What you are called is not what you are. What you do for an occupation is not what you are or who you are. Many people, for some reason especially men, think that they are their job. I am a doctor. No, you are not what you do, for when and if you stop being a doctor or a salesman or a school teacher, you are still you, perhaps better off, perhaps worse but, nevertheless, you are you.

You do not resemble your mother's side of the family. Your physical body may resemble your bother's side of the family, and many people believe that they are their physical body. It is easily shown to be a false idea. Look at your left hand. (You've been asked to do that before haven't you?) Now if you were to lose that hand, are you lost as well? Of course not, you have lost your hand, but you remain. The hand is yours to use. It is part of your body, but it is not you. It only belongs to your. Each part of your body is the same, in other words, it belongs to you. You use it but it is not you. You are much more than your hand, your arm or even your entire body all together.

Some believe that while this may be true of the body, it is not true of the mind. Some will tell you that they are their mind. That, too, is a contradiction. It is as if we believed that the sun is illumined by its own light!

If something is yours, it can not be you. The "you" is that being which possess the thing. It is your mind, it belongs to you the way that your hand belongs to you. You are often asked to use you mind, and that is the proper attitude concerning it. Use your mind, use you left hand, both are yours to use, but you are more than the sum total of all those things that belong to you.

Those who have great difficulty with this concept are those who are convinced that they are their mind. You may not destroy me if you destroy parts of my body, but you will certainly destroy me if you destroy my mind, they would explain. These have not learned to distinguish the "I" from the "Not I." When it comes to answering the question "Who are you?" these must reply at last, "I am my mind."

If I were to take a magnifying glass and direct the sun's rays through it, I would soon have a mall dot of light and heat that is capable of starting a fire. Focusing those rays is done by the glass, but the glass does not start the fire! Nor does the Sun itself start the fire, not even the small dot of light and heat. I have started the fire. The glass was my instrument, the Sun was used, bit it was I who started the fire. The mind similarly can focus my thoughts, but neither my thoughts nor by mind are me...I am behind it all.

When Moses asked God for His Name, God replied that His name was Yaweh. This word has a meaning. Most scholars believe and teach that the meaning is "I am that which is the I am in your."

Only you can think of yourself as an "I." When you say "I am," you can not be talking about me. I am not you. You are not me. You are not your body. You are not your mind. You are a spiritual entity that manifests itself separately from all those things, and you manifest yourself through your WILL.

This is a great secret to learn. You are able to distinguish yourself through your Will. Through your Will power you are able to be distinguished from others. It is that Will that is the seat of the spiritual entity that is "you." the Holy Spirit shows itself through you as the sun shows itself through the magnifying glass and the focused ray is what we have written about under the heading: Attention. In other words if you think of a search light, the light is that part that corresponds to our attention. The searchlight itself is like the mind, but it is the will that directs the searchlight, that focuses the attention. It is you, and you are behind the searchlight. Yet, when and if that searchlight burns out, you are still you. Jehovah does not mean merely "I am that I am." It means "I am here." Or, "Here I am." you are related to that. God is your Father. You say so each time you pray the prayer that Jesus taught us. "I am here. Here I am."

Therefore, you are here and with you comes the "I am here." Picture a large reservoir, high in the mountains, or better yet, a large eternal glacier covering the peaks of the Himalayas. Picture the water from that glacier filling up that huge reservoir, cradled in the mountain's arms, and from that reservoir, several rivers running out, carrying the waters to large lakes further down the slopes. There, in turn, streams carry that lake water further down the mountain to smaller and smaller lakes and toward the bottom of the mountain there are many small pools fed by brooklets from above. All carry the water from the glacier. All are part of that glacier. We may be small ponds at the bottom of the mountain but we are fed from the reservoir of God's love for us.

Know yourself. You are a spiritual entity that manifests in Will power. You are behind the searchlight and God is the electrical power that enables it to be a searchlight. If you look around you; that is, if you were to stand up and turn all around you, you would see that your eyes describe the circumference of a circle. It is especially clear, if you are on a vast beach by the ocean. You would soon realize that you are in the very center of a huge circle. If you looked up you would realize that you are also in the center of the dome of sky above you. You are, so to speak, the center of it all. Right at this moment you are the center of it all. Yet, so is your friend across town. He or she is also the center of it all. How can that be? How can a circle have two centers?

Even if she or he were standing right next to you and you both experienced the same circumference, you both would be the center! Two centers? Two thousand centers? Two billion centers?

Yes, we are all at the center and in that center, the tiny dot surrounded by a circle is the sum total of creation. It is you. You are a spiritual entity representing the sum total of God's creation. He is in you and you manifest his presence and his love through your Will.

The object of Contemplative Prayer is to bring about a reunion between your outer nature and your inner nature, and then between your inner nature and God.

In one of Plato's dialogues, he describes Socrates and his friend Phaedrus sitting by a brook somewhere in ancient Greece. As the two begin to leave the banks of the river Socrates offers up a prayer to God as he feels Him in that place.

He says:

"Beloved Pan, and all you other Gods that haunt this place, give us beauty of the inward soul, and ay the outer and the inner be as one. May we reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may we have such a quantity of gold as only the temperate can carry. Anything more?"

To which Phaedrus replied: "Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common."
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