Why Techniques?
Techniques get the body involved in religion, which helps us fulfill that Great Purpose of linking up to the Source by connecting all the dimensions of existence, mind, body, soul and spirit.
Yeshua taught in terms of mind-body-soul and spirit, recognizing these realms exist in each human. He said the first commandment is to Love the Divine ” with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment” Mark 12:29-30, Matt. 22:37-40, Luke 10:26-28. That is a great verse to ponder over. It has lots of inner meanings and connections. Yeshua was quoting from Judaism’s most ancient prayer, the Shema, a prayer known to every one of his listeners since childhood. “Listen O Israel the Lord your god is One…” Deut. 6:4.
Heart and soul are the same thing and connected to the Magdala, as we will see later in this lesson when we discuss the Quaternity chart. Mind is mentioned directly. When Yeshua says strength in that verse, he references the body, the physical realm. When the word soul is used, really spirit was meant. “Heart” was the word for soul back then.
Heart = Soul.
Soul = Spirit
Mind = Mind
Strength = might or Body
All these realms are how to uplink to the Father, the Source. The Source is the Divine whom Yeshua says it is our first commandment to “love”.
There are powerful but simple exercises you can do to CONNECT, to build that uplink directly to the Divine. Why not “link up” to Mary Magdalene and Yeshua? Or to God-the-Mother or Father? Plug yourself in and log on. Download some programs – or some patches. Even get some words and messages (emails!) directly from your favorite deity. DO SOMETHING with all these alternative ideas you’ve read about.
Techniques taught by Yeshua himself
Teachings and truths are very fine and wonderful and we should study them and pass them on to the ones coming after us. But what about techniques? Did Yeshua teach any specific spiritual practices? We don’t know the details of the techniques he taught. But we crave the details. Many people want a little more for their spiritual life. Some want daily observances, special prayers, guided journey meditations, chants, magik symbols, sacred hymns, rituals and rites of passage, initiations like baptism and ordinations like deaconhood and priesthood. We want to DO something with our spiritual life, not just talk about it, read about it, not just think about it. Breaking out of the intellect into the physical realm is a must for embarking on the true esoteric Kristian grail quest-journey.
Healing techniques
Yeshua taught his healing methods to his students and sent them out to “do this and more,” implying that they could go further than him in healing skill!
He taught them hands-on healing techniques so that they could go out and deal with the many physical afflictions facing humanity in their day. Healing techniques may have constituted half of his instruction since we know it was such a large part of his ministry. Now we have modern medicine to do most of that making the lame to walk and the blind to see.
Spiritually speaking – today we can learn spiritual healing techniques to help the spiritually immobile (the lame) walk – make progress – to walk forth again. And we can cause the spiritually blind to perhaps “open their eyes,” and “see” a different worldview, use their open-minded kind of vision. So there are things we can learn to do, practices and techniques implied right in the New Testament. Yeshua told his students all this that I do you will do and more. He told them they’d go on to do MORE healing than he did. I have wondered what he meant by that. Perhaps he said it because he knew he would only be here a short time, long enough to start something, to get the ball rolling, whereas his students would go on and do more. He expected them to start a chain reaction extending the teachings into the far distant future. Do you think he ever thought of us in this present day?
The Bible doesn’t say how to heal, doesn’t explain the literal techniques. One time Yeshua used spit and dirt mixed together, another time somebody just touched his clothes which created some kind of circuit so that energy could flow into the sick person and out of the Master.
Male-Female Teams
Working in male-female pairs was the standard in Yeshua’s School. He actually sent them out in twos. Most of us were raised to think the apostles went out teaching and preaching to various communities in male-male pairs. Margaret Starbird points out in an August 2004 email: “We have the testimony of Paul (written BEFORE the Gospels) that the brothers of Jesus and the other apostles are “travelling around with their sister-wives” (1 Cor 9:5)–modelled IMO on the “Song of Songs” where the Bride is addressed, “my sister, my spouse.” The “Song” was very popular at the time of Jesus (2 copies were found in the caves at Qumran) and was even sung in taverns–to the shock of the second century rabbi Akiba. I think the model for this special “joyful” travelling around together was Jesus and Mary Magdalene–the “Beloveds” celebrating the “kingdom of God” in our midst!”
Techniques Implied but not stated in the Gospels
The Prayer Shawl or Stole
Use of a prayer shawl or prayer stole was no doubt practiced by Yeshua and his School, both males and females. More on that later in this lesson.
