People in general have the idea that the meditative life is some kind of cloistered, dull existence. That nothing much happens. One sort of gets quiet and allows a higher energy to come in and that’s about it. Boring, dull, no stimulation, no excitement. But this is nothing more than a “sophisty of the human mind” (to quote Monroe Shearer). The human mind has all kinds of sophistries – justifications and excuses – all of them false – to deter the meditative experience.

Another sophistry is the idea that spending time on your inner life will prevent you from dealing with the things of the outer world. That you will miss opportunities in the outer life. I too felt like this for many years, but personal experience showed me the fallacy of it. For no matter how deeply you go into meditation, if there is something that you are supposed to do – some person that you are supposed to meet – something in the Divine Plan of your life – you will not miss it. In fact, you will be thrown down from your meditation in order to do this.

It is true that there are many things in the outer world that you will miss – troubles, problems, people that you shouldn’t be meeting, projects that you shouldn’t be doing, opportunities that “seem” like opportunities, but which turn out to be dust and vanity and time wasters. And this is good.

What I learned was that the meditative experience, the communion with Higher Consciousness, is actually a time saver, not a time waster. It automatically weeds out all the “false starts” and troublesome karmic situations that you would have gotten into had you not been in meditation.

Isn’t it better to be in communion with your Higher Consciousness, to feel its electric flow of force coursing through your body, to feel its sense of wellness, its love, its embrace, than to be arguing with troublesome people, or in consideration of vain pursuits that will only cause more pain and heartache?

In the world success is viewed as “busyness” – motions made by the physical body. But wasted motions, are not success. They vampirize much needed energy and distract a person from his or her really important goals. The resultant arguments, conflicts and bad feeling generated by these kinds of actions tend to generate more negative karma in the person’s life.

The inner state of “stillness” will lead to more – and more harmonious – outer success than mere magnitude of physical motions. From the point of stillness – from communion – the resultant actions will be powerful, to the point, and always successful. The Higher Consciousness only knows success.

The human mind is addicted to action – action, action, action. This is all it knows. When it is inactive, it feels restless and uncomfortable. Part of this is good. For the body is an “action” machine – built for this purpose. However, its actions were meant to come from the directives of the Higher Consciousness and not from itself. Action just for the sake of action is merely spinning the wheels – wasting gas.