Introduction to the Preliminary Meditation Outline

To undertake occult meditation and serious esoteric study is, in itself a service to the community of man. To pursue this study and training with steadfastness and perseverance, will bring forth into full expression the will-to-serve, which is the basic urge, the motivating impulse, of you the soul.

We, your friends in Arcana, include you into a group of meditators who (as a group entity) exist for the sole purpose of aiding, to the full extent of our understanding, the manifestation of some specific portion of the Plan for human progress. We are very much in earnest. We work as well as idealize. We find the work joyous. We find it rewarding. We find the companionship of fellow souls to be one of life's most precious gifts.

Our immediate service is to you. We stand ready to aid and support your spiritual advance in every way we can.

The meditation work is designed to produce certain beneficial effects in the subtle bodies whether you have previously meditated little or much or not at all. Use the meditation outline exactly as it is, step by step; you will be laying a foundation necessary to a later systematic building in consciousness.

When we as a group have established a rhythm of cooperative workmanship, we can be more effective as a channel for Hierarchical energies. We anticipate your contribution to the plan and purpose which brought us together.

We wish you joy in this spiritual adventure and rejoice with you as you enter on the path which cannot be traveled alone.

In friendly companionship,
The Staff of ARCANA

Meditation is the Foundation of Arcana

Meditation receives priority in the study papers. We learn to give to meditation the first consecrated activity of the Whole Man, at or near the beginning of each day. It is the foundation of every other aspect of the ascent of the Spiritual Way.

Quoting from Letters on Occult Meditation:

"The emphasis upon the importance of meditation follows naturally upon the realization by the student of the absolute necessity for the domination of the Personality by the Ego."

"Man at this time is engaged in many pursuits and through the force of circumstances he is polarized entirely in the lower self, that polarization being in either the emotional or mental body. One point of interest: as long as the polarization is purely physical or purely emotional, no need for meditation is ever felt. Even when the mental body is active, no urge arises until the man has run through many changes and many lives, has tasted the cup of pleasure and of pain through many incarnations, has sounded the depths of the life lived entirely for the lower self and found it unsatisfying. Then he begins to turn his thought to other things, to aspire to that which is unknown, to realize and sense within himself the pairs of opposites, and to contact within his consciousness possibilities and ideals undreamt of hitherto. He has come to a point where success, popularity and diverse gifts are his, and yet from their use he derives no contentment; always the urge within persists until the pain is so severe that the desire to reach out and up, to ascertain something and someone beyond, overcomes all obstacles. Then he begins to meditate, to ponder, to intensify vibration until in process of time he garners the fruits of meditation."

There will be more instruction on meditation; it will reach you in a steady uninterrupted stream so long as you are working in ARCANA.

The very first step, now, is for you to go ahead and actually use the Preliminary Meditation. Each subsequent measure of instruction should have a measure of your effort, your application, to play upon. If sunshine were kept in a closed container, if it were kept theoretical and not related to the garden, it could not cause the flowers to grow. Most people reach the threshold of real esoteric training with more theoretical knowledge than they know how to apply. We attempt to act upon the principle that knowledge (especially spiritual knowledge) must be applied before deeper knowledge is attainable.

Evening Review With Eight Questions

EXPLANATION OF EVENING REVIEW
The server-in-training closes each day with the Evening Review.

The most valuable Evening Review is clear, rapid, impersonal and impartial. As the regular daily practice of meditation gradually and surely shifts the center of interest away from selfish personality preoccupation towards the Soul's cooperative intent, there Will be less and less tendency during the Evening Review to waste time and thought in self-depreciation, self-condemnation, self-defense or self-praise. Excessive self interest simply fades out when the light of the Soul reveals new and beautiful possibilities in the dimension of relatedness. The server's own characteristics, both good and not So go, interest him only as they are a help or a hindrance in what he realizes he should be doing.

There is a certain similarity between a good review and good gardening, which it is well to note. In both, one pulls out the weeds again and again, but the major attention is Kept on the cultivating of the flowers and vegetables, watering them, protecting the weak shoots, transplanting some for sturdier development, pruning when necessary, and finally harvesting them and putting them to constructive use.

1.) Arrange a time and place, as close to the day's end as possible, wherein you can be alone and undisturbed for five to fifteen minutes. Relax for a minute. Then raise your consciousness into the head. When stabilized on the plane of mind, sound the Sacred Word once (inaudibly), breathing it out towards the Soul, and lifting your consciousness into the Soul where you take your stand.

2.) Say with quiet confidence:
"I stand in the light, the One who can observe."

3.) Then using the illumined mind as a searchlight, look backwards over the day's events from evening to that day's beginning. All happenings do not warrant equal attention.

4.) Using one of the eight questions will help you to see each day from the soul's point of view.
Use only one question each evening.

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