I have heard from many individuals working their way through the Dedicant Program that the meditation requirement is one of the most difficult, next to the spirituality and the Final Oath. I have given this serious thought and have come to the conclusion that it isn't the essay that is difficult; it is defining meditation and the necessary requirement for the essay where the difficulty lies.

    You can sit in the lotus position and chant "OM" until your ass turns blue and you have a serious case of laryngitis, it really isn't going to accomplish very much if you haven't taken the time to sit down and discover for yourself exactly what it is that you are trying to accomplish!

    So the last five months have been a small journey to find out for myself, "Why the Hell am I doing this!?"

For the first month or so I went with what I knew. I would get up early in the morning and walk briskly for 15 to 20 minutes and then jog back home. This simple exercise was useful in first waking me up, and then clearing my mind of the previous nights muck. Although I found it energizing, I didn't really feel that I accomplished anything more than making a healthier me. Each morning I would manage to clear out my mind, only to find it filling back up with a new day worth of worries, troubles and woes.  I continued the jogging, in the hopes that eventually something would come of it. So far, just some lost weight and a lot of lost sleep.

    For the next month I went with something I knew and loved even more than jogging. I continued jogging, if for no other reason than to stay in some semblance of shape. However, at night, before I would go to bed, I would sit down at my desk. I would turn off the TV and the computer, and I would light a single candle. I would bring out my favorite deck of Tarot cards and at random I would pick a card. I fell back on my studies of the Tarot from many years ago when I would deeply contemplate the image on the card.  I would take in every aspect of the picture until I knew it so well I could close my eyes and see the image in my mind's eye.

    With this image in mind, I would try to clear my mind of all thoughts but one.  I would try to enter the picture. I would imagine that the card itself was a doorway into the scene presented.  Then I would try to see what was on the other side. What did the scene look like from the reverse point of view?   Would I see my body asleep on the other side of the door, or would I see new dimensions of the picture.  This worked rather nicely for a while in that I would actually receive messages that were useful to me later on.  However, I didn't really think at that point I was really getting the point of meditation.  I didn't know whether or not this was what the ADF had in mind when they asked people to develop mental discipline.

    Then I decided I was going to try something else, while still using the techniques that had helped so far. I have been told that there are two times in the day when the mind is clear and receptive and we are in a trance state; in the morning just before we wake, and at night just before we fall asleep.  So I presumed that at some point, this state was what we were looking for.  I was a little reluctant, because I knew that there were some real doozies of dreams and nightmares out there just before I woke and fell asleep!  I wasn't real sure I wanted to be in that state for any length of time.  But this was for my own benefit, so I went with it.

    There was a point during both the jogging exercise and the Tarot meditation that I was in the proverbial "zone."  I knew that I wanted to get here again, but the piece that I truly felt I was missing was the most important aspect of meditation.  What was the purpose?  I needed to have a goal, some kind of result that I was looking for.  The trance was useless to me unless I knew why I was doing it. 

    During the third and fourth months I would jog while trying to slow down my heart rate and calm my breathing.  This may not seem like such a task, but I wanted to have better control over my body while I was doing some tasks.  One of the main things that I hoped to gain from it was a better control over my stage fright during Grove rites.  I know that I can do much better if my mind isn't racing and my knees are knocking together threatening to have me fall down or run away.  I think that you can ask some of my friends that there is some improvement in that aspect.

    The second thing I tried to accomplish during that time was to continue the Tarot contemplation while keeping some kind of question in my mind while I did it.  I tried to keep the question in mind as long as possible so that I knew that the message that I received would relate. For instance if I wanted to know what the next day would hold for me I would keep that question in my mind while I would “visit” the Empress or High Priestess.  I wasn't always successful. I knew, as a professional reader, that sometimes there are more important messages that need to be relayed and I kept that in mind as much as possible.  My successes in this were negligible.  I think I still have a great deal of work ahead of me in this respect.  However, I am hopeful considering the successes I have had.

    As of the writing of this, I have completed the fifth month and I am now well into the sixth.  The mental discipline that I have tried to develop is a continuation of the previous months.  It isn’t just the meditation that is important, but the aspect of continually trying.  Instead of saying to myself, “Well, five months are up, I can quit now,” I keep working at my meditation and weekly devotionals.  This builds a spiritual power to support the mental discipline.  It makes a more well-rounded Dedicant and prepares one for what lies ahead.

    For the record, I know that there are some individuals that will use the "Two Powers" meditation almost exclusively during their five months, and for some it may very well work.  However, though I get much more from the Two Powers than I did in the past, I do not believe that as a builder of mental discipline, this is the route for me. The Two Powers meditation is more of a vessel for communication with the Kindred and I prefer to leave it at that.

    Was I successful with my mental discipline?  I truly believe that I learned a great deal about myself through this exercise and I realize that I have much more to learn.  Have I managed to discipline myself to do this exercise regularly?  I admit to a certain amount of failure in that aspect.  My daily or weekly worship is by no means consistent as I had hoped it would be, but I can say with some certainty that I go for quality over quantity in this respect.

    My advice to any new Dedicants would be this: for successful meditative work you must have a goal in mind.  As I said before, you can sit and chant all you like, but if your mind AND spirit aren't fully involved in the process... all you are going to have is a sore body.

Bright Blessings!