The meditations of the heart provide what we might call the rudder that directs the course of one's progress across the sea of life. As one abides in a realization of reality and allows the spirit of divine love and truth to permeate the consciousness and the feeling realm, there is provided what we may call a connecting link between the inner aspirations and the sphere of function. There are very few who in their heart of hearts do not aspire to higher and more wonderful things. Those higher aspirations take form in consciousness according to the individual concept of what a higher order or level of life might be. The aspiration to higher things is in some minds caused to take the form of a desire for a beautiful house in which to live, and what we might call social position and economic ease. We recognize that this level of aspiration is not of the highest order, and yet we must recognize that the spirit of aspiration toward higher things is present even when the form of aspiration is such as to suggest only worldly things.

This widespread spirit of aspiration is a wellspring in the human heart which we must of necessity tap, that, drawing together these currents or threads of aspiration, we may develop a new consciousness with respect to the meditations of one's heart. We have the necessities of our daily lives with which we must contend, and there are practical matters of every sort with which we must deal, but the material aspects of life and the practical necessities should not be allowed to produce a ceiling of consciousness. There has been a trend, by reason of the current of what we call universal education, to get all matters down to what is conceived to be a practical level, and to a very great degree the poetry has been taken out of life. Today, when we think of picturesque speech, we are likely to think of some individual who swears fluently. The idea that picturesque speech might see the poetry in all things, and might provide a certain elegance of expression with respect to those things, seems to be foreign to our modern age. It seems to me that there is a practical aspect which those who pride themselves on being practical have overlooked, and when the spirit of meditation in the heart, when the level of consideration, is reduced to its lowest component parts in the humdrum of daily activity, so that the poetry of life is not given consideration, the spirit of the human being is enclosed within a cage and the practical activities lose the essences of delight which would otherwise be known.

Our considerations have been largely with respect to spiritual principles and laws, and I would not suggest that this theme is separate therefrom; but the ordinary or usual concept with respect to spiritual things is that they are far removed from the practical necessities of life. If the spirit of aspiration springing forth from the heart of the individual found some enduring expression in the poetry of life it would be seen that the practical phases of life were designed by the Most High God to be the means by which spiritual things might be realized, by which spiritual things might be recognized in their practical aspects. All too often, when an individual has some tendency toward a recognition of what I have called the poetry of life, he soon lets the grind of his daily task and the necessity of what he conceives to be the practical life do away with that expression of the spirit of aspiration. We see and recognize and appreciate the beauties of nature, we recognize the beauty of a lovely day, and our spirits rejoice in these things; but I think that even Emissaries have yet to learn how to enjoy the full the poetry of life that finds natural expression through all of one's daily activities. The spirit of aspiration housed only in the forms of the practical concept of living soon dwarfs and becomes an inadequate thing.

We recognize that in the development of industry, where factories turn out objects on a production basis, the spirit of craftsmanship tends to be lost. We recognize that articles of wood, for instance, made by craftsmen in days gone by carry a spirit, or a nature, that is not readily found in the production-line furniture sold in department stores today. This is a concrete example of one phase of this matter of letting the poetry of life find expression in relationship to all phases of life--the spirit of aspiration--so that one lives in a world that is larger than the physical form of daily necessity. The spirit of aspiration has been chained in tiny prison cells the world around, and these spirits need to be set free. Man today is inclined to talk about freedom, largely as it relates to his economic system or his ability to do what he thinks he pleases to do in the world of things; but the freedom of the spirit, which causes the individual to be enfolded in an invisible world, which is what we might call, in one sense, the inner plane expression of the individual's physical world, is something that is sorely needed in the world. Each one carries something of an atmosphere, either of one whose spirit of aspiration is confined in a tiny cell or of one whose spirit of aspiration rides free, creating in the environment of the individual an expression of heaven on earth. If the individual is truly aware of the incarnate God Being through whom he has the privilege of life, he must surely recognize that the spirit of that God Being cannot be well contained within the confines of the physical body if there is a true expression of life, and therefore, surrounding the human being, there is the invisible expression or manifestation of heaven, even as we think of the inner planes as surrounding this physical world. So the meditations of one's heart must necessarily indicate the level to which the spirit of aspiration rises in the life of the one who walks along the Way.