It's not easy to establish a meditation practice if you are a Christian
because there is no easily visible meditative tradition in most of the
Church and even if someone becomes interested in meditation, where do
they go to learn about it? You won't find a notice for Thursday's
meditation class on many parish noticeboards. You won't find many
teachers of meditation listed in the Diocesan phonebook. Books like
Anthony De Mello's Sadhana or Morton Kelsey's The Other Side Of Silence can
give pretty reliable information and instruction but does your local
Christian bookshop stock them? Don't count on it. Sure, we know there
are monks and nuns somewhere who probably meditate but mostly we hardly
even know what the word means. Sometimes we use the word to denote deep
thought, particularly if that thought consists of pondering the meaning
of tricky Bible verses. Sometimes we use it as a synonym for a short
sermon. Sometimes we refer to it by kinder, more acceptable synonyms
such as 'contemplative prayer' and we share our experiences and almost
get what it's all about. Sometimes. In much of the church there is not
just an absence of meditation but downright suspicion; say the M word
and you conjure up images of the Maharishi and Tibetan guys in orange
robes blowing big trumpets and we all know where that leads to.
It's
no wonder then, that within the church misconceptions about meditation
lie thicker on the ground than Pentecostals after a healing meeting. The
principle misconceptions are these:
*Meditation is about losing connection with the world and entering some sort of trance state. No, medititation is about becoming more connected with the world, and heightening our awareness of it.
* Meditation involves letting go and losing yourself. On the contrary, meditation involves the difficult work of not being swept away by your own, or anybody else's thoughts.
* The aim of meditation is to stop mental activity and think about nothing.
No, that's death you're thinking of there. We can't turn our brains
off. We can, in time, learn not to be prisoners of our own thoughts, but
that's another matter.
*Meditation is opening yourself to odd spiritual influences.
No more than any other human activity. Meditation of itself is no more
and no less "spiritual" than other mental activity, such as thinking, or
dreaming, but like thinking and dreaming, it is a very sure means of
personal spiritual development.
* Meditation is Eastern and to participate in it means selling out to the Hindus or Buddhists.
While it is true that the Eastern practice of meditation has been more
open than in the West, and that the Eastern practice of meditation is
more visible, and possibly more highly developed, meditation is a
universal human phenomenon with no particular debt to any one culture or
faith.
*Meditation is something we do with our minds.
Meditation is something we do with our bodies as much as our minds, in
much the same way that sleep is something we do with our bodies as much
as our minds
*Meditation won't save your soul.
True, but neither will fasting or attending Holy Communion or going to
church or doing good deeds, or praying for that matter. Only the Grace
of God saves souls. Eating won't save your soul either but that's no
reason to stop doing it.
Meditation is spiritual practice; a
training exercise we perform to strengthen our spiritual muscles. It is a
technique, a way, a method by which we can co-operate with the holy
Spirit in furthering the work of sanctification. It is a way by which we
can recognise and untangle the grave bandages we all trail behind us as
we leave the tomb.I'm not sure why meditation has virtually died out in
much of the church. Although it does survive in pockets here and there,
it is something the Church could profit by rediscovering.
Last night I finished reading Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things, Our Brains, our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World , the biggest book I have ever read, in all senses of the word "biggest". Back in 2017 I wrote about books which had been important to me , and, however I would recompile that list now, The Matter With Things would go straight to the top. Really. It's that good. I've read every word: no skipping or coming to and realising that my eyes have been glazed over for the past ten minutes. It's taken me a couple of months to engage with its 1300 or so pages of text, and, as well, there are another couple of hundred pages of appendices and bibliography (well, OK, I haven't read the bibliography). At the end of the book proper there is an epilogue which is a "so what" chapter in which McGilchrist speculates about the implications of his hemispheric theory for the world in the immediate future. This epilogue is preceded by a
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