There are stories, legends, mythologies, folklore, traditions, histories, scriptures, and texts from all around the world which tell us of humans who have reached the stature of the gods. They have, in essence, become "a god." Some recognizable examples are people such as Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), and Muhammad. The process that these went through has been called theosis, deification, divinization, realization, awakening, and enlightenment. What does it mean to become or be "a god"?
It seems to me that many people consider meditation to involve elaborate fantasies, imaginings, and visioning in the mind. This seems to be facilitated and encouraged by many guided meditations. I perceive that these kinds of meditation can have many positive benefits in creative pursuits, visualization, and problem solving, to go on adventures and vision quests in the mind. However, I think meditation can offer much more than this.
Eckhart Tolle is a very wise man, among many. Let his words sink in deep.
Exactly 500 years ago today, October 31, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a church door that started the Protestant Reformation (31 October 1517). What were those "theses"? Do they have any applicability today?
I perceive that priesthood was originally an inner experience of Divine Power and Presence in humans, a deep Realization when they subdued their egoic psychological "natural man" self in consciousness, and perceived their real Being underneath it in Glory, beyond words. I believe humans eventually organized this mystical experience, and the knowledge of it, instituting it into the "ordination" to an "office" of "priesthood," meant to indicate those who had direct experience of God.
An addition to the BHT, concerning how we can know for ourselves if these things are really from God, or if they are from Bryce's own deranged mind.
President Joseph Fielding Smith, as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who later became the tenth President and "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator" of the LDS Church, wrote the following that was published in 1954: "IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE, THE CHURCH IS FALSE."
I have considered forming a discussion group of some kind where we can regularly talk about these things, face-to-face, and commune-contemplate-meditate together regularly with like-minded people. Technology being what it is today, we can each do this from wherever we may be anywhere in the world as if we were all sitting together in the same living room!
I don't think so. But I think it is deeply, absolutely, universally Real. Let me explain.
There are many benefits to meditation: spiritual, religious, practical, psychological, emotional, etc. Psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman talks through some of them in this video.