the TRUE MEANING OF MEDITATION


"When you pray to your Father, enter your secret chamber and pray in secret and your Father will see you and reward you openly."

So, how do we pray in secret when we all go to church and pray openly? So maybe it isn't the way. The Bible teaches us not to pray loudly, like the heathen or the hypocrites do. So the secret lies in this secret chamber. That is why when we go to church, we pray a lot, out loud, and everyone hears it except God! So, most of the time, our wishes aren't fulfilled. It is because we do not follow what the Bible says. If we believe in it, then we should study it more carefully.

Now it isn't that we must sit there and think about God all the time. We just have to merge with God, and become one with God, and always be in His consciousness. That is what is meant by the Kingdom of God. If you go to the church once in a while, on Sunday, it is also a way to seek the Kingdom of God, but probably not a very fruitful way. Because Jesus said to us that the Kingdom of God comes not through observation, but it is within us. If it is so, what shall we do? Still, we must meditate, even though, it is said that the Kingdom of God doesn't come through observation, meaning not through meditation even. But it makes us more aware of it. The Kingdom of God isn't made by meditation, but by meditating we become aware of our Kingdom, which is already existing within ourselves.

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Our meditation, we believe, is the original plan from God, that we should get in touch with the God power and with the Word of God. In the Bible it is said,

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was with God.

So we meditate on that Word, which is the vibration within, the Word which indicates the frequency, the God Power. Because we are the temple of God, and God speaks to us in such a way. He appears to us in the form of light and speaks to us in the form of sounds. Seeing the light, we see many other things. Hearing the Word we hear many other things. We hear the teachings directly from God. So this is what we are meditating on. But when we have a powerful teacher, you may pray inside to Him or Her, if you have difficulty in meditation, or if you are too far from God, then you might need an intermediary. So you are still a little weak like a baby that needs his parents to hold him, so he can walk. But later you walk alone. You must know that your goal is walking alone, and growing up, and not to rely on parents forever.

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Meditation is a kind of education, a kind of learning process. It's just like when you go to college, you ask your professor or teacher something, and then you must sit quietly and listen to his/her instruction and wisdom. If the student just goes to college and asks the professor something, and then walks out immediately and does something else, will he ever be wise? So even though the professor is in front of him, he gets nothing, because he doesn't give him/her a chance to speak.

Meditation is like any other science in our lives. We must learn. We must be willing to accept the wisdom that will be given to us. And like any other science and study, we learn by listening and by practicing. When we sit quietly in silence, there will be a lot of information, blessing, love, and energies pouring into our being. We will feel differently after meditation. And the longer the period and the longer we meditate, the wiser, the more peaceful we become. This is how the world will become peaceful.

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Some people asked me if I could teach them a meditation method that will stop the breathing and the heartbeat. I said, "No need to be such a hurry. Wait a while; when you die, all this will happen." This is not a necessary thing to do. We have no need to intervene with nature's functions. This is not a way to enlightenment. Then, they asked me if I would teach them a meditation method, which would increase their body heat, so that it becomes like a flame of samadhi - samadhi power through heat. I said, "No need, just jump into the oven!"

This is nonsense! It has nothing to do with enlightenment. Maybe the Masters or the practitioners in the Himalayas don't have enough heat, and they must practice what we call "tummo" heat from the solar plexus to develop heat to warm the body during the cold Himalayan weather. But here, we have central heating and heaters; we have everything, and there is no need for that. And I cited an example of the Buddha. One person came to the Buddha and boasted that he could walk across the water to reach the other shore. The Buddha asked, "How long did you practice before you could reach it?" He said "Twenty-five years." The Buddha said, "Why waste time and money? I only pay 5 cents and I can cross the river by boat."

These are wrong conceptions. We practice to enlighten ourselves: to know what else we can do for humankind, how we are related to the universe, and how we can offer anything to the universe, which offers us so much; or to free ourselves from suffering, to free ourselves from the slavery of birth, death, and reincarnation. But we do not practice to show off. There is no need to increase heat or cold, no need to stop the heartbeat and breathing. These are ephemeral phenomena, the working and functioning of nature. We do not bother.

The God Nature is not in the breath; it's not in the heartbeat or in the heat from the stomach. The God Nature is also in them, but they are only one small aspect of God Nature. We should find the whole, and then we will understand every detail. We should not just bother about details and forget the whole. So, the wrong conception needs to be changed in order to raise our level, at least our intellectual level, in order to understand further. If we keep attached to this kind of conception or worn-out prejudice, we have no hope of being more civilized, more intelligent.