How do I deal with a problem?

Some people have asked, but what do I do in meditation when I have a problem? How do I deal with a problem? I thought this was a practical way of life. And it is. There is a way to deal with every problem that comes to you. And they do come, and it’s good. Just be glad because the more problems you have, the more opportunities you have. I know you’ve heard that before, and you’re not happy about that. But it is true, and this is what’s true about it. Because as long as everything is beautiful — and I know some people who find life just like that. There isn’t a problem and there isn’t a care and there isn’t anything to be disturbed about in the whole world. They’re living in beautifully good humanhood.

They can read all of these words of truth, and hear these messages, but they never become theirs until they come right up against something where they have to discover for themselves that they really are truth. That these principles really are truth and they really do work when we apply them, when we practice them. So when we have a problem, we do meditate. We sit down and meditate. You remember I said yesterday “don’t meditate for anything, don’t try to gain anything from your meditation”? And that’s right. This is not a violation of that principle. It is that when you sit down with a problem and meditate, you are saying in so many words “God, really, nothing in this world matters, just let me know you. If I can just experience your Presence, if I can just get the realization that you have never left me, that you are right here with me every single second. I don’t ask to have this thing healed. I don’t ask to have anything changed out here in the outer picture. I only seek the realization of thy Presence, that is all.” And that is all that is necessary, because in God’s presence there is fullness of life.

Now then, how do you get that realization of the Presence? When you’ve got a pain someplace that’s nagging at you and telling you how much you hurt, how do you get that relief from within? And there is a way. That way is through contemplative meditation, in which we remind ourselves of all the truth that we know. About what? The truth about God. Never the truth about a person with a problem, because there’s no truth to that. You see, the person with a problem is a shadow. It’s the shadow of the divine reality which has no problems. So never do you meditate on the problem or the person, but you always keep your meditation on the level of God. Until you reach such a point of quietness within that your mind becomes what it was meant to be, a transparency. And then it will mirror forth the perfection of the divine consciousness. That is the function of the contemplative meditation, which in the art of spiritual healing is called “treatment”.

But since 1964 we have tried to use the word “contemplative meditation”. And that is because, when I sent Joel the manuscript for the May letter of 1964, which was all about treatment — and I took it from the tape, where it spoke about treatment — he made one of the few comments he ever made about it and told me not to use the word “treatment” anymore. Let’s call it “contemplative meditation”. Now, in The Infinite Way, that really is the same. But many people have the idea of a treatment as doing something to a person, you see that point? And that’s why that change in terminology is helpful. We’re not trying to do something to a person, even our own person. We are contemplating the truth about God so that the veils or the shadows or the fog that hides the perfection is dissolved. That the mind has a single focus and sees what really is.