The Lord’s Prayer
Yeshua himself gave his students the Lord’s Prayer, no doubt giving them a recitation method.
Based on the world’s traditions that do spell things out (such as India’s scriptures) and based on what we know of the ancient mystery schools of Yeshua’s time and on what we can gather from the New Testament we can construct a nice set of practices, exercises and techniques.
Two Ingredients: Effort & Grace
Effort and grace. The physical work of techniques is not enough. Effort yes, but there is an unseen force – grace – sort of like magik makes it all happen. Grace is an invisible magical force at work in the universe. And Grace is associated with the Sacred Feminine. It’s a girl’s name. Effort and grace, working together.
Fulfilling our purpose and linking with the Divine does take effort. Eastern schools of meditation, Buddhism and yoga teach that effort only, perfectly correct practice of techniques brings on the experience of the divine, but it can take lifetimes of this faithful day in and day out practice and then when you contact their divine it is as an absolute impersonal kinda deity, not the personal God or Goddess we westerners want to connect with. We also don’t want to have to reincarnate multiple lifetimes. We want to get this done now, this lifetime. So western mystical traditions, including esoteric or inner Christianity have their own set of kickin’ techniques. And we believe in effort and grace working together.
Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition, by Richard Smoley says, “There is a subtle and profound dynamic between effort and grace, between activity that one performs and results that seem to come about on their own.”
THE TECHNIQUES
Reminder: Several of the techniques we will cover in this lesson are described in the Techniques chapter of Smoley’s book, Inner
Christianity. There is an Archdiakon/issa course based on that entire book, but we separated the Techniques chapter and made it a special lesson, throwing in several other Esoteric Christian techniques, too. So when you get to the Inner Christianity Course, some of this will look very familiar.
1. Sensing God’s Mark on the Forehead and Right Hand (not in Smoley’s book, a Mystery School exclusive!)
In Step 1 you sense the subtle circulation of the body (and Step 1
is covered in Smoley’s book)
Pick one shoulder blade and feel it touching the seatback behind you. Now close your eyes and take your mind, and “go” there to that shoulderblade. And just sense it. Feel the contact point it makes with the seatback. Feel it from the inside of your shoulderblade. You are inside sensing this bodypart. Are you in? Feel anything moving inside there? Does it feel kinda un-solid? Like maybe something in there is swirling around a bit? Some kind of invisible energy moving around inside your shoulderblade? Some people feel a tingling, some get a sensation of warmth. Or it feels like your shoulderblade is “dizzy” inside. Like some energy is flowing and moving below the surface.
You could “travel” to your elbow and feel it touching your chair, or you could go to the heel of your foot and sense where it makes contact with your shoe.
Do this technique enough and you become aware of a subtle circulating energy in your body. You could call it lifeforce, Ruach, Godforce. We know what Luke Skywalker would call it: The Force. This invisible energy that you sense just under the surface of your physical body is called the subtle body in eastern traditions. It is the invisible body you send out sometimes while sleeping, or in an out of body experience, or in so-called “astral travel.”
What is the Mark of God?
The Creator God in the Old Testament tells us he has marked or sealed his chosen ones, put an invisible seal on their foreheads and right hands. [Deut 11:18, Ezek. 9:4] [God marked the righteous on their foreheads: Rev. 3:12; 7:3; 9:4; 14:1; 22:4] Esoteric Christians know that the chosen ones are actually those that CHOSE GOD. We have free will, remember so the chosen ones are those that made an agreement with the Divine Source to work to fulfill their destiny, their Purpose of being – to climb that tower, flip that switch, and get to know the Divine intimately. Any person who agrees to be THEIRS – the Godhead’s – will be “marked” or “sealed” somehow by the direct contact with holiness. You give them your heart and they mark you on the forehead or right hand, says the Bible. The forehead symbolizes thinking-patterns and the right hand symbolizes behavior. The book of Revelation talks of god writing his name on peoples’ foreheads (and sometimes uses the term putting his seal there). No one knows what God’s seal looks like, but Judaism teaches it is the Hebrew letter Tav, because Tav means “seal,” “impression – like an embossed seal,” or “code” and is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, thus the seal of creation – because God used the 22 letters to create the universe. In Greek — the alphabet of early Christianity — the Hebrew letter Tav becomes Tau, which lucky for us who can’t read Greek, is also our capital T in the Latin alphabet.
