Meditations on the Tarot

The task for this week is to work on the purity of thought.

Whenever we catch ourselves harboring negative or hateful thoughts about others, envious thoughts, inappropriate erotic thoughts, inter alia, even negative thoughts, perhaps especially, about ourselves, we are to do the concentration exercise.

Bring attention to your selected body area and while you maintain that awareness, observe those thoughts while striving – without effort – and see what happens.

We need to be gatekeeper’s of our thoughts, like an esoteric version of Maxwell’s Demon.

Most of you did not choose to speak last night, so I have to assume that you found it difficult to remember to do the concentration exercise. Nevertheless, the effort is worthwhile and it is important to notice the difference from our “normal” waking state.

There is a small tension in the birth of Christ in the soul. On the one hand, we are to judge our thoughts objectively and impartially, like Christ the Judge. We shouldn’t want to be burdened by negativity.

On the other hand, Christ the Redeemer, will forgive (under the appropriate circumstances) these negative thoughts. There is the tendency in the modern world, under the influence of Freud and the “masters of suspicion” to consider negativity as representing “what we really are” or “our true feelings”. Quite the contrary … they are usually temptations from lower forces, not what we are meant to be.

Fortuitously, I just found out about this talk that may be of interest, at least the first half of it: The Psychological & Spiritual Effects of Being Negative

We focused on the idea of “concentration without effort”, beginning on page 8 of MoTT. This is the first thing to learn.

So we learned an effortless concentration exercise that can be done at any time. During the week, we are to try this exercise whenever we pass through a doorway of any type. During those moments, we can observe the automatic movements of thoughts, images, passions, personal desires, and other mental perturbations. The idea is to develop the ability to consciously direct attention, rather than to allow our attention to be randomly attracted.

We can observe, then, what happens to mental perturbations while we are directing attention. Is there Silence where there was previously “noise”? We can learn to maintain this concentration for longer periods, as described on page 11:

To begin with there are moments, subsequently minutes, then “quarters of an hour” for which complete silence or “concentration without effort” lasts. With time, the silence or concentration without effort becomes a fundamental element always present in the life of the soul.

This concentration exercise is always available to us whenever we remember to try it.

We touched on higher forms of concentration, as outlined by Mary of Agreda in The Mystical City of God

Man’s mind is rapt by God to the contemplation of the divine truth in three ways:

1. He contemplates it through certain imaginary pictures.
2. He contemplates the divine truth through its intelligible effects.
3. He contemplates it in its essence.

Now when man’s intellect is uplifted to the sublime vision of God’s essence, it is necessary that his mind’s whole attention should be summoned to that purpose in such a way that he understands nothing else by phantasms, and is absorbed entirely in God.

These are related to the stages of prayer: vocal prayer, mental prayer, and unceasing prayer.

Concentration on mental images or thoughts are forms of meditation.
Concentration that is beyond images and thoughts is contemplation.