The Altar and the Heart

Meditation:

• Close your eyes and take deep neutral breaths.

• When relaxed, visualize on the inhale a beam of white light extending from heaven down into your Heart.

• Simultaneously on the inhale, visualize a beam of green light extending from the middle of the Earth up into your Heart.

• On the exhale, visualize golden beams of light emanating from your Heart into your shoulders, down your arms and into your hands.

• On the exhale, golden light is also emanating all over your body from your Heart.

• Continue until you receive a special impulse or until ready to stop.

Altars have been used for thousands of years for praying, meditating, divination & sacrifice. In a church or synagogue, the altar is placed in a central position. There, the workings can be heard and observed by all present. It condenses even the largest venues into one small concentrated area of interest. This area receives impulses from all corners of the gathering while simultaneously generating its own impulses in return, to the benefit of all in attendance. Impulses flow in and out from the altar just as our breath flows in and out in steady rhythm with our heartbeat.

The use of altars in ancient times gives us an explicit visual. The priests of the ancient Israelites had the job of making animal sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people. Specific parts of the animal were burned on the altar in a ritualized manner including prayer. The result was a special connection between Heaven and Earth. The sins, thoughts, emotions & physical matter were condensed into one small area and transmuted into something else. The physical matter burned and broke down until it returned to the ethers. From that concentrated area of activity, the hope was that God would respond with his blessings, reaching back out from the altar to the people.

       Our present day altar activity is not much different. We bring things to the altar in different forms  - thoughts, feelings, intentions, questions, physical objects, etc. In the interest of forging a connection between the seen and the unseen. The hope is that something will come from it. A new manifestation. The Altar is a place of transformation, transcendence and transmutation. It is the center in which incoming and outgoing impulses flow.

In the microcosm of Man, our altar is the Heart center. It has a central location in the human form, in the middle of the higher and lower energy centers. It is balancing in nature. When we allow heart forces to work, they bridge the will and the intellect. When impulses of will and intellect are brought together at the altar of the Heart, a new third force is formed. The heart forces transmutate and warm the cold impulses of will and intellect, and a mantle of beauty is laid across the pillars of strength and wisdom. The result is Love, which traces a path for our future development. A path to God, who IS Love.

As we sacrifice externally to reap external rewards, we must also sacrifice internallly to reap internal rewards. Our life must become such that we lay all that we are at the altar of the Heart. We continuously, little by little sacrifice pieces of our undesirable nature so that we may become transmutated from the inside out. We take in sense impressions, transmute them and send them back into the world infused with a loving, transcendent purpose. The outer world is meant to be transformed inwardly.

Humanity is the crown of creation, and as such we have the responsibility of allowing to happen what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer: Let thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. This is a naturally occurring process as long as we do not allow our selfish natures to get in the way.