Meditation

[Lou Gold]

In certain sense, in our thinking being we're always within the context of these astral rhythms. Even if we don't understand the deeper nature of these processes we can still work on them, for example, by consecration. Even the most trivial activities can be spiritualized in this way. For example, we wash our hands. We do that for hygienic purposes. But we can think while washing "May just as the water washes away the impurities from my hands, so Divine Love flow through me and wash away all dark thoughts and feelings." This is really the proper mood in which the exercise in question should be taken. We breathe instinctively all the time. Why not breathe once in a while by consecrating our breath to the Divine?

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

Federica,

I will offer a couple thoughts on your question. I don't think the consecration and the ceremonial exercises are too different. One way I would think about it is that we are always clouded by dark thoughts and feelings when we are not fully present in our spiritual activity. When we are walking in the house and bang our knee against a table, what does the pain sensation tell us? Basically, it points right back to our walking activity and tells us our attention was not present enough in that activity - perhaps we were thinking about what to wear when we go out or what to get for dinner. Then, hopefully, we take that feedback and adjust our inner state to be more present and attentive, at least until the next time we lapse into inattention and absence.

In the normal course of life, practically all sensations feedback to our inner activity and provide the opportunity to adjust that activity to interact more harmoniously with its surroundings. That happens so seamlessly that we don't even notice it most of the time. This is also thinking-will activity - after all, we must set intentions to move around our surroundings, wash our hands, and so forth. But when it becomes so habitual that we no longer experience ourselves setting the intention and carrying it out, the intents and the perceptual flow are completely out-of-phase. So the question is how to take a more conscious stance and become increasingly present in our thinking-attending activity, so we don't keep lapsing into inattention and absence?

We can try to work around the edges on the horizontal plane, but ultimately our efforts won't get too far until we also center our spiritual activity in the temporal thickness of the Divine vertical axis. This axis can firmly anchor our activity at any given moment when we are interacting with the psychic and bodily support for our spiritual activity (practically always), because that support is constellated precisely through the Divine axis. Even if we don't understand the detailed depths of this Divine axis, the consecrating and ceremonial gestures are simply that we recognize its existence and its power to concentrically harmonize the depth layers of our activity in gratitude and devotion. Just as the pain in the knee feeds back to our attending activity, these gestures act as higher-order (more conscious) feedback for the Divine. So it is not at all a constraint on the Divine axis but, rather, a nutritious offering that will also feedback into our capacity for attention and presence.

PS - I think it always helps to center our activity in the axis by slowing the pace of these 'trivial' things we do. We can then feel intimately involved in every little movement of the arms and hands. We can even try to notice how the sensation of the water changes in relation to our hand movements. Of course we aren't analyzing this with the intellect, but simply remaining intuitively present in the rhythmically and harmonically changing context.

PPS - I think there is little need to be concerned with 'overdoing it' with any attempts to remain present through consecration/ceremonial exercises since they are so unfamiliar to our normal inattentive habits. Even if we set the firm intention to do such consecration with every hand wash, we will surely forget or skip it a good amount of the time. That itself can be taken as a sign that it is something worth devoting more effort to.

Ashvin sez: "When we are walking in the house and bang our knee against a table, what does the pain sensation tell us? Basically, it points right back to our walking activity and tells us our attention was not present enough in that activity - perhaps we were thinking about what to wear when we go out or what to get for dinner. Then, hopefully, we take that feedback and adjust our inner state to be more present and attentive, at least until the next time we lapse into inattention and absence."

I ask: Why is this a lapse rather than a rising into a better awareness?

[Lou Gold]

Cleric K wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 6:33 am

"In certain sense, in our thinking being we're always within the context of these astral rhythms. Even if we don't understand the deeper nature of these processes we can still work on them, for example, by consecration. Even the most trivial activities can be spiritualized in this way. For example, we wash our hands. We do that for hygienic purposes. But we can think while washing "May just as the water washes away the impurities from my hands, so Divine Love flow through me and wash away all dark thoughts and feelings." This is really the proper mood in which the exercise in question should be taken. We breathe instinctively all the time. Why not breathe once in a while by consecrating our breath to the Divine?"

Thich Nhat Hanh noted that anything can be a meditation. Washing the dishes can be a meditation ... as long as we so just to do it and not to get the job done.

