Course XIII - Teaching 11: Invocation

When the Son is about to meditate, he starts repeating the relative formula, and continues later with a more or less uniform invocation, in which it is only the subject that changes.
There are several methods, which vary from a simple petition repeated until the end, to the one who looks at himself in front of what he discovers, and asks what he feels necessary. But this way the exercise is reduced to be only a change in the orientation of thoughts within the same previous state to meditation. It is only the approach that has changed, and this is not meditation. Meditation must lead to higher introspection, and not be reduced to enunciation of wishes.
So, an invocation of this type should not be included in meditation; it is only a reflection about a subject or a problem, something that one can do at any moment. And what one can do continuously and naturally, is improper for meditation.
Invocation is far more than a request; it is the soul effort to raise its mental and vibratory state; mainly it is to become conscious of oneself and, from there, to reach a transcendent state of consciousness.
Invocation starts with a moment of silence. It is the necessary interval between one state and the other.
Instead of beginning with an immediate request of what you feel necessary to ask, one must go down to depths of the soul and pray from the silence. Also, an invocation must not be necessarily a request or a plea. An invocation is reduced to be so only while the soul is unable to transform its mental state through a simple inner movement. So, in an invocation it is necessary to avoid an enumeration of motives and reasons, and to avoid the speech; simply, one has to invoke.
The soul has not many needs; it does not need for this or that motive. The soul needs the Divine Mother.
Repetitions are not important. You do not avoid monotony with the art of speech; at the end, speech is dialectical monotony. The art of exposition does not avoid monotony. However beautiful may be the words, if the inner life is absent, there shall be monotony.
Fundamentally, in invocation you must learn how to change the tonic of the thought, the mental state. This is why it is so important that meditation may be the first action of the day, before the mind follows the usual rhythm of its ideas. Later, by practice, you shall be enabled to achieve this change at any place and moment.
This mental change mainly consists in a stop or inversion.
It is necessary to stop the current of usual thoughts, to keep quiet; in certain sense, it is to stay motionless. As the current of thought cannot stop, inverts its movement and takes an inner dimension.
Then invocation begins. Now the mind does not speak, because only can reflect on soul problems, but the soul voice, the inner voice of the individual being does speak. So an invocation gains power and spiritual depth, and the subject of meditation is formulated and posed really and directly.
A backward survey, rightly made, produces naturally this inversion of movement, and the change of dimension is expressed when one is asleep.
This ability in meditation produces a change in the state of consciousness, from a usual state to other state that is deeper and spiritual.
When one achieves this, also we achieve the exercise; the exercise of meditation becomes meditation.