But God’s actual seal may take different forms. Some people who do this technique see the six-sided hexagon, which is considered the building block of the universe in Sacred Geometry. The hexagon appears in honeycombs, ice crystals, and is the heart of the Star of David and every snowflake…
Whatever form it takes, God’s seal on you can be SENSED by going to the forehead or right hand just like we “traveled” to the shoulderblade a minute ago. Close your eyes again real quick and “go” to the inside of your right hand. With your inner eye have a look around. See what you can see, or just FEEL as we did the shoulderblade. Feel God’s mark on you.
WARNING LABEL: People prone to the power of suggestion can get all scared they have the mark of the beast on them when doing this exercise. That’s why this one is supposed to be done under the supervision of an instructor. Still, you can do this on your own if you are careful to remember the mark of the beast is taken voluntarily and only when fully conscious. You have to CONSENT to wear it and have to physically offer up your right hand or forehead to be marked. And all this is not going to happen until the apocalypse, so I assure you, you are perfectly safe.
Because these exercises really are quite potent they sometimes come with warning labels. Esoteric techniques can and will cause you to ascend – they will take you up to your beloved (and within, as this is Inner Christianity, Esoteric meaning Inner).
They work because they engage and put to work all four realms of your being – body, mind, soul, and spirit.
Simple is powerful. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of any given technique.
2. Making Sign of the Cross: Spirit, body, Mind, Soul (another Mystery School exclusive)
Remember in your 2nd Degree initiation (of any Esoteric Christian Order) you crossed yourself using the Quaternity Chart. We canted it slightly so that you end up looking at a big red X instead of a red plus sign. See below. Spirit at the top of a red X…
Here’s a review: Draw or
print the diagram above, and then while looking at it canted as shown above, take your right hand to touch your forehead. That’s spirit – Father God. Now lower your hand and touch the middle of your chest. That’s Body, Mother God. Keep looking at the red X chart. Now if you’ve been raised Catholic, your hand is going to want to go toward your left shoulder next. But if you were raised Eastern Orthodox you will be able to nicely go to the right. Going to the right first is the oldest form of making the cross, the Catholics changed it. Take your hand upward and touch the right side of your chest almost to the shoulder. That’s God-the-Son, the Word, and Mind. Now end up by touching your heart on the left side of your chest. That’s Mary Magdalene of course, the “heart” of Christianity, the soul and the Holy Grail. So do the whole thing again. Touch forehead, down to middle of chest, over to the right and end up on the left. You have made an equal bar cross across your body and have overlaid it with the Red X which forms the dividing lines between the four realms or dimensions. You sort of pull in that Red X, symbol of the Quaternal Godhead. The Red X is a mysterious coded symbol of the Grail Church and is seen in so many Mary Magdalene paintings, heretical “alternative church” watermarks, engravings and writings.
3. YHVH Breathing Technique, Hearing the Ineffable Name
The very first technique taught at the Mystery School — it’s part of the Catechumen Lessons, so we won’t give instructions here, just wanted to remind the reader about it.
4. Thought Power & Visualizations (more fully explained in Smoley’s book, Inner Christianity)
Thought forms (that’s Mind) infused with powerful emotions (that’s Soul) and coupled with internal visualizations can really get stuff done. The creative visualization self-help techniques of popular culture harness this powerful dynamic but they don’t quite go deep enough.
Logismoi (Thought-forms) made of Soul-stuff (astral light)
aka Magic and Creative Visualization
A collectively generated thought-form is called an egregore and it has even more power. It is made up of collective aspirations and goals of a group, often a magical Order. Egregore comes from the greek to watch over or to be aware of.
Centering Prayer
Thomas Keating’s centering prayer uses one one syllable word like god or love and recites it like a mantra.
Another choice used by John Main a Benedictine monk is the Aramaic password, Marana Tha, meaning “Our Lord, Come.”
Say the four syllables mah-rah-na-tha. Similar in meaning to “Kumbayah, My Lord” which means, “Come by here, My Lord”
Nighttime Practices before sleep
Backward Remembering (described in Inner Christianity)
Martinist: take a moral inventory of your actions each night
3. Inside a Sphere of light
You’ve probably heard of those balls of light people make and send out to do remote healing, or whatever. Making boxes, putting something in it like one of the elements (fire or water) and then taking it into your chest, absorbing it. OR putting something yucky into it and mentally shrinking it, sending it yonder.
