Meditation is a key that can open many doors along the path to God. We tend to be so outer focused that we lose track of the real path, which is the inner journey to a personal relationship with our Lord. Mother Teresa wrote, “In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you.”(No Greater Love by Mother Teresa, p8). With a minimum of effort, meditation can help us find the trail that takes precious time off our journey to the Truth. Meditation is a more direct path, perhaps a short cut, to understanding this mystery.
Meditation is the process of stilling the mind. The conscious mind, with its worrying and negative beliefs, is the cause of our material predicament. Inside and behind this worrying process, the perfection and abundance of the divine realm is constantly trying to press itself into our minds and lives. If we still this mind, then we get out of the way and allow the grandeur of God to enter our existence.
Stilling the mind allows our little self, our worries and concerns, to take a break. If this little self can get quiet, our true Self can emerge. God can express Himself in our world. Our agitated mind is constantly dwelling on the past, reacting to some event in our world or preoccupied with fears and concerns about the future. These worries and concerns of our fearful self, like wind on a lake, keep things stirred up and keep us removed from our peaceful self. Anxiety, fear and anger are unproductive protective mechanisms that keep peace at a distance in our world. Taking a break from these primitive defenses is possible. Meditation is the key.
Meditation is very simple. It is also very profound, very deep. If one takes meditation step by step, the depth will come of itself. First time meditators can begin with 5 to 10 minutes of meditation at a time, performed twice daily. A morning and evening time is generally preferable, but creating a time and place that fits your schedule is fine. It is a wonderful practice to begin the day by becoming calm and getting in touch with God’s energy and love within.
Comfortable, loose fitting clothes are essential. It is nice, but not necessary, to have a designated meditation spot that creates an atmosphere of serenity. Sit comfortably in a chair with your back straight and feet flat on the floor and your hands placed comfortably in your lap. You can also sit cross-legged on the floor, perhaps sitting on a cushion. Relax and close your eyes. Pay attention to your breathing. As you relax, your breathing will become deeper. It’s called belly breathing. Your muscles relax and you breathe more from the diaphragm rather than shallow chest breathing. Feel the tension flow out of you as your abdomen collapses with each out breath. Breath in vitality; breath out tension and toxins. Breath deeply and slowly. Pay attention to your body relaxing in the chair. Feel the tension flowing out of your body as you relax.
Give yourself permission to step away from the worries of the day. This is your time, time for your personal growth. The cares of the world will present themselves later. Learn to disregard them for a short time. When thoughts do arise, notice them and then let them go. Don’t be upset with the initial wandering thoughts. Notice them and then gently bring your focus back to the increasingly peaceful sensations within you. You are trying to find the quiet spot between your thoughts.
Attempt to decrease your effort in this process. Our tendency is to go at things with gusto. Meditation isn’t like that. The more we “try” the more we chase it away. The inner peace we are exploring is naturally present, when we get out of the way. It’s like we are unlearning our conditioned thought processes.
As you end your meditation, allow your attention to return to the room around you. Gently open your eyes. Keep the inner focus as long as you are able. As you take time to meditate each day, it will become easier to relax and enter the quiet of your deeper mind. Regular practice will also allow you to become more peaceful between meditations.
Meditation is a short cut on the path to experiencing God-consciousness. When one contacts God, all other objects of one’s desire appear of themselves. “Seek first the kingdom of God… and all these things will be given you besides.”(Matthew 6:33) There are a myriad of research studies on meditation that show benefits to health, sleep, mood and psychological growth. Here are some of the things that meditation can help us discover:
Happiness. Meditation does help one become happier through inner peace. There is magic in meditation in which our being settles itself down and rediscovers the priorities. Peace is one of them. The absence of anger and fear is part of that happiness. Love and peace, like light eliminating darkness, cause anger and fear to disappear.
Anxiety Reduction. Daily practice of meditation will slowly but surely calm one’s mind and decrease symptoms of anxiety. It is difficult to calm one’s self in the middle of an anxiety attack, but if a person persists in daily meditation the level of experienced anxiety will decrease.
Thought control. By calming the mind one learns to focus the mind and consequently one’s thoughts. With more focused thoughts a person can choose more wisely, think through things better and pursue one’s goals more completely.
Healing the body. Most powerfully, meditation helps us get in touch with the miracle working power of God. Associated with the process of relaxation are benefits such as decreased blood pressure, improved circulation, less stomach problems. Every area of the body is helped by the healing power of meditation.
Material comfort. God wants us to have everything we need or want in order to accomplish our function on this earth. With our fears and negative beliefs, we actually prevent God’s abundance entering our lives. Meditation helps to remove the negativity that blocks the prosperity trying to permeate our life.