[AshvinP]

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

Federica,

I will offer a couple thoughts on your question. I don't think the consecration and the ceremonial exercises are too different. One way I would think about it is that we are always clouded by dark thoughts and feelings when we are not fully present in our spiritual activity. When we are walking in the house and bang our knee against a table, what does the pain sensation tell us? Basically, it points right back to our walking activity and tells us our attention was not present enough in that activity - perhaps we were thinking about what to wear when we go out or what to get for dinner. Then, hopefully, we take that feedback and adjust our inner state to be more present and attentive, at least until the next time we lapse into inattention and absence.

In the normal course of life, practically all sensations feedback to our inner activity and provide the opportunity to adjust that activity to interact more harmoniously with its surroundings. That happens so seamlessly that we don't even notice it most of the time. This is also thinking-will activity - after all, we must set intentions to move around our surroundings, wash our hands, and so forth. But when it becomes so habitual that we no longer experience ourselves setting the intention and carrying it out, the intents and the perceptual flow are completely out-of-phase. So the question is how to take a more conscious stance and become increasingly present in our thinking-attending activity, so we don't keep lapsing into inattention and absence?

We can try to work around the edges on the horizontal plane, but ultimately our efforts won't get too far until we also center our spiritual activity in the temporal thickness of the Divine vertical axis. This axis can firmly anchor our activity at any given moment when we are interacting with the psychic and bodily support for our spiritual activity (practically always), because that support is constellated precisely through the Divine axis. Even if we don't understand the detailed depths of this Divine axis, the consecrating and ceremonial gestures are simply that we recognize its existence and its power to concentrically harmonize the depth layers of our activity in gratitude and devotion. Just as the pain in the knee feeds back to our attending activity, these gestures act as higher-order (more conscious) feedback for the Divine. So it is not at all a constraint on the Divine axis but, rather, a nutritious offering that will also feedback into our capacity for attention and presence.

PS - I think it always helps to center our activity in the axis by slowing the pace of these 'trivial' things we do. We can then feel intimately involved in every little movement of the arms and hands. We can even try to notice how the sensation of the water changes in relation to our hand movements. Of course we aren't analyzing this with the intellect, but simply remaining intuitively present in the rhythmically and harmonically changing context.

PPS - I think there is little need to be concerned with 'overdoing it' with any attempts to remain present through consecration/ceremonial exercises since they are so unfamiliar to our normal inattentive habits. Even if we set the firm intention to do such consecration with every hand wash, we will surely forget or skip it a good amount of the time. That itself can be taken as a sign that it is something worth devoting more effort to.

Thank you, Ashvin.

I have to say, to me your entire post sounds like a detailed illustration of the ceremonial exercises à la Zajonc. I don't feel the question is addressed. Yes, in both the ceremonial and the consecration exercises we may face our lacking understanding of the Divine axis. But it still seems to me that the two exercises relate to this lack in different ways.

In the ceremonial exercise, we pay intense attention to the thinking-will flow coalescing in our body’s interaction with its environment, thereby strengthening awareness of our intuitive orientation. In the consecration exercise we go a step beyond the attention. We also superimpose a precise, personal formula that we, however, don't understand in its working. I believe it could trigger an aspiration to 'jump ahead' and a hope to bypass existing constraints to our flow of becoming and proper understanding of how to transform our flow in harmony with those constraints.

There could be a risk that, instead of working slowly at buiding a controlled experience of our spiritual activity, the exercise could trigger a habit of wishing: "let's hope that the mysterious power of, say, washing hands, can also wash away my dark thoughts". In other words, I feel that, in the insufficiently trained soul, consecration could trigger a form of supersition.

Federica,

It seems to me the 'jumping ahead' risk is only an apparent one that manifests when we analyze the consecration from the side. Because, when we express the intention to center in the Divine axis, and thereby become more present in our spiritual activity, there can be no mistaking that a simple hand wash doesn't get rid of our dark thoughts and feelings. On the contrary, we become much more intuitively sensitive to the dark currents steering our surface thoughts that are otherwise merged into the background. We begin to realize more and more just how inattentive and absent we are in the course of daily life and gradually find degrees of freedom to work on harmonizing the currents.