Most people think the balls of light exercises are New Age but that method was invented by esoteric Christians. The new agers recognized its power, adopted it and use it a LOT.
You may not have heard the original and proper way to use a sphere of light. The esoteric Christian way was taught by Gareth Knight and included in his book Experience of the Inner Worlds. Gareth Knight is an esoteric Christian and Qabalist.
Step 1:
You build the ball of light around you as usual. You project it outward, “see” it shining there in your mind’s eye (or just sense its presence). But next you do not focus on feeling the BALL. Instead you feel yourself INSIDE the sphere. Sense yourself sitting inside this thing. How does it feel in there? In that inner space you can “penetrate both time and space, and the inner planes of Creation.”
AND you can actually approach the Creators. That dynamic duo consisting of mathematical physicist genius divine and his primal-energy partner, the great source Ma Matrix Chaos, the Abyss Lady, the Heavenly Mother.
Hanging out in a sphere of light you construct invisibly around your form can lead to some nifty realizations and encounters.
However, if you get too many visions, you need to tell them to go away. There is a funny warning story Richard Smoley relates in Inner Christianity. An enthusiastic zen student who jumped off his mat and ran to the zen master, “I just saw a vision of the golden buddha!” Unimpressed the teacher said, “Keep meditating and it will go away.” Visions, lights, special internal effects do happen. Even apparitions may “appear”, but they are not the goal.
4. The Fiery Spear Exercise (adapted version. We will learn Gareth Knight’s specific original version in the Inner Worlds course).
There is no picture for this one, we couldn’t find one that fit.
This one is recommended for only five minutes at a time to start. It is quite simple to memorize, only one line of instruction.
Visualize a spear made of fiery substance coming downward from above, entering the top of your head, passing thru your spine as though your spine were a hollow conduit, then leaving your body and “going deep into the heart of the earth.” Try to picture this in your mind’s eye. A spear of liquid fire comes from heaven, its path never curves, always going in a straight line. It finds your head, travels thru your spine and then plunges deep into the heart of the earth.
The Fiery Spear visualization technique awakens the powerful life-force in you and anchors you at the same time to the earth. It also uses your invisible spiritual body as a conduit taking energy from heaven and sending it into the earth.
This exercise is Christianity’s very own version of waking up the kundalini – the raw life-force within. It is another gem we’ve had but nobody told us about in Sunday school. And you don’t have to picture a coiled serpent or other eastern image. In the east the serpent is used to represent power and the creation of the world. Our ancestors made other things like the spear and grail into sacred symbols. In your spiritual practice, use the archetypes and symbols that work for you, that resonate with your sensibilities.
But why the spear — what is the heritage, the symbolism? The spear represents the one that pierced Yeshua’s side, some say going all the way into his heart. Blood and water came out. Legend says Joseph of Arimethea used the Holy Grail to collect some of that sacred blood and brought it to England. This could be symbolic of bringing the Grail religion out of the desert, out of the Middle East, to us — the northern or western world.
Of course we know the secret interpretation of this legend was that the blood of Jesus was “carried” as a child in MM’s womb. And she also was brought out of the desert to the north and to the west. Mary Magdalene and the Grail-as-a-Chalice symbol are interchangeable — overlapping meanings. Both are valid. They both represent powerful realizations or MYSTERIES we wish to grasp and understand fully.
5. Grail-to-Heart Visualization technique
In the Grail legends knights go in search of the Holy Grail, and often find a lady carrying it. The Grail can only be seen by the pure in heart. Once again it is associated with the heart.
Major theme of Esoteric Christianity, often lost or obscured: An awakened heart is necessary but not enough. You must also have an awakened intelligence, one that is capable of inquiring about meaning, searching and asking for meaning, trying to connect the dots in life. This is what Parsifal had to learn and it took him a long time. Finally he got it and the sacred marriage of heart to mind, yearning soul to thinking ego, took place and healed the wasteland. – Smoley Inner Christianity, Techniques Chapter.
The Grail is a pre-Christian universal archetype harnessed by Christianity
in the middle ages.
It has existed in the collective unconscious and as a literal sacred object to our ancestors. Prehistoric times knew it as the womb and the abyss. Then as a cauldron and finally it evolved into the chalice.