We resist meditation because we are addicted to doing. This is especially troublesome when we don’t know exactly what we are doing or why. We have been taught that we have to get things done. Being responsible and discharging our duties is important. We need to help our neighbor. However, most of our activity level is frenetic. We have to clean, socialize, shop, work, and organize. We generally feel we need to stay busy. We tell ourselves we do not have time for exercise, relaxing or meditation. Notice how our busyness gets in the way of accomplishing. A famous Hindu teaching is: “Notice the inaction in action and the action in inaction.”(Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 4, Verse 18) The reality is that meditation allows us to generate more energy. It helps us to be more organized and we actually get more done if we spend time meditating.
Preconceptions about meditation can get in the way. Assuming that meditation is New Age or sacrilegious and of Eastern religious origin hinders one’s even beginning the practice of meditation. In reality, silence is a very important part of prayer. The Psalmist wrote, “Be still and know that I am God”(Psalms, 46:11). Our Christian desert forefathers practiced contemplative prayer. Meditation is an essential part of our spiritual growth. It is a short cut to making conscious contact with God.
A huge impediment in perfecting meditation is becoming frustrated and giving up. We can become impatient with our progress. We make excuses for not meditating today. We feel tense or hungry and believe we should be doing something else instead of meditation. We substitute busyness or not well considered activity for needed rest and replenishment. Stick with it. Like Father Bernie Owens says, “Trust the process!”(Fr. Owens of the Manresa Jesuit Retreat House)
Meditation is the real secret. It is so simple that it is the overlooked key to our bond with our inner being and God. We think we are afraid of our weakness but we are really afraid of our strength. It is often easier to avoid something that may bring success if we feel unworthy or unable. With two five-minute sessions a day, meditation can lead us to a totally new experience of life. Our primary goal is conscious contact with God. As we move along this path to God through meditation and inner peace our heart’s desires are fulfilled of themselves. Opening up to our Spirit helps us to be naturally more giving and loving and focused. With this change of consciousness and getting our negativity and ego out of the way, abundance and happiness expand from within. We are allowing the perennially loving power of God to alter our life.
by Robert Gordon Brown
The clock was a cheap, orange, China made model probably worth $3.95 atany American Wal-Mart; well, maybe $4.95. The merchant wanted to startat $20.00. Did he think I was born yesterday?
“Ridiculous,” I said and started to turn to go.
“Well, what you give me my friend?”
“In the U.S. I could get that clock for no more than $5.00.”
“Oh no, not this clock, it has an extra strength battery. It is guaranteed to run eighteen months on just this one battery.”
I laughed as he showed me the battery and turned to walk away althoughit was the only 8’x10’ concrete open-air shop of the many I had checkedout in the quarter mile long alley with any clocks.
“How about $15.00?” he asked.
“No. I could only give you $5-$10 at most.”
“$11.00.”
“No.”
“Here in the box, new.”
I peeled off $11.00. I handed him the money feeling in the spirit offriendship, brotherhood, and peace, which is lacking in Jerusalem, themost holy of places.
After we returned from lunch I examined the clock. It had run all ofeleven hours. I shook the clock and played with the battery. Thesecond hand sat in one spot banging against some unknown force gettingknocked back with each try. I threw into my open suitcase thinking Imight have time to bring it back at lunch tomorrow.
“I knew it was a piece of junk but thought it would get us through till we left Israel,” I said.
“Let’s see, you paid $11.00 and it ran eleven hours, so it cost you $1 per hour for your clock,” my wife smirked.
Our tour that afternoon included the Mount of Olives, the Garden ofGethsemane, and the very road Jesus had entered on Palm Sunday andconcluded at the Rock of Agony. Agony. I thought about it for awhile. It seemed to me that there was far too much agony in thisland. It seemed to be the prevalent emotion throughout Jerusalem. Itwas displayed by the Jewish men praying at the Western Wall, bowingdeeply and rhythmically as they chanted their prayers pausing to leanagainst the wall to weep. It was in the distrustful stares of thePalestinians we had met and in the eyes of those who roamed the streetsbegging for money. Over the past few days I noticed little happiness,so few smiles.
That night after dinner we fell into bed exhausted from the day.
I lay there thinking about everything that happened that day, when mymind lingered to consider what to do about the broken clock. I decidedthat I would bring the clock back and demand my money.
If the man I bought the clock from balked or tried to bargain with me Iwas going to pronounce in my loudest voice, “Fellow merchants andtourists! Gather here and see how this man sells cheap plastic clocksfrom China for three times their price. He says he guarantees them torun eighteen months with their new high energy batteries. Well myfriends, this clock ran only eleven hours and stopped.” Then I woulddrop the clock to the ground and stomp on it several times smashing itto bits. “Do you really want to buy from shopkeepers like this?” ThenI would stalk away.
As I lay there thinking that I had arrived at a solution to the failedclock, the clock dilemma took on another dimension. How could thereever be peace in this part of the world? A Palestinian or ArabChristian would never buy a clock from a Jew. A Jew would consider aclock from a Christian as unclean. And so it goes, mutual distrust fedby hatred learned from the age of a child’s earliest memories.
Some would point at Jerusalem and say, “But look we have the JewishQuarter, the Christian Quarter, the Muslim Quarter and