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Breathing is the simplest meditation.  When life starts falling apart all around you and you don’t even have time to call in the Light, just take a deep breath.  Breathe in the positive and breathe out the negative.  – John-Roger

This article by John-Roger was originally published in the Movement Newspaper in October 1982.

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There is no way to deceive God.  As you demonstrate your ability to discern truth, to sacrifice the lesser worlds for the greater Spirit, to live in faith and creativity, to make your intelligence and will useful to you, and to be devoted and disciplined in loving service to all, you have anointed yourself in mastership.  Others can only reflect to you that you are there.  And if you are there, of course, it does not matter what anyone else says or thinks.  So ultimately it comes right back to: “To thine own Self be true.”

I talk about the Spirit and tell you of the God within and the higher realms of Spirit as a means of awakening you to those greater levels.  You might say, “What good does it do to hear your words if I don’t know them for myself?”  If I didn’t keep putting out the message, you might not turn in this direction for a long, long time.  You might become so caught up in the illusions of the world you wouldn’t look toward Spirit for eons.

I love you and want to share the joy of Spirit with you.  You can learn through joy.  You can learn through upliftment.  You can also learn through pain and anguish, but why make those choices if you have others?  Pain is not a negative process; it lets you know you’re awake and alive.  Pain can be a strengthener.  Grief can be a strengthener.  Feelings of intimidation, worry, confusion – they’re all potential strengtheners.

Suppose you have a piece of gold which you want to make into a beautiful chalice, but you don’t know how to do that.  So you take it to a goldsmith who has the skill to make the chalice.  You give him the gold and you release it.  You don’t care if he melts it, hammers it, molds it, shapes it, or even throws away the parts that contain impurities as he makes it into a beautiful chalice.  You don’t care about the process of transformation as it goes from a rough piece of gold to the golden chalice.  The result is worth it.  The beauty of the final product is worth everything that has been part of the process.

When you move toward God Consciousness, you give your consciousness over to God and ask him to make you into the golden chalice.  God will do it precisely the way that is perfect for you.  What do you care if you have an ache or a pain along the way?  What does it matter if you’re a little depressed one day or a little confused another?  If you were already perfect, you would have already reached God realization.  You must bring yourself into line with spiritual direction.  When things disturb you, move to the higher perspective and see where it might fit in the larger picture.  If you complain about the work that Spirit does with you, Spirit backs off.  Then you complain, because God is molding you into the golden chalice and is separating out the impurities from the gold.  When the chalice is completed, Spirit will come along and give you jewels to add to it and enhance its beauty.

You can build strength through every situation that appears to you.  If someone comes up to you with some marijuana and wants you to join him in smoking it, you can go with him, roll it, get it all ready, and then put it down and walk out.  You’ll build strength.  You can go to your cupboard and take out the liquor bottle and pour the booze down the sink without taking that final drink.  If you’re overweight, you can cook a beautiful steak and throw it in the garbage disposal.  Or you can go to a restaurant and order a wonderful meal but not eat it.  Yes, I agree, it’s a crazy point of view, but watch the strength you’ll build.  You build integrity.  You build character.  You build your own trust in yourself as you learn to keep your word and be true to yourself.  Integrity is an indicator in the physical world of spirituality.

Your word should be like the North Star which remains constant.  Once you have given your word in a sincere or spiritual way, it should remain constant.  If you change it, you are not really following a path of upliftment.  You’re following a path of manipulation, attempting to manipulate people in their relationships to you.  Usually your attempts to manipulate are based upon your emotions, your thoughts, or imagination which create all sorts of illusion and delusion.

Take care of this physical level.  It’s important.  You create your habits here.  You serve yourself well if you create good habits.  My mother used to get after me to make my bed every morning, and I couldn’t understand why because every night it would become unmade again.  In her own way she explained that making the bed, cleaning my room, showering, brushing my teeth – all those mundane levels of living – were part of demonstrating respect and love for the God that dwells within me.  We each are a part of God, very specifically and literally.  We honor the God within by doing good things both in this world and in the higher worlds.

You cannot neglect this level and call yourself spiritual.  If you want to be eccentric and get away with it, it’s also important to maintain a certain amount of practicality.  If you have your life together, have a good family life, are holding a good job, making good money and paying your bills, you can rant and rave and roll around on your living room floor, and everybody says, “Yeah, but everything else in his life is fine, so it must be okay.”  If you’re an undependable “slob”  who borrows money from everyone around and acts weird, they lock you up.  If you want to be eccentric (which can sometimes be another word for free), get your life together.  Then you can do some eccentric things if you want.

Maintain the mundane levels.  That may come down to simply breathing in and out when the going gets rough.  Breathing is the simplest meditation.  When life starts falling apart all around you and you don’t even have time to call in the Light, just take a deep breath.  Breathe in the positive and breathe out the negative.  If your emotions are kicking up on you, just take in a deep breath, gather your emotions up into that breath, and then release them as you breathe out.  And if you need to, do it again and again.

You have dominion over yourself and your expression.  Ask for the Light to be with you.  Focus on the Light.  Recognize yourself as a child of God who deserves all that is good.  As you hold that focus inside of yourself, you’ll create it.  You can create good feelings, happiness, joy, and a quality of peace within you.  When you start to experience bliss, you know you have tapped into the Soul level energy.  When you start to experience the loving inside, you’ll know your path.  There will be no way to deny it.  When you realize you hardly notice what used to drive you into negativity, you’ll start to know the value of the spiritual path.

Take the time in your life to consider your path.  Make your choices based upon the best and most accurate information available to you.  Don’t rush into changes.  Meditate upon your life’s path.  Ask for Spirit’s guidance.  If you are involved in something you would like to change, ask Spirit to take the old pattern from you, and then let it go.  It sounds simple, and it is.  It is not necessarily easy.  When you are willing to let go of those things which have not worked for you in your life, ask Spirit to take them.  And then just move forward on your path.

Be willing to drop the criteria of the physical, mental, emotional and financial levels and move to the spiritual.  Be willing to sacrifice the lower levels to gain the Spiritual.  If you want to travel the path of the Sound Current initiations of the Traveler, you must be willing to reach beyond the limitations of the material worlds in order to gain the awareness of your life in the spiritual worlds.

Baruch Bashan

ENJOY A SHORT BREATHING MEDITATION BY JOHN-ROGER
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