It appears in our earliest myths and legends, especially journey myths. Going on quests, is a theme of every psychologically satisfying story. Both ancient and modern. We see the spiritual journey motif from Indiana Jones, to Star Wars. From King Arthur legends to Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings (LoTR). Tolkein added a fascinating twist to the quest however. The sought after object-of-power is UNholy. That evil ring, is to be destroyed, not found. It is still a quest because the questors find their higher selves, their inner gifts, in the process. You could say that in current popular culture, that evil Ring is the SHADOW of the Holy Grail. Tolkein used Celtic & European pre-Christian themes and archetypes. Just as the writers of the Grail legends did. His stories may become as long lived as the Grail legends. Mainstream Christianity is already using the power of the Ring movies. New books are out like Walking With Frodo, a guide to resisting evil while going on the journey of life. And Finding God in LoTR. There is also the Gospel According to Tolkein, which is a scholarly work explaining all the underlying Christian themes in LoTR.
This next technique uses the Grail symbol itself. It is called the Grail-to-Heart Visualization — and it HAS a diagram, however primitive!
Step
1: Picture the grail chalice floating outside your body just in front of your heart.
Step 2: Now let it start to move and go inside you. Let the Grail merge with your heart. Coalesce into it.
Step 3: When the Grail fully merges with your heart you will “feel your heart burn inside you.”
Notice the heart and grail symbols overlapping again and look at the Quaternity Chart to see that Magdalene, the Grail, is also the heart. Only the pure in HEART were allowed to “see” the Grail in the legends.
If you like this Grail exercise and the Fiery Spear, you will like the book Experience of the Inner Worlds by Gareth Knight. There we will learn other esoteric Christian techniques such as the Upper Room, the Winding Stair, and the Dark Cloud. There is enough in the Inner Worlds course to keep us busy for a whole year, as our advanced initiates can testify.
6. Prayer of the Heart
Now we are going to go back in time to an Eastern Orthodox Christian technique started by the desert fathers just after the time of Yeshua. They were doing this Prayer of the Heart exercise during the days when the New Testament was being put together.
Paul advised his readers to pray unceasingly. Either he himself practiced the Prayer of the Heart or some very early Christians turned it into a technique. To practice it you simply repeat a prayer-word or prayer-phrase over and over. The Prayer of the Heart became immortalized in a classic book called Way of the Pilgrim. An eastern orthodox Russian monk once gave that book to my husband with a very mysterious, conspiratorial air. It was two years before the Soviet Union fell, and Christianity was still illegal in Russia. As soon as we got home I snatched the book away from him and stayed up all night reading it. Boy howdy but do they take a long time – the whole book! – to get to the point and actually give you the words of the powerful Jesus prayer. Of course I was only 21 and it was a good exercise in spiritual patience. One has to endure the initiation of pain and frustration to get to the gold of the gift. The impatient immature ones get weeded out in the process – I was almost weeded out for sure regarding this teaching! The repetition of a prayer-word or prayer phrase is called a mantra in Hindu practice. You’ve no doubt heard of the most famous mantra in the world, the OM mantra and perhaps you’ve also heard about other famous mantras such as the Tibetan “Om mani padme hum” or OM Nama Shivaya. We will discuss mantras and their recitation in the mantra section of Chapter _______.
The Prayer of the Heart is mysterious and simple.
This exercise involves reciting a specific one line prayer.
Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior Have Mercy on me. As you remember from the Catechumen Initiation / Baptism, these words are part of the Ichthys Jesus Fish anacronym. See diagrams at right.
Sometimes the words ” a sinner” are added to the end. There is also a short version – simply saying “Jesus,” which is why the Prayer of the Heart technique is also called the Jesus Prayer.
Other Formulaic prayers like Hail Mary and Lord’s Prayer are fine.
You can choose a prayer like, “ay-MOGdah-laynay, or Maria ay-MOG-dah-laynay”. To make it longer you could add something like “…who knows the All, dwell with me.”
Quaternity: “Father-Mother God, Sacred Son & Holy Daughter, Creators, Redeemers, be with me, your kin.” (Kin means family, we need all the reminders we can get)
Anyway, take your time to decide on a short potent god-name prayer like this. Then stick with the one you decide for at least a while.
First you say it outloud. Do this alone. Practice 10 min. a day.
