Early in the morning, when you sit down to meditate, take three very deep, slow, steady breaths, and while you are breathing in, offer your soulful gratitude to the Supreme. Why? For several reasons. We all sleep at night. We take rest and our nerves are energised. But when it is a matter of conscious aspiration, sleep is half-death. We do not consciously aspire at all in ordinary sleep. While we are sleeping we have made a half-friendship with death, and for eight or ten hours we have entered into death's door, where there is no creativity. Who brings us back from sleep? God. How? He tells us inwardly, "Children, it is time for you to get up." Like an employer He takes us to be His instruments again the following day. The Supreme has a cosmic plan. In His plan He expects us to play some conscious role each day. He could have allowed us to sleep. If He had not given us the inward urge, we would have slept until twelve o'clock, midday. There are people who have no aspiration and who get up very late. But there is a vast difference between those people and sincere seekers. For this difference, we are grateful to the Supreme, for He has chosen us to get up and meditate.
There is a second reason to offer gratitude. Out of so many millions of people, why has God given aspiration to us and not to others? Why has He chosen only a few thousand out of so many millions? For this boon, too, we should offer our conscious gratitude to Him early every morning.
After offering our gratitude, we can begin meditation. Think of the Supreme as a human being. If you take Him as a personal God, especially in the beginning, it becomes easier and safer. If you want to see God in the impersonal aspect, you will be confused by its immensity. Inside us is the soul, which has boundless capacity. Let us take the soul as the impersonal God, and the body as the personal God. Now the strength that the soul has as an impersonal God is expressed through the physical. If the soul wants to express its beauty, it will express it in the physical. If the soul wants to manifest its strength, it will give us strength.
When the beginner meditates early in the morning, he should meditate on the Feet of the personal God. He should feel that with utmost love and devotion he is touching somebody who is infinitely greater than he is. And while touching his feet, he should try to become one with that person. What is the purpose of touching his feet? Someone may be so tall that you cannot touch his head, but when you touch his feet, immediately you get the feeling of devotion and humility. When you touch his feet you consider him as your very own. If you feel that he is your very own, then your devotion gets dynamic power and enters into activity. So when we feel that the Supreme has a human form and that He is our very own, only then do we have the joy of identification. Only then do we feel inseparable oneness and boundless joy.
When you feel that someone is your very own, you try to give that person something of yourself. He gives you what he has and you give him what you have. How does this exchange take place? It is through the light of the eyes. A spiritual Master represents the personal God for those who have become his disciples. When the Master looks at the disciple and the disciple looks at the Master, what happens? The Master looks at the disciple with soulful compassion, and the disciple looks at the Master with soulful adoration. The Master as the personal Supreme has all compassion, and the disciple has all adoration. This is the wealth that they give to one another. Here they meet and come together.
Start with faith; start with the feeling that your Master is great. If he is not great, then why have you accepted him? You should be able to offer yourself to him with the feeling that he has surpassed you in everything, that he has in infinite measure everything you need. This lesson is for the beginner, but it can be applied even by the highest beginner. It is applicable to everybody who is trying to go a step beyond.
To end your meditation you can repeat "AUM" or "Supreme," or your Master's name — whatever inspires you most. Then your meditation is over.From:Sri Chinmoy,Meditation: humanity's race and Divinity's Grace, part 2, Agni Press, 1974
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