Of a practice here is an amazing quote that reads like a lecture from George Fox where he is explaining in 17th Century terminology how to meditate in the way he understands it as process of technique.
There is some archaic language in it, but do push on. For instance, ‘incarnate’ or 'embodied ignorance' could be a fair current synonym for the usages of ‘transgress’. - whereas 'God' is Love, Light, etc.,
This larger quote below comes from the book, George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’, an editing of archival notes for a book that George Fox wished, even leaving money towards its publication, to be published following his death. The original manuscript disappeared and was never published. In recent times pieces have been pulled together. This archival quote below appears in a footnote within the text of the modern compilation in publication of George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’ about healing.
Excerpt: From, George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’..
George Fox:
“Friend,
Be still and cool in thy mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord God, whereby thou wilt receive this strength and power from whence life comes to allay all tempests against blusterings and storms. That is it which moulds up into patience, into innocency, into soberness, into stillness, into stayedness, into quietness up to God with his power. Therefore mind, -that is the word of the Lord God unto thee, -that the authority and thy faith in that to work down, for that is it which keeps peace and brings up the witness in thee that hath been transgressed, to feel after God who is a god of order and peace with his power and life. When transgression of the life of God in the particular the mind flies up in the air, and the creature is led into the night, and nature goes out of his course, and an old garment goes on, and an uppermost clothing, and nature leads out of his course, and so it comes to be all of a fire in the transgression, and defaceth the glory of the first body. Therefore be still a while from thy own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires, imaginations and be stayed in the principle of God in thee to stay thy mind upon God, up to God, and thou wilt find strength from him, and be a present help in time of trouble in need, and to be a god at hand, and it will keep thee humble, being come to the principle of God, which hath been transgressed, which humble God will teach in this way, which is peace and such he doth exalt. And now as the principle of God in thee hath been transgressed, come to it, to keep thy own will, that is the earthly, thou must be kept. Then thou wilt feel the glory of the first body, and there the wisdom of God will be received, which is Christ, by which all things was made and created, in which wisdom to be preserved and ordered to God’s glory. There thou wilt come to receive and feel the physician of value which clothes people in their right mind whereby they may serve God and do his will.
For all distractions, distempers, unruliness, confusion, is in the transgression, which transgression must be brought down, before the principle that hath been transgressed be lifted up, whereby the mind may be seasoned and still’d, and a right understanding of the Lord, whereby his blessing enters and is felt over all that is contrary with the power of the Lord God which gives dominion, which awakens the principle of God within, which gives a feeling after God. Therefore keep in the fear of the Lord God. That is the word of the Lord unto thee, for all these things happeneth to thee for thy good, and your good, to make you to know your own strength and means, and to know the Lord’s strength and power. Trust in him therefore.
Let the time be sufficient that is past. Who in anything hath been lifted up in transgression out of the power of the Lord, for he can bring down and abase the mighty ones and lay them in the dust of the earth. Therefore all keep low in this fear, that thereby you may receive the secret of God and his wisdom, and know the shadow of the Almighty, and sit under it in all tempests and storms and heats, for God is a god at hand, and the Most High, he rules in the children of men. So then this is the word of the Lord God unto you all, what the Light doth make manifest and discover temptations, confusion, distractions, distempers. Do not look at the temptations, confusions, corruptions, but at the Light that discovers them, that makes them manifest, and with the same Light you will feel over them, to receive power to stand against them, which Light discovers. The same Light that lets you see sin and transgression will let you see the covenant of God which blots out the sin and transgression, which gives victory and dominion over it and brings into covenant with God. For looking down at sin and corruption and distraction, you are swallowed up in it, but looking at the Light that discovers them you will see over them. That will give victory, and you will find grace and strength, and there is the first step of peace, that will bring salvation, and see to the beginning and the glory that was with the Father before the world began, and so come to know the seed of God which is heir of the promise of God and world which hath no end unto the power of an endless life, which power of God in immortal, which brings up the soul which is immortal up to the immortal God in whom it doth rejoice. So in the name and power of the Lord Jesus strengthen thee." -George Fox ~July 1658
https://quakerbooks.org/products/george-foxs-book-of-miracles-3982
Discussion:
‘Transgression’ here, is such an arcane usage.
Of the witness, the transgression is that you have missed it, that it has been violated or has been hidden; the violation is that it has been covered over, missing. What has been transgressed is that it has been violated against, you are not awake to it any more, the sin in the transgression, the incarnate, is that we don’t see it.
Transgression of the life of god, an old garment goes on, this is the sin. The transgression is the mistake of an identification in the human form. This is more of an elaboration, an embodied ignorance. Transgression is more the embodied ignorance when we are identified with the body and our struggles and our strife and our minds and all of this that is in the transgression. It is in the mistake of the identification to be brought down.
It has to be let go of before we can be otherwise. It is so arcane but it is just gorgeous. It is very beautiful.
The tricky thing is the point of identification, the sin itself is in the error, the misidentification of the ego structure with the mind and the body in the earthly sense. It is not just incarnation but the condition of the incarnation. When the incarnation is one of ignorance that is the transgression.
It is arcane and at that time this was being said it made sense to those people. What Fox is getting to is process, what we would recognize as mediation practice, meditation that is transformative. It is not that there is not process there, a meditation. It is just the language, in modern time we use ‘stress’, he uses ‘transgression’. He uses ‘soul’, we use ‘jivan’. We use ‘field of consciousness’, he uses ‘god’.
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Email Chain:
This could alarm, or enlighten some people..
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Why is it important for you to frame it as meditation?
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Different than worship as some might suppose that.
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Is it though? Isn't meditation a form of worship?
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Or maybe then the question is what do you define as worship?
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Yes, ..in this modern 'spiritual but not religious' age the usage of worship is worth looking at for understanding.
May be it is off-putting to call Quaker Meeting the meeting for worship when it is a collective group meditation-like practice.
I used 'corporate' as a description once for collective practice and was told that ‘corporate’ was not helpful as a description because of how people feel about corporations now.
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In consideration, copying out dialogue..
Dear Friend,
(..In Synchronicity whilst you were composing this below I was also writing this..)
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What people coming in to the Society of Friends now may not readily appreciate is how SOF cultural norms seen now came out of modifications to a spiritual regeneration movement; came out of, tempered, in an era of extreme viciousness all across Europe, of a viciousness towards transcendentalists like George Fox of the 17th Century. That persecution story is the story of European spiritual movement, even up to the time of Steiner and the German National Socialism of the 20th Century with the church of the nazi party. In Fox’s 17th Century time the Anglican church uses magistrates to investigate satsang groups like Fox’s. In 18th Century Germany the Churches use magistrates to investigate the mystics of Amana. Across Europe the church-states of orthodoxy use magistrates to go after transcendentalist quietists of the Mennonite movement and also the meditative Quietist old Baptists of Europe, separatists who are outside the Roman and Lutheran x-ian branded church-states. Hence, the Beye brothers as boys from the Francke German transcendentalist ashrams in Germany of the 19th Century are proactively sent refugee away to the safety of America, the German Freethinkers.
George Fox, who traveled, was not new to this persecution and the violence of it. So when asked by authorities as hundreds and a thousand of Friends at the time were being scooped up and jailed, deprived summarily of liberty and property and health; Q: ‘What are you doing over there in those meetings?” Answ: “Oh nothing, we are just Friends meeting.” Q: a church? A: “No, no, no, ours is not a Church. Look, we don’t even have steeples or clergy”.
Q: On Which side of the civil war are you? You’re Anarchists as a group?
Answer: “No, we are not insurrectionists, we in fact are Pacifists, Sermon on the Mount Christians”. Are you atheists? Answ: “No, we meet in Worship of the Divine, we are just friends meeting for worship”.
Meanwhile similarly in Sweden it was illegal for spiritual transcendentalists to meet in groups without clergy even to just read the Bible for themselves.
An understanding of a context of who Quakers are as spiritual peoples fairly ought to sit resting in the deeper Quaker practice, and then not just necessarily let some forms of culture complicate something that is more simple in practice, as in “..Peace, Be Still”.
Jai Guru You,
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For me, the fact that Quaker Meeting is called 'Meeting for Worship' creates a sense of intentional group inclusion that is rooted in the concept that we are all already that of the Light--individually and collectively. It feels rooted in wholeness and community. While I appreciate that this maybe part of the 'meditation' process, it is not what I feel when I think of meditation. Therefore, in a way, when the terms are switched it feels like an erosion or it is make it something other than what it is. What is coming up for me is that it feels like a type of erasure experientially, spiritually, and ancestrally.
I can also imagine, like you mentioned that there are people who feel similarly about the word 'worship' as you said. And I can connect with their feelings about that. However, unless they are Friends, Meeting for Worship and the process of meeting is not their lived practice, space, or ancestry. Therefore, while it could be said that there are many similarities between Meeting for Worship (Friends' practice) and meditation - they hold very different connotative meaning. Essentially what I'm coming to is considering the similarities while allowing their uniqueness and context to be upheld. This is making me think of the tenet within Quakerism which is valuing and holding the uniqueness through which God speaks to us and through which we do our ministry in life. With this, it does not feel as though there needs to be the objective comparison, or making one to be the other, because they are both unique expressions and practices of the Light.
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In saying ‘meditation’, the Quaker process is much more like the Buddhist’s. The principles of evolution are universal, the principle of the practice in sitting in to the soul and that.
For instance, this is not necessarily like TM in practice at all. That TM and the Quaker practice in some ways in effect there are certainly similar results. But in effect they don’t exactly equate in that where TM tends to the super mental, this, the inner light, this divine light being still as a part in Quaker practice is much more embodied, much more an embodied practice than the TM practice is.
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Meeting for Worship, 17th Century. Entering into this form of worship.
“… the first that enters into the place of your meeting, be not careless, nor wander up and down either in body or mind, but innocently sit down in some place and turn in thy mind to the Light, and wait upon God simply, as if none were present but the Lord, and here thou art strong. When the next that come in, let them in simplicity and heart sit down and turn to the same Light, and wait in the Spirit, and so all the rest coming in fear of the Lord sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh, and wait in the Light. A few that are thus gathered by the arm of the Lord into the unity of the Spirit, this is a sweet and precious meeting in which all are met with the Lord…. Those who are brought to a pure, still waiting on God in the Spirit are come nearer to God than words are… though not a word be spoken to the hearing of the ear. In such a meeting where the presence and power of God is felt, there will be an unwillingness to part asunder, being ready to say in yourselves, it is good to be here, and this is the end of all words and writings, to bring people to the eternal living word.” -1660
-Alexander Parker, Letters of Early Friends, ed. A.R. Barclay (London; Darton and Harvey, 1841), pp. 365-66. Alexander Parker was a close companion of George Fox.
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The following “Queries” were read annually before each Preparative and Monthly Meeting of Friends, and were answered in writing as prescribed by the Discipline of Indiana Yearly Meeting, 1854, pp. 81, 82.
“First Query.—Are all the meetings for worship and discipline attended? Do Friends avoid unbecoming behavior therein? And is the hour of meeting observed?
“Second.—Are Friends preserved in christian love one toward another? Are tale-bearing and detraction discouraged? And when differences arise, are endeavors used speedily to end them?"
http://iagenweb.org/history/qoi/QOIAppC-E.htm#AppD
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"..Spiritual Evolution is a whole lot easier in a group. It will take a whole lot longer individually, to do this individually alone. It ‘takes a village’. When we do this together obviously you are the first beneficiary of it but you are also affecting the collective, our collective and also the larger collective. So thank you for coming to Fairfield and the group meditation in community we do here." -Jennifer Hamilton, Fairfield, Iowa
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The company we keep..
"Once Ananda, his cousin, devoted attendant, and beloved pupil, said to the Buddha. 'It would seem one half of the spiritual life is friendship with good people, association with good people, and communion with good people.'
The Buddha said in reply, 'It is not so, Ananda, it is not so. It is not one half of the spiritual life, it is the entire spiritual life.'" -Buddha
“Gathered”. “Where two or more are gathered..” in group meditation.
Interesting that silent-meeting old Quakers talking about where a group’s silent meditative practice becomes ‘gathered’, or goes superradiant as other modern day meditators might refer to that, Quakers referred to those meditation meetings as “gathered” at that in that collective experience.
Evidently the spiritual but not necessarily religious modern free thinking version of Matthew 18:50 becomes..
Where two or more meditators are gathered in meditation there is superradiance.
Fox's 'Transcendentalism',
this becomes George Fox’s great legacy along the line with Jesus Christ's "Where two or more are gathered..". This in development with natural sciences in modern time correlating with transcendentalism as to the practical role of collective meditation, that not only an individual experience is compelling in a transcendentalist meditationism, or simply being still, but now by virtue of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's 20th Century articulation there is come the science as evidence of the collective practice of meditation on the whole.
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“At one time, meditation was considered "mystical." Now, doctors routinely prescribe it. That's because research shows Transcendental Meditation reduces stress and improves health. Hundreds of studies confirm real benefits for individuals, including better energy, learning ability, job productivity, and happier relationships.
The revelation that group meditation reduces turbulence in society and improves community or global health is simply an extension of the individual practice of meditation.
This is a new paradigm to be implemented, for it may hold the secret for planetary peace. If wars start in the minds of men, then peace logically should start there as well.”
In Stillness Waging Peace, https://africanexecutive.com/article/read/10025?fbclid=IwAR2PDCGnnWk6fGKlTpO6gFA14XmXOMuwcpeKyMoNChDsEv1GhvQ6t0R3ghg
Quote: “..based on the non-religious Transcendental Meditation (TM) program,
As strange as it may sound, when large groups of trained practitioners sit down on a daily basis to do this meditation program together, a powerful "field effect" of coherence and peace ripples throughout the consciousness of the surrounding population. The bigger the group the bigger the effect. The outcomes, confirmed repeatedly by extensive scientific research, are consistent and measurable decreases in war deaths, terrorism, and crime.”
"This collection also causes us to reconsider the early Friends movement and the distinctive contribution of George Fox within it. In these narratives as well as those added by Cadbury one gets a sense of the reality with which God’s working in the world was experienced by early Friends. Rufus Jones rightly suggests that these accounts may make us change our thinking about the sort of ministry Fox had. Rather than seeing Fox as primarily a prophetic voice speaking out against societal ills and injustice, or as a charismatic challenger of institutionalized religion, or as a visionary who had special access to divine leadings, one must consider his ministry as growing out of transforming encounter with the Power and Presence of God ..What William Penn referred to when he described Fox as one excelling in prayer in his preface to Fox’s Journal:
“But above all he excelled in prayer. The inwardness and the weight of his spirit, the reverence and solemnity of his address and behaviour, and the fewness and fullness of his words, have often struck even strangers with admiration, as they used to reach others with consolation. The most awful, living, reverent frame I ever felt or beheld, I must say, was his in prayer. And truly it was a testimony that he knew and lived nearer to the Lord than other men; for they that know him most will see most reason to approach him with reverence and fear.”
-Excerpt from a Foreword written by Paul Anderson for George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’
In considering Fox's instruction here, as an old meditation teacher looking at this now (2019) this sounds, paraphrased, in some things like lectures I could have given in teaching people meditation. It sounds also like things energy healers could say about spirituality in consulting with folks now on energy workings in their own subtle form and systems. For instance, https://sites.google.com/site/chakraheartmeditation/the-heart-meditation-in-method
-Doug Hamilton, Fairfield, Iowa.
Take a look…
Quaker Meditation Instruction
https://sites.google.com/view/quaker-meditation-instruction/home
https://www.mail-archive.com/fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com/msg353114.html
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/437643
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"It is cultivating spiritually simply to sit with silence.. as spiritual practice."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIv95dM7FwY