You are supposed to pay attention to the MEANING of the prayer, not just recite it like a robot. You want to think about the meaning so that it isn’t just a prayer of the body. And if you put your emotions into it, you are adding SOUL.
Matt: 6:7 Jesus says, “When you pray don’t use vain repetitions as the pagans do.” He wanted to be sure vain repetition wasn’t all one did but concentration on the meaning of the words must be added.
WE INTERUPT PRAYER OF THE HEART TECHNIQUE TO THROW IN A MISC TECHNIQUE…
7. Starbird: Wearing a Prayer Stole
Margaret Starbird suggests in her book,
Feminine
Face of Christianity to use a prayer stole that you drape over your head and shoulders to help you feel the presence of the Sacred Feminine. You can use the prayer stole while doing this Prayer of the Heart technique. As the stole surrounds and envelopes you, says Margaret, so does the energy of the sacred feminine. Men can try this, too. In the style of the blue and white masculine prayer shawls – called a tallit-worn by Jewish men to this day. Yeshua himself is often portrayed wearing a head covering. No doubt signifying a Hebrew tallit. Yeshua liked to withdraw from the crowds and commune with the Divine. Perhaps when Yeshua covered his head he would feel surrounded and enveloped by his Heavenly Mother. He would speak to the father, commune with him using words. And Yeshua could feel the mother, commune with her using the material object or tool of the headcovering. Matter – mater – mother – surrounding and enveloping him like a mother’s love – and grace.
So you are praying your Prayer of the Heart outloud – alone – for 10 min. a day, perhaps twice a day if you can.
Internal Phase
Then you move to the internal phase where you stop saying it out loud.
And the sensation of reciting the prayer should now become rooted in the heart. Think of it as tho you are actually repeating it down there – in your heart. Feel it “speaking” from inside the left side of your chest, from the place your hand covers when you say the pledge of allegiance. Put your hand there now as if making the pledge. Think of reciting a prayer from in there. The placing hand on heart thing, as in the pledge, comes from our ancestral instinct that the heart is where it’s at. Terms like ‘cross your heart’ and ‘I swear on my heart,” come from this. We often touch our hearts to show absolute sincerity that transcends words. Okay, you can take your hand down now if you want.
The next stage is The Ache.
After repeating your chosen prayer silently from the heart for a long while, your heart will begin to ache.
When that happens, “leave” the heart place and take your attention up to the spot we talk from – just under the adam’s apple. Repeat the prayer from that place – still silently – for awhile and then descend again to the place your hand covers when you say the pledge.
After practicing the Prayer of the Heart faithfully you will reach a state of stillness.
Your heart will literally feel warm. In the GRAIL-TO-HEART technique we also talked about a burning sensation in the heart. Heartfires. Modern science doesn’t know what makes the heart beat. They say it is caused by some kind of invisible untraceable “spark” — an electrical spark that we cannot measure, only
detect its results, a heartbeat.
This brings us to the final stage of the Prayer of the Heart
Then a small flame will be lit in your heart and it will burn there as long as you like. It may also feel like something is squeezing your heart (but not hurtful). Now is when you begin to sense directly the presence of God and words fail to describe it further. – we can only talk about this with words. A person can’t quite get the ah-hah, I understand experience, unless they actually try this technique.
8. Starbird: Wearing a Ring for Mindfulness
Margaret Starbird suggests another wonderful spiritual practice in
Feminine
Face of Christianity – the wearing of a ring, perhaps around the neck from a chain, or as usual on the hand — to remind you to speak to your eternal beloved. If you already wear a special ring, she says, switch it to the other hand so that it will come to your attention more often. Each time you see the ring or feel it — any time it somehow comes to your attention — talk to your inner beloved. He or She is lonely for you and loves to have you converse.
9. What about Meditation? It does exist in Xtianity.
It seems Meditation is the number one technique in the world’s deep religions. Smoley says Christians see meditation not as a cognitive exercise – all in the mind — but as a way of actually encountering God in his/her personhood
10. Chanting
You can use Chanting to engage the body, mind & soul to uplink to the Divine. Take a Psalm or some other inspiring passage or poem and start by just reading it out loud. Alone where no one can hear you. Do that until you are comfortable with the sound of your own voice. This is great to do in the car. But the radio must be off.
Next begin to intone the words, kind of sing them, by imitating chants you’ve heard sung before. The tune doesn’t matter.
Do this awhile and soon you will feel an inner reverberation. The words will start to resound in different parts of the body. The center of the head, or maybe the heart.
