When I first became
interested in the spiritual world I, like many of my generation, did not enter
through Christianity but through meditation of a roughly Eastern sort. I say
roughly Eastern because my meditation was not based on any particular
practice but was a generalised emptying of the mind and sitting in silent awareness. In fact I started meditation by just staring out of the
window! But I soon moved on to sitting cross legged, eyes closed, and
trying to still thought. There was not much sense of God or anything other than
to reach a higher state of consciousness. All pretty amateur and self-centred,
I must confess. But despite this fairly hopeless method I did have certain
experiences that seemed to indicate to me that there was something real to it
all. Beginner's luck, I suppose.
Eventually I honed my technique
and learnt to meditate by stilling thought (or trying to, this was never easy
for me) and attempting to focus my awareness in the heart which, spiritually speaking, is not the physical heart but a more central point in the chest. But still God was
not invited to the party. I was young, only 22, and keen but very inexperienced
and ignorant. My motive was mostly self-centred but there was also the
sincere attempt to discover some kind of highly reality because I felt it must
be there and that's what a person should do. So I did have a
real sense that a human being was supposed to search for the highest truth that
he could and not waste time in materialistic pursuits. My
motive was a mixture of self-interest and genuine aspiration to something higher.
Anyway, to cut a long story
short, I learnt before too long that there was more to the spiritual path than
just the attempt to enter into a state of passive bliss which was probably my
initial goal. I used my periods of meditation to try to become more aware of
God within and I began to appreciate that the spiritual path was not just about
higher states of consciousness but the attempt to put oneself right with one's
Maker. I went from simply trying to gain something for myself to trying to attune myself to the real. In a way that remains my aim.
Continued on Albion Awakening
2 comments:
I couldn't resist the temptation - forgive me.
From a surname site:
Last name: Wildblood
"This is an English surname of great interest. It derives comes from a medieval nickname for someone who behaved in a wild fashion, (or given the robust humour of the period, the complete reverse!), and is claimed to describe an untamed spirit or in later terms "a rake". The origination is from the Old English pre 7th Century word "wilde" meaning untamed, and "blod", meaning blood or spirit."
An untamed spirit. In some respects, you appear to have calmed down from earlier incarnations. In other respects, you are as feisty and non-conformist as ever you were. Good thing too.
Well, I'm not a rake, at least not in the 18th century meaning of the word, but I like to think some of the other descriptions might apply to me - in their best sense only, of course!
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