The only thing we really need to understand in the working of consecration is that the Divine axis is wise and intentional, i.e. that it truly perceives our stream of impulses, feelings, and thoughts, just as we perceive sensory details, and uses it as feedback for higher-order goals within the curvatures of destiny, as Cleric indicated in the last post re: going to sleep. The deeper understanding of the axis will come precisely through the intuitive orientation we gain from more attention and presence in its continual inflowing of the 'now' state, through such exercises as these. If we say that the deeper understanding is first necessary before engaging the exercise, then we put ourselves in the odd position of blocking a simple yet potent degree of freedom for gaining the very deeper understanding we are hoping for.

Of course, if for some reason an individual has a strong intuition that such exercises play to their lower 'superstitious' impulses in an unhelpful way, perhaps after observing how they respond to it after some time, then they can choose to focus on other exercises that build an attentive presence within the intuitive context of the now state. Fundamentally, though, they are all seeking the same Divine axis and, in practice, I doubt many people would get carried away on the waves of superstition by consecrating their breathing, hand washing, or anything similar (all else on the intuitive thinking path being equal).

[Federica]

Federica,

I will offer a couple thoughts on your question. I don't think the consecration and the ceremonial exercises are too different. One way I would think about it is that we are always clouded by dark thoughts and feelings when we are not fully present in our spiritual activity. When we are walking in the house and bang our knee against a table, what does the pain sensation tell us? Basically, it points right back to our walking activity and tells us our attention was not present enough in that activity - perhaps we were thinking about what to wear when we go out or what to get for dinner. Then, hopefully, we take that feedback and adjust our inner state to be more present and attentive, at least until the next time we lapse into inattention and absence.

In the normal course of life, practically all sensations feedback to our inner activity and provide the opportunity to adjust that activity to interact more harmoniously with its surroundings. That happens so seamlessly that we don't even notice it most of the time. This is also thinking-will activity - after all, we must set intentions to move around our surroundings, wash our hands, and so forth. But when it becomes so habitual that we no longer experience ourselves setting the intention and carrying it out, the intents and the perceptual flow are completely out-of-phase. So the question is how to take a more conscious stance and become increasingly present in our thinking-attending activity, so we don't keep lapsing into inattention and absence?

We can try to work around the edges on the horizontal plane, but ultimately our efforts won't get too far until we also center our spiritual activity in the temporal thickness of the Divine vertical axis. This axis can firmly anchor our activity at any given moment when we are interacting with the psychic and bodily support for our spiritual activity (practically always), because that support is constellated precisely through the Divine axis. Even if we don't understand the detailed depths of this Divine axis, the consecrating and ceremonial gestures are simply that we recognize its existence and its power to concentrically harmonize the depth layers of our activity in gratitude and devotion. Just as the pain in the knee feeds back to our attending activity, these gestures act as higher-order (more conscious) feedback for the Divine. So it is not at all a constraint on the Divine axis but, rather, a nutritious offering that will also feedback into our capacity for attention and presence.

PS - I think it always helps to center our activity in the axis by slowing the pace of these 'trivial' things we do. We can then feel intimately involved in every little movement of the arms and hands. We can even try to notice how the sensation of the water changes in relation to our hand movements. Of course we aren't analyzing this with the intellect, but simply remaining intuitively present in the rhythmically and harmonically changing context.

PPS - I think there is little need to be concerned with 'overdoing it' with any attempts to remain present through consecration/ceremonial exercises since they are so unfamiliar to our normal inattentive habits. Even if we set the firm intention to do such consecration with every hand wash, we will surely forget or skip it a good amount of the time. That itself can be taken as a sign that it is something worth devoting more effort to.

Thank you, Ashvin.

I have to say, to me your entire post sounds like a detailed illustration of the ceremonial exercises à la Zajonc. I don't feel the question is addressed. Yes, in both the ceremonial and the consecration exercises we may face our lacking understanding of the Divine axis. But it still seems to me that the two exercises relate to this lack in different ways.

In the ceremonial exercise, we pay intense attention to the thinking-will flow coalescing in our body’s interaction with its environment, thereby strengthening awareness of our intuitive orientation. In the consecration exercise we go a step beyond the attention. We also superimpose a precise, personal formula that we, however, don't understand in its working. I believe it could trigger an aspiration to 'jump ahead' and a hope to bypass existing constraints to our flow of becoming and proper understanding of how to transform our flow in harmony with those constraints.

There could be a risk that, instead of working slowly at buiding a controlled experience of our spiritual activity, the exercise could trigger a habit of wishing: "let's hope that the mysterious power of, say, washing hands, can also wash away my dark thoughts". In other words, I feel that, in the insufficiently trained soul, consecration could trigger a form of supersition.