If you keep it up, Smoley says, you will notice that it is possible to change the atmosphere of a room thru this process. “Chanting of this sort has no doubt fostered the air of serenity that abides in old cathedrals, monasteries, and other holy places.”
11. Next is Divine Reading.
It’s called “lectio divina.” Lectio divina or Divine Reading is an ancient practice kept alive in Christianity by the Benedictines and Esoteric Christian’s. It is a slow and contemplative reading of a small passage, page, verse or even a word or two in holy scripture. Jews and Christians — the “people of the Book” — would do this by candlelight leaning over an ancient scroll or fat leatherbound tome open to their favorite verse. Imagine yourself looking at any line of text. Staring at it a minute.
The words of the passage you are reading are like a landing strip. When your mind takes off (like an airplane), you bring it right back down to the page. The line of text you are staring at is the landing strip. Your mind will taxi and take off again. But you just land it right back by taking your eyes over the words, reading them slowly, slowly and contemplatively. Things then begin to happen. You uplink to the divine.
Along with chanting, this is one of the world’s most ancient techniques, stemming from the earliest days of holy books, (scrolls, clay tablets, walls) perhaps as far back as Sumeria and ancient Egypt when people first wrote holy words down. The Psalms, some of the world’s oldest poetry of all time, have been used for lectio divina more than any other reading material. You can join the tradition by “trying out” some of those enigmatic prayer-songs in the middle of your Bible.
12. The Lord’s and Lady’s Prayers
The Knights Templar recited the Lord’s Prayer multiple times before breakfast. They were some of the world’s first esoteric Christians. We also believe the Templars, Rosicrucians and any other esoteric Christians, recited a Lady’s Prayer. As you probably well know, in all of our Mystery School’s esoteric Kristian Orders we pray the Lord and Lady’s prayers one after the other for balance.
The best way to work with these prayers is to memorize them. Then you can try adding in use of the rosary. Rosary praying is a very old form of Christian magik. Protestants especially would agree that the rosary is magik. They’ve been calling it magical mumbo-jumbo since rosaries were invented.
Another twist on the practice of reciting prayers inwardly is to imagine yourself typing the words. It helps your mind focus on the words of the prayer, AND engages the body – the physical impulses from brain-to-fingers.
Richard Smoley points out in his techniques chapter of Inner Christianity that the Doxology (ending of the Lord’s Prayer) correlates to last three spheres on the Tree of Life. Most scholars say the Tree of Life was created in the 1200’s in Spain by mystical Jews. But Yeshua’s use of it as a doxology shows not only is it probably much older, but that Kabbalah’s influence on and interpretation with Christianity goes much further back than the Renaissance.
Kingdom = malkhut
Netzach = Power “Eternity but means something like the power of cyclical repetition
Glory = Hod
So don’t knock Kabbalah, since Yeshua used it at the end of the Lord’s Prayer.
Conclusion
Before we close, look again now at the Quaternity Chart. You can use this system to get ideas which techniques to use to connect to the four persons of the Godhead, or four realms of existence. If you need some Yeshua or Mind in your life, try words or scripture. Lectio divina is perfect for him. Bring in God-the-Mother with physical material items such as prayer shawls, rosaries, sweet oils. Contact God the Father with intuitive things like symbol meanings. Anything that requires figuring out layers of meaning. Such as when you get a sudden aha! – intuitive connection of a symbol to its meaning — can connect you to him. Meditating on cosmic symbols as in tarot, or even just sacred numbers.
Mary Magdalene calls us from the heart. MUSIC triggers the emotions and thus is SOUL. So chanting, singing and music, or any use of the emotions can connect us to her. Dancing is nice because it uses the body and the soul, connecting us with both parts of the Sacred Feminine. Then if you also think of the meaning of the words of the song you are dancing to, it links you to Mind / Yeshua. Dance in some meaningful pattern that you grasp on an intuitive level – like move around the room in a spiral or make a hexagon shape – and you’ve got ALL FOUR.
We touched on all the major esoteric Christian spiritual practices. Except for hands on healing. There are many more, though. And advanced versions and different twists to the ones we covered. Explore as many as you can — try them all. Find the one or two that resonate best with you. You’ll know which ones are the best, because you will get results. Your special version of the divine uplink will light right up and connect you directly and profoundly to the deity that has your heart.