The Control of the Faculty of the Attention is the Key to Adeptship!

The most profitable decision I have ever made was to learn to meditate.

For many people the word meditation brings to mind the image and idea of a person sitting peacefully with eyes closed and perhaps “de-stressing” by disengaging from everything. It can do that. But over the course of a number of articles I will share here you will see that resting and de-stressing is not the most remarkable result of meditation, especially if you stick with it over a period of time. Instead, I’d like to suggest the possibility of an enormously active and fruitful inner work involving energy, travel, learning, expanding and ultimately, the mastery of every element of ones being as the fruit of meditation. I’d like to convince you that meditation is the next spiritual practice that you should choose to focus on and to stick with it past the “tried it” phase and into the “oh, my, gosh!” stage. I’m convinced that by then you’ll need no further convincing or coaching in order to choose meditation as a lifelong practice.

It has been my experience that if a person desires spiritual mastery all that’s really needed is the commitment to meditate for perhaps 30 minutes a day. I truly believe that if you made that commitment to yourself right now—you set aside 30 minutes and then showed up for the 30 minute slot at least 5 out of 7 days, that you would attract to yourself a number of angels and spiritual masters who are eager to teach you everything you require to become a spiritual adept, if that is your intent. I further predict that after some initial time spent gaining a rudimentary control over your subtle faculties, that you would move into perhaps the most exciting spiritual adventure you can even imagine right now.

I did just that. I didn’t read any books or seek any earthly teachers in order to learn meditation. I just sat down one day and I asked Jesus to sit with me, to protect me and to teach me to meditate. And He did.

The first thing conveyed to me was the requirement that I be able to fix my attention upon something—anything, and to hold it there without straining or wandering. So I practiced resting my attention upon various physical objects and mental concepts in a restful, observant mode. The main skills to develop at first are:

1. Hold the attention still without straining—and if your attention wanders bring it back gently and lovingly, without feelings of frustration
2. Develop the ability to observe and notice quickly if your attention wanders. Don’t underestimate this one!

After doing this for some weeks I began to notice that I was much more aware of what we call the “faculty of the attention”. It was beginning to feel like a discreet, tactile part of me (like my hand)—and I could concentrate much longer on a concept or object. I began to be able to hold my attention for many minutes at a time without catching myself involuntarily wandering into a thread of thought—my mind was beginning to come into harmony with a higher part of my “self” that was observing and directing the exercise.

I consider what I have just shared to be a foundational, absolutely crucial skill to gain—the ability to concentrate gently upon a single subject and to gain a strong sense of observing and directing all of your component parts, subtle and physical, from a point “above it all”.

If you would like to come on this journey with me I’d strongly advocate that you stop reading now and actually do what I’m describing for at least several weeks or until you have actually gained some momentum at entering the disciplined state that I described above. Perhaps you are there already or way past that point. Be honest with yourself though! For a number of weeks I admit that I would catch my mind wandering away about 50 times in 30 minutes. The process of getting that count down to only a dozen is very much like strengthening a muscle and there isn’t any substitute for this exercise. If you can honestly hold your attention upon a single subject for 30 minutes and you catch your mind wandering only a dozen (or fewer) times, then move on to the next installment.

If you plan to breeze through and just read all of this without actually doing it and mastering it I have to say that I feel kind of sad about that.