On Christian Meditation

Thanks to Sis JM who delivered an introductory talk last Sunday on Christian meditation and its importance to our day-to-day living.


Words of wisdom from Fr. John Main, OSB, a proponent of Christian meditation:


“This meditation, this pursuit of wisdom and love, must take place in an entirely ordinary, natural way. Meditation must be built into the ordinary fabric of everyday life. It is by being still, in a very simple child-like way, by paying attention.”

-oOo-

“To be fit for the great task of life, we must learn to be faithful in humble tasks.” Then he went on to speak about the humble task of saying our word, our mantra."

-oOo-

“It’s as though we were rushing through our lives, and in our hearts there is the flame of a candle. Because we are moving at such high speed, this essential interior flame is always on the point of going out. But when we sit down to meditate, when we become still, when we are not thinking in terms of our success or self-importance, of our own will, when we are just in the presence of the One who is, then the flame begins to burn brightly. We begin to understand ourselves and others in terms of light, warmth and love.”

-oOo-

“None of us”, he says, “would meditate unless it had occurred to us that there is more to life than just being producers or consumers. All of us know that we can’t find any enduring or ultimate meaning in just producing or consuming. So we seek ultimate meaning. And we come to meditation because an unerring instinct tells us that, just as we can’t find any ultimate satisfaction in consuming or producing, so we cannot find ultimate meaning outside of ourselves. We have to begin with ourselves”.

-oOo-

“It is so easy for us to become dehumanised, to become just consumers in a materialistic, commercial society. It is so easy to live our lives in some sort of mechanical way, going through routines each day, but losing the sense of freshness, of creativity, of freedom. As a result, we live our lives in a sort of rush, one routine following the next, distracted perhaps for a bit by entertainment, by pleasure, or deadened by the pressure of work or play. To break out of this cycle, each one of us must learn to stop the rush of activity. We must learn the priority of being. We must learn to be still. That’s what our regular times of meditation are about.”

-oOo-

“It is learning to stand back and to allow God to come into the forefront of your life. So often in our experience, we find that we are the centre of the world. So many of us see reality revolving around us. We think quite naturally of situations and of people primarily in terms of ‘how is this going to affect me?’ Now that’s all right as far as it goes. But if we really imagine that we are at the centre of the world, then we are never going to see any situation, or any person, or ourselves, as we really are. Because of course, we are not at the centre of the world. God is at the centre. Now meditation is trying to take that step away from self-centredness to God-centredness. And the result is that we find our own place in the world. We find where we should be. We find our relationships in the right order – our relationships with one another, our relationship with creation, and our relationship with God. What we discover, and what is very important for each of us to discover, is that we do have an essential place in God’s plan, each of us responding to the unique gift of our own creation.”

-oOo-

The mantra is like the needle of a compass. It heads you always in the true direction you must follow, away from self into God. And whichever way your ego may lead you, the compass is always faithful in the direction it points you. The mantra, if you say it with generosity, with faithfulness and with love, will always point you in the direction of God, and it is only in God that our true destiny can be revealed. In saying our mantra, in the daily return to the discipline, we gradually learn to look beyond ourselves. We learn to see with a vision that focuses itself ahead of us, in God. In that focusing of everything on God, everything in our life becomes aligned on God, and everything falls into its proper place. Our order of values is gradually changed. Instead of the value system being based on the ego, on personal success or self-promotion, self-preservation or similar limiting factors, our values system becomes aligned on God.”

-oOo-

“We cannot vanquish the ego by force. That would itself be egotistical. We cannot use force because force would be a self-directed exercise of the will. The principle to bear in mind is this – we cannot possess ourselves but we can be ourselves. The ego is self-consciousness. To change this introverted image of self, to escape from self-obsession, we have to change the direction of our attention, of our consciousness. In other words, the only way to transcend the ego is to ignore it. No amount of self-analysis, self-pity or self-distraction, will overcome the ego. All of these would be much more likely to compound the egotistical state. Meditation, the recitation of the mantra, is the way of egolessness. It is the path to selfless attention.”

-oOo-

“We must first learn to be, and then we will know what to do. The power to do good, it is said, comes from being good. What we do is only changed deeply and permanently by what we are. This is a way of saying that Christ is simultaneously present in our hearts, in our worship, and in our world.”

-oOo-

“Each of us must understand the power source that is available to us by being in the presence of Jesus. All of us are sinners. All of us are capable of sin and of the desire for sin. All of us have sinned and do sin. But what is of supreme importance for every one of us is that we come into the presence of Jesus, we are strengthened by him, and our egoism is deflated by the sheer beauty of his being. The journey is a journey away from self, away from egoism, away from selfishness, away from isolation. It is a journey into the infinite love of God. With some of us, the end of egoism requires a big struggle. Sometimes, we are carried more or less kicking and screaming into
the kingdom of Heaven”.

"Be still, and know that I am God." - Psalm 46:10