end in the Creator, not in technique.
The threefold discipline of the personality:
The heart of the discipline of the personality is threefold:
One, know yourself.
Two, accept yourself.
Three, become the Creator.The third step is that step which, when accomplished, renders one the most humble servant of all, transparent in personality and completely able to know and accept other-selves.
In Ra's words — Meditation and the Disciplines
Ra's inner curriculum begins with silence — the prerequisite of mental work — and then unfolds as a systematic balancing of every charge within the self: every patience matched with its corresponding impatience, every approval shadowed by its disapproval, until the mind can rest in the completeness of what it already contains (). Meditation itself divides into two distinct modes: the passive clearing that opens an entity to the Creator's voice, and the adept's visualization practice that crystallizes the will (). The four exercises Ra offers — seeking love in the present moment, seeing the Creator in another, in the mirror, in the creation — provide the practical daily form of that seeking (). Crucially, Ra draws a sharp line between control and direction of the will: control is a shortcut that creates further incarnative debt, while acceptance and forgiveness are the actual path toward the disciplined personality (). Technique, however refined, is never the heart; the heart is unity, love, and light, and every working must begin and end in the Creator (). The threefold discipline — know yourself, accept yourself, become the Creator — clears the path toward the great indigo gateway (); the adept then bridges space/time and time/space by invoking, and afterward carefully setting down, the magical personality (). The three aspects of that personality — power, love, wisdom — exist so the neophyte approaches its tools in balance rather than abusing them (). At maturity, the external forms — pyramids, rituals, instruments — become training wheels that can be set aside ().
The passages
— Silence, polarity within the mind, and the four disciplines of mind
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 smooths 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.
— Two kinds of meditation: clearing and visualization
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.
— The four exercises of Ra
The moment contains love. That is the lesson/goal of this illusion or density. The exercise is to consciously seek that love in awareness and understanding-distortions. The first attempt is the cornerstone. Upon this choosing rests the remainder of the life-experience of an entity. The second seeking of love within the moment begins the addition. The third seeking powers the second, the fourth powering or doubling the third. As with the previous type of empowerment, there will be some loss of power due to flaws within the seeking in the distortion of insincerity. However, the conscious statement of self to self of the desire to seek love is so central an act of will that, as before, the loss of power due to this friction is inconsequential.
Exercise Two. The universe is one being. When a mind/body/spirit complex views another mind/body/spirit complex, see the Creator. This is an helpful exercise.
Exercise Three. Gaze within a mirror. See the Creator.
Exercise Four. Gaze at the creation which lies about the mind/body/spirit complex of each entity. See the Creator.
The foundation or prerequisite of these exercises is a predilection towards what may be called meditation, contemplation, or prayer. With this attitude, these exercises can be processed. Without it, the data will not sink down into the roots of the tree of mind, thus enabling and ennobling the body and touching the spirit.
— Will, not control
It is paramount that it be understood that it is not desirable or helpful to the growth of the understanding, may we say, of an entity by itself to control thought processes or impulses except where they may result in actions not consonant with the Law of One.
Control may seem to be a shortcut to discipline, peace, and illumination. However, this very control potentiates and necessitates the further incarnative experience in order to balance this control, or repression, of that self which is perfect.
Instead, we appreciate and recommend the use of your second verb in regard to the use of the will. Acceptance of self, forgiveness of self, and the direction of the will: this is the path towards the disciplined personality. Your faculty of will is that which is powerful within you as co-Creator. You cannot ascribe to this faculty too much importance. Thus it must be carefully used and directed in service to others for those upon the positively oriented path.
There is great danger in the use of the will as the personality becomes stronger, for it may be used even subconsciously in ways reducing the polarity of the entity.
— Technique is not the heart
This is technique. This is not the heart.
…
Unity, love, light, and joy: this is the heart of evolution of the spirit.
The second-ranking lessons are learn/taught in meditation and in service. At some point the mind/body/spirit complex is so smoothly activated and balanced by these central thoughts or distortions that the techniques you have mentioned become quite significant. However, the universe, its mystery unbroken, is one. Always begin and end in the Creator, not in technique.
— The threefold discipline of the personality
The heart of the discipline of the personality is threefold:
One, know yourself.
Two, accept yourself.
Three, become the Creator.The third step is that step which, when accomplished, renders one the most humble servant of all, transparent in personality and completely able to know and accept other-selves.
In relation to the pursuit of the magical working, the continuing discipline of the personality involves the adept in knowing itself, accepting itself, and thus clearing the path towards the great indigo gateway to the Creator. To become the Creator is to become all that there is. There is, then, no personality in the sense with which the adept begins its learn/teaching. As the consciousness of the indigo ray becomes more crystalline, more work may be done; more may be expressed from intelligent infinity.
— Silence and singleness of thought: the adept's key
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.
— The magical personality as bridge to the higher self
When the magical personality is properly and efficaciously invoked, the self has invoked its higher self. Thus a bridge betwixt space/time and time/space is made, and the sixth-density magical personality experiences directly the third-density catalyst for the duration of the working.
It is most central to deliberately take off the magical personality after the working in order that the higher self resume its appropriate configuration as analog to the space/time mind/body/spirit.
— Power, love, and wisdom in balance
The three aspects of the magical personality—power, love, and wisdom—are so called in order that attention be paid to each aspect in developing the basic tool of the adept: that is, its self.
It is by no means a personality of three aspects. It is a being of unity, being of sixth density, and equivalent to what you call your higher self and, at the same time, is a personality enormously rich in variety of experience and subtlety of emotion.
The three aspects are given that the neophyte not abuse the tools of its trade but, rather, approach those tools balanced in the center of love and wisdom and thus seeking power in order to serve.
— Beyond the training wheels
You may note that as one learns the, shall we say, understandings or disciplines of the personality each of these configurations of prana is available to the entity without the aid of this shape. One may view the pyramid at Giza as metaphysical training wheels.
The full corpus on this
Every place Ra touches this subject — the passages above are a starting point, not the whole of it.
Referenced in
Other curated pages that discuss the same passages.