Methods of Meditation
Jennie H. Croft
UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY
KANSAS CITY, MO.
1928
Forward
There is an insistent call for instruction in methods of meditation and in getting the greatest benefit from concentration and from the silence; also for general information upon the silence. It was borne in upon the writer that this theme should receive special attention from instructors.
During several years of teaching of the silence and of the methods and practice of the silence, the writer found it expedient to divide the instruction into four distinct parts. Each part depends upon each of the other parts and no one part is complete and effective until all the parts are understood and utilized.
Introduction
Lesson I deals with relaxation. This is a course in physical training in which the body is taught to obey mental commands.
Lesson II takes up concentration. Through concentration the mental nerves and the mental muscles are trained to obey.
Lesson III relates to meditation, which is a blending of the two preceding exercises and leads into that which is more spiritual. Here we begin to know, and to get the benefit of an inner power that we have set in operation by our relaxation and our concentration. In this exercise we consciously make this inner power an integral part of our whole being by our intelligent use of the power. We believe that man cannot know God without having meditated on Him; consequently that the practice of meditation is very necessary to our spiritual growth.
Lesson IV we have named "Realization." Realization is the outcome of the three exercises, relaxation, concentration, and meditation. Realization is purely spiritual in its working and in its power. We begin with the physical and go through the mental into the intellectual, where we meditate upon whatever we desire to hold in mind, until the spirit of it becomes a part of us and continues to unfold in realization. Realization is not temporary; it is an eternal activity. After realization the soul becomes more and more identified with its own divinity. The more we practice realization, or letting the reality of the subject of our meditation take possession of us, the more we know of it and the more quickly we find its value and observe its enlightenment of our whole being. We come to know God, to know ourselves, and to know the relation between ourselves and God. We advance into the realm of conscious knowledge in which we know that our eternal Father, the source of all, is one with us in omnipresent power and wisdom.