Federica,

It seems to me the 'jumping ahead' risk is only an apparent one that manifests when we analyze the consecration from the side. Because, when we express the intention to center in the Divine axis, and thereby become more present in our spiritual activity, there can be no mistaking that a simple hand wash doesn't get rid of our dark thoughts and feelings. On the contrary, we become much more intuitively sensitive to the dark currents steering our surface thoughts that are otherwise merged into the background. We begin to realize more and more just how inattentive and absent we are in the course of daily life and gradually find degrees of freedom to work on harmonizing the currents.

The only thing we really need to understand in the working of consecration is that the Divine axis is wise and intentional, i.e. that it truly perceives our stream of impulses, feelings, and thoughts, just as we perceive sensory details, and uses it as feedback for higher-order goals within the curvatures of destiny, as Cleric indicated in the last post re: going to sleep. The deeper understanding of the axis will come precisely through the intuitive orientation we gain from more attention and presence in its continual inflowing of the 'now' state, through such exercises as these. If we say that the deeper understanding is first necessary before engaging the exercise, then we put ourselves in the odd position of blocking a simple yet potent degree of freedom for gaining the very deeper understanding we are hoping for.

Of course, if for some reason an individual has a strong intuition that such exercises play to their lower 'superstitious' impulses in an unhelpful way, perhaps after observing how they respond to it after some time, then they can choose to focus on other exercises that build an attentive presence within the intuitive context of the now state. Fundamentally, though, they are all seeking the same Divine axis and, in practice, I doubt many people would get carried away on the waves of superstition by consecrating their breathing, hand washing, or anything similar (all else on the intuitive thinking path being equal).

Yes, it's clearly "from the side", since I don't have any practice of consecration in the described way. Do you?

If we say that the deeper understanding is first necessary before engaging the exercise, then we put ourselves in the odd position of blocking a simple yet potent degree of freedom for gaining the very deeper understanding we are hoping for.

I don't say that. I have not lost sight in this discussion of the living nature of the path, of the first person experience. Surely one should practice paying attention to our trivial everyday gestures in order to deepen understanding of the axis. The part I was questioning is the superimposed formula.

[AshvinP]

Yes, it's clearly "from the side", since I don't have any practice of consecration in the described way. Do you?

If we say that the deeper understanding is first necessary before engaging the exercise, then we put ourselves in the odd position of blocking a simple yet potent degree of freedom for gaining the very deeper understanding we are hoping for.

I don't say that. I have not lost sight in this discussion of the living nature of the path, of the first person experience. Surely one should practice paying attention to our trivial everyday gesture in order to deepen understanding of the axis The part I was questioning is the superimposed formula.

Sure, I try to consecrate a washing activity every time I remember to do it, which is much easier said than done. Again, the problem has never been that I indulge too much in the consecration in the hopes it will magically purify my soul, but rather that I habitually forget to do it or decide I am in 'too much of a hurry' to do it. I first came across the hand-washing example from OMA, which may have been mentioned before.

Most people wash themselves, or at least their hands and face, every day. It is rightly considered to be normal behaviour for civilized people to wash. But how they wash is quite another matter. Children are told that they have to wash in order to be clean and not inconvenience others by their body odour, and that is all; it is simply a question of hygiene. But this is not enough; one can be washed and perfectly clean physically and still be as inwardly dirty as though one had never had a bath in one’s life.

The physical body is not man’s only body; he also has his subtle etheric, astral and mental bodies, and he has to care for them as well. He has to wash the dirt from them and cleanse them of all the impurities caused by the base sensations, desires, thoughts and feelings that he continues to harbour and nourish inwardly.1 Water washes us on the physical plane because it has the power to dispel and absorb impurities, and on the spiritual plane it has exactly the same power. All religions have rites of purification in which water is used – ablutions or ritual bathing, for instance – and these rites are based on an age-old lore concerning the powers of water.2 You will say that modern life does not lend itself particularly well to practices of this kind, but actually that is not true. From the time you get up until you go to bed you have innumerable occasions to wash, and you can make the most of these occasions when you use water to wash yourselves spiritually and psychically at the same time.

The water which we are all familiar with and with which we wash every day is a materialization of the cosmic fluid that fills the whole of space. By means of thought it is possible to be in contact with this fluid and be purified by it. The first step is to be aware, when washing, that the physical water you are touching is a spiritual element; and the first effect of that awareness will be to modify your gestures. Many people use rough, clumsy gestures when they wash, in the belief that this helps to wake them up and stimulate them and put them in a good mood. They certainly wake themselves up, but brusque, hurried gestures have a bad effect on the body, particularly on the face, for the harmony of our face comes from the extremely subtle organization of its particles along specific lines of force. Man’s face is a reflection of the face of God, and those who wash their faces roughly and carelessly disturb the features of the divine image.

When you wash, therefore, try to use measured, harmonious gestures so that your thoughts may be free to do their work. Concentrate on the water, on its pure, limpid transparency, and you will soon feel that it is reaching into unknown regions within you and working its transformations. Not only will you feel lighter and purer, but your heart and mind will be nourished by new, subtler and more invigorating elements. Physical water contains all the elements and forces of spiritual water; you only have to learn to awaken them and receive them inwardly.

Aïvanhov, Omraam Mikhaël. The Mysteries of Fire and Water (Izvor Collection) (p. 46). Editions Prosveta. Kindle Edition.

I am not really understanding the issue with the 'superimposed formula'. OMA goes into much more detailed and varied practices and formulas that can be used (in other parts of the book not quoted). I don't think anyone is suggesting we must use some specific incantation for this to work on our subtle organization - the words we use are only support for the soul mood and intuitive stance that we are taking in relation to the activity in question.

At the same time, it may be important to note that condensing our conscious intuitive gestures into words also helps to spiritualize the verbal intellect. We have heard of walking on consecrated ground, i.e. the support for our will activity. Similarly, we can 'walk' our intuitive thinking activity on the consecrated ground of the verbal intellect (consecrated because the words are consciously reflective of the activity that constellates them, prayer being the clearest example of that). Gradually the latter will stop being a distraction from the underlying activity and come to provide more and more finely textured orientation to that activity.

[Cleric]

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

I'm sorry, maybe my choice of the word 'consecration' was poor. Now as I think, it may really point in a direction quite different from what I intended.

The idea was simple - that everything in our sensory life can be seen through deeper meaning. Cleaning is something that we see everywhere in the living kingdoms. Even a single cell has to eliminate waste. But all these things also have their spiritual archetypes. So the exercise is more about connecting the physical action with higher meaning. There's no danger of falling into superstition here. We're just recognizing that the physical act is embedded into much more encompassing and meaningful inner life. We simply draw the parallel that just as our physical body can be purified, so the same is true for our psychic life. And not only that there's a parallel but in a sense the physical cleaning is the convoluted manifestation of the spiritual archetype. Thus by recognizing this we already work a tiny bit towards the spiritualization of the physical world, attuning it back to the higher flow.

Or maybe the act of imagining the purification as a shower of Love is what seemed superstitious?

[Federica]

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

I'm sorry, maybe my choice of the word 'consecration' was poor. Now as I think, it may really point in a direction quite different from what I intended.

The idea was simple - that everything in our sensory life can be seen through deeper meaning. Cleaning is something that we see everywhere in the living kingdoms. Even a single cell has to eliminate waste. But all these things also have their spiritual archetypes. So the exercise is more about connecting the physical action with higher meaning. There's no danger of falling into superstition here. We're just recognizing that the physical act is embedded into much more encompassing and meaningful inner life. We simply draw the parallel that just as our physical body can be purified, so the same is true for our psychic life. And not only that there's a parallel but in a sense the physical cleaning is the convoluted manifestation of the spiritual archetype. Thus by recognizing this we already work a tiny bit towards the spiritualization of the physical world, attuning it back to the higher flow.

Or maybe the act of imagining the purification as a shower of Love is what seemed superstitious?

Thanks, Cleric. Surely I don't find anything questionable in recognizing the connection between physical action and spiritual meaning. I guess what led me astray is the idea that consecration allows us to work with something even if we don't understand it, by wishing a certain result into our flow of becoming.

PS. Purification as a shower of Love is a new idea for me, that does not seem superstitious!
This question tells me I have to put much more effort in making my writing clear. Sorry.

[Federica]

Yes, it's clearly "from the side", since I don't have any practice of consecration in the described way. Do you?

If we say that the deeper understanding is first necessary before engaging the exercise, then we put ourselves in the odd position of blocking a simple yet potent degree of freedom for gaining the very deeper understanding we are hoping for.

I don't say that. I have not lost sight in this discussion of the living nature of the path, of the first person experience. Surely one should practice paying attention to our trivial everyday gesture in order to deepen understanding of the axis The part I was questioning is the superimposed formula.

Sure, I try to consecrate a washing activity every time I remember to do it, which is much easier said than done. Again, the problem has never been that I indulge too much in the consecration in the hopes it will magically purify my soul, but rather that I habitually forget to do it or decide I am in 'too much of a hurry' to do it. I first came across the hand-washing example from OMA, which may have been mentioned before.

Most people wash themselves, or at least their hands and face, every day. It is rightly considered to be normal behaviour for civilized people to wash. But how they wash is quite another matter. Children are told that they have to wash in order to be clean and not inconvenience others by their body odour, and that is all; it is simply a question of hygiene. But this is not enough; one can be washed and perfectly clean physically and still be as inwardly dirty as though one had never had a bath in one’s life.

The physical body is not man’s only body; he also has his subtle etheric, astral and mental bodies, and he has to care for them as well. He has to wash the dirt from them and cleanse them of all the impurities caused by the base sensations, desires, thoughts and feelings that he continues to harbour and nourish inwardly.1 Water washes us on the physical plane because it has the power to dispel and absorb impurities, and on the spiritual plane it has exactly the same power. All religions have rites of purification in which water is used – ablutions or ritual bathing, for instance – and these rites are based on an age-old lore concerning the powers of water.2 You will say that modern life does not lend itself particularly well to practices of this kind, but actually that is not true. From the time you get up until you go to bed you have innumerable occasions to wash, and you can make the most of these occasions when you use water to wash yourselves spiritually and psychically at the same time.

The water which we are all familiar with and with which we wash every day is a materialization of the cosmic fluid that fills the whole of space. By means of thought it is possible to be in contact with this fluid and be purified by it. The first step is to be aware, when washing, that the physical water you are touching is a spiritual element; and the first effect of that awareness will be to modify your gestures. Many people use rough, clumsy gestures when they wash, in the belief that this helps to wake them up and stimulate them and put them in a good mood. They certainly wake themselves up, but brusque, hurried gestures have a bad effect on the body, particularly on the face, for the harmony of our face comes from the extremely subtle organization of its particles along specific lines of force. Man’s face is a reflection of the face of God, and those who wash their faces roughly and carelessly disturb the features of the divine image.

When you wash, therefore, try to use measured, harmonious gestures so that your thoughts may be free to do their work. Concentrate on the water, on its pure, limpid transparency, and you will soon feel that it is reaching into unknown regions within you and working its transformations. Not only will you feel lighter and purer, but your heart and mind will be nourished by new, subtler and more invigorating elements. Physical water contains all the elements and forces of spiritual water; you only have to learn to awaken them and receive them inwardly.

Aïvanhov, Omraam Mikhaël. The Mysteries of Fire and Water (Izvor Collection) (p. 46). Editions Prosveta. Kindle Edition.

I am not really understanding the issue with the 'superimposed formula'. OMA goes into much more detailed and varied practices and formulas that can be used (in other parts of the book not quoted). I don't think anyone is suggesting we must use some specific incantation for this to work on our subtle organization - the words we use are only support for the soul mood and intuitive stance that we are taking in relation to the activity in question.

At the same time, it may be important to note that condensing our conscious intuitive gestures into words also helps to spiritualize the verbal intellect. We have heard of walking on consecrated ground, i.e. the support for our will activity. Similarly, we can 'walk' our intuitive thinking activity on the consecrated ground of the verbal intellect (consecrated because the words are consciously reflective of the activity that constellates them, prayer being the clearest example of that). Gradually the latter will stop being a distraction from the underlying activity and come to provide more and more finely textured orientation to that activity.

Ashvin, I don't find anything questionable in the quote. To me it's an invitation to progressively understand the spiritual meaning of water, with practical suggestions. "Concentrate on the water, on its pure, limpid transparency, and you will soon feel that it is reaching into unknown regions within you and working its transformations."
I am myself particularly drawn to understanding the meaning of water, as previously mentioned in this forum. Sure, "consecrated words that are consciously reflective of the activity", I understand. As I said to Cleric, what made me react is consecration when we are unconscious.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, I don't find anything questionable in the quote. To me it's an invitation to progressively understand the spiritual meaning of water, with practical suggestions. "Concentrate on the water, on its pure, limpid transparency, and you will soon feel that it is reaching into unknown regions within you and working its transformations."
I am myself particularly drawn to understanding the meaning of water, as previously mentioned in this forum. Sure, "consecrated words that are consciously reflective of the activity", I understand. As I said to Cleric, what made me react is consecration when we are unconscious.

Right, and the key point is that we can't draw a hard boundary between exercises such as 'consecration' (or whatever we label it) and the act of becoming more conscious of the spiritual meaning. It is appropriate in the domain of strictly sensory knowledge to say, "I am not going to mess around with these knobs before I thoroughly understand the functions of the machine they are attached to." That is simply being prudent. But when it comes to the spiritual domain, pushing and pulling the levers of our spiritual activity, intuitively exploring its possibilities of movement and degrees of freedom, is inseparable from becoming more conscious and knowledgeable within that domain. In that sense, it is what Cleric spoke of in relation to the etheric body:

As an example, imagine how by moving your arms in all possible ways you can sweep the volume of space reachable by your fingers. It would look something like a half-sphere in front of you and as something squished behind, since we can't reach much of the space behind our back. We have intuition of space only because we can sweep it in this way. Analogously, we can sweep the 'volume' of all thoughts and memories that we can reach. Just like our intuition of space serves as the intuitive context that integrates our spatial sensations together, so the inner experience of the etheric body manifests as the intuition that glues together the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity (mainly thinking and remembering).

The consecration and similar exercises help 'sweep the volume' of the astral body where purification through virtues translates into concrete knowledge of the rhythms of our experiential stream. Does this relate more to your initial concern?

[Lou Gold]

Here I would say - maybe some feel similarly - that for the way my particular constitution is made (yeah, made in Italy
perhaps this is why) I wouldn’t feel very drawn to consecrating everyday gestures in this way, that is, without understanding the deeper nature of the processes that, for example, orient toward and precipitate in the action of hand washing.

I am reminded of what Stainer says, that we can and should study and understand spiritual science before acquiring clairvoyance, that is, experiential, conscious understanding of reality from without the magnetizing and dulling filter of our physical body. To exaggerate a little, this consecration would feel to me like capturing and reworking a prayerful mood, but without freely offering it to a higher intelligence, whom I would submit to, and trust to harbor the prayer, and harmonize it as necessary.

To me it would feel like a wish for magic, or a prayer with conditions, where I try to catalyze the prayerful mood to direct it to the divine, but at the same time blindly formulating that it has to pass through a particular intersection in the world. I am probably misinterpreting, but this consecrating intention seems different from the slow-pace, ceremonial type of exercises when one fills with attention a simple everyday gesture as in, for example, Zajonc, whom Ashvin recently quoted. There, the intent is to try and map out the working of the will, through our body and gestures, in order to build up some strength and create more specific intuitive context around its unfolding, but with no intention to impress formulas of unknown (to the extent we don't understand them) origin in the flow of becoming.

To be clear, if I need help with dark thoughts and feelings, I would feel more whole praying to a higher being to enable me to deal with these, rather than attempting to catalyze higher forces through the (for me arbitrary) gesture of hand washing. It feels as if I was imposing a constraint to those higher forces, but without really grasping why and how it would interfere. Therefore I tend to think that prayer is for everyone, development of thinking is for everyone, but consecration is not. Am I misunderstanding consecration?

I'm sorry, maybe my choice of the word 'consecration' was poor. Now as I think, it may really point in a direction quite different from what I intended.

The idea was simple - that everything in our sensory life can be seen through deeper meaning. Cleaning is something that we see everywhere in the living kingdoms. Even a single cell has to eliminate waste. But all these things also have their spiritual archetypes. So the exercise is more about connecting the physical action with higher meaning. There's no danger of falling into superstition here. We're just recognizing that the physical act is embedded into much more encompassing and meaningful inner life. We simply draw the parallel that just as our physical body can be purified, so the same is true for our psychic life. And not only that there's a parallel but in a sense the physical cleaning is the convoluted manifestation of the spiritual archetype. Thus by recognizing this we already work a tiny bit towards the spiritualization of the physical world, attuning it back to the higher flow.

Or maybe the act of imagining the purification as a shower of Love is what seemed superstitious?

Or maybe the act of imagining the purification is also dependent on imagining what is dirty? Seems to me like anything might be imagined as a an insight or superstition -- example: seeing the earth herself as a great living being.