In the early stages of mysticism, it's necessary to learn where you're losing energy and plug up the holes in your being.  It's also necessary to become aware of where you gain energy and to try and increase the energy that you are taking in and decrease the loss of energy.  We start to do this in our physical life, in the island of our first attention, in our day-to-day awareness - let's not be concerned with traveling across the great oceans or exploring other islands until our own island is together.

The first step, really, is to understand where power comes from and increase it within ourselves, because without power we can't do anything, we can't be anything.  Everything we do and are, according to the laws of mysticism, is dependent upon our personal power - the energy at our command.  You might want to go places and have wonderful times, but if you're so weak you can't get up off the bed then there's no journey.  So it's necessary to have energy and power, and of course to direct that energy and power properly.

If you're in a very cold place, if the house if freezing cold, you're not really worried about where you're losing heat.  The first step is just to get the fireplace going so that there's some basic heat there.  Even if you're losing it, you can stand near the fire and become warm enough to survive.  Then you can turn your attention to where you're losing the heat, become even warmer and then perhaps even increase the fire.  So step one is to understand where power comes from.

Power comes from eternity, it comes from the void, from the unseen realms.  Each one of us has infinite power within us, but it's necessary to access that power and bring it into your life.  There may be a great deal of oil under the ground, but unless you can bring it up above the ground you won't be able to refine it and use it to heat your home.  So the first step is to understand where power comes from.  Power ultimately comes from eternity, from life itself.  There are different strands of power, though, just as there's power in the sun and power in the wind, power in coal and oil and things like that.

- "The Yoga of Mysticism and Power", The Lakshmi Series