The primary purpose of creative meditation (also known as spiritual meditation) is service, rather than relaxation or therapy. It is the technique par excellence for spiritual growth and consciousness expansion, while being dedicated to improving the thought forms that govern daily world events.
Creative meditation…is invocative of the higher energies and creates a channel of contact between soul and spirit. This is brought about by…“vertical meditation.” It is also evocative and creates a ferment or dynamic movement in that level of being that must be affected or changed, and this is the horizontal aspect. Both the vertical and the horizontal activities are descriptive of the method of invocation and of evocation. (Discipleship in the New Age, II:213)
Creative meditation is the process of sustained, controlled mental attention and activity, and it is a skill that needs to be practiced daily. Meditation is not simply making the mind quiet and then doing nothing more; it is inner action – action in the inner worlds – and meditation of a creative kind includes various ways of definitely using inner, or subjective, energy.
Our desires and thoughts are continually filling the inner world with thoughtforms, or energetic creations of the mind, usually charged with desire. Their strength, quality and duration depend on the force with which we create them and the persistence with which we maintain them. One of the reasons for the present world turmoil is the mass of negative, conflicting and destructive thoughtforms with which humanity is filling the ethers. Therefore it is a primary responsibility to learn to control the mind and use it constructively instead of adding to the myriad of confused and destructive thoughts.
There are many approaches to creative meditation; however, they share the following common stages:
- Alignment, or being relaxed and centered with the mind still
- Concentration, or deliberately holding the mind steady
- Reflective meditation, or coordinated thinking about a specific “seed thought”
- Receptive meditation, or being mentally alert to insights from the Soul or Spirit
- Invocation, or direct request for aid
- Radiation of the energy generated out with a specific service focus
Sequenced Training in Meditation
The term "meditation" is used in multiple ways. For example, it may refer to a particular sequence of activities, or to the power of thought and the ability to create and sustain and eliminate thoughtforms, or to the whole Science of Invocation and Evocation. In its most "rudimentary" forms of practice, the purpose of meditation is to create the conditions in which we can be responsive to the Soul and live from that perspective. In the Ageless Wisdom meditation is not an end in itself but a means for further service. The kind of meditation used in the School has the goal of aiding servers in their projects in support of the Plan.
Meditation training at the School includes forms of meditation with seed thought whose purpose is to promote alignment and contact with the Soul, develop focus and depth, and control the three vehicles of the personality (physical, emotional and mental). Alignment with the Soul helps to eliminate personality distortion and become aware of ever more expanding truths. Later on training focuses on the ability to channel, not simply contact, spiritual energy. At a yet more advanced stage, meditation techniques teach us how to work with energy purposefully. The practice of meditation teaches us, through the interludes, how to create points of tension and release them in service. Thus the primary aim of the School's meditation training is to help students grow into the ability to work with energy in service to the Plan.