First-ranking lessons

[Steppingfeet]

Yeah, I basically agree with you, but still, I thought, as Gary mentioned, that these two things would be more intertwined. For instance, imagine that I do seek unity daily and nightly, but then I stumble upon an intensive catalyst, and I just don't *want* to seek unity with this catalyst as it is completely unacceptable to me. In this instance, I would go into meditation and try to seek answers within. What happened? What is unacceptable? How can I move on on my chosen path? Instead of keep pushing to seek unity, as I understand myself well enough at this point, that I simply don't *want* this unity with this catalyst... Do you see what I mean? And that is how I have been working this far.

I think that when the being is centered upon seeking love, light, unity, and joy, there are many, many variations in the state of mind and mood; many speedbumps, many pitfalls, many dead-ends.

So even when it seems like you don't *want* to seek unity, you are still already in motion, on a course, that, like Plenum was saying, is headed in a certain direction thanks to your inner compass. The seeking of unity is *already* there, a deep, slow-moving undercurrent carrying your forward, informing your will and faith as you move through the many seeming mountains and valleys and deserts of spiritual seeking.

Personally I believe that these "second-ranking" techniques are vitally important. I think that meditation itself is the single most powerful tool we have in our own hands for effecting our own self-transformation and self-realization.

Perhaps the relationship between the so-called "first" and "second" ranking lessons may be illuminated by considering Ra's suggestion to: "Always begin and end in the Creator, not in technique."

The seeker doesn't meditate for the sake of meditation in and of itself, but as a means, or tool, to know the all-self, to know the Creator.

Though I think the closer the individual "I" comes to the infinite all-self, the more that many approaches dovetail into one another, and ideas become synonymous with one another. Kind of like many roads converging into a single path.

I like also what Anagogy said: "That central consideration is the rock of general truth, upon which the more specific *refinements* of service and meditation accentuate."

: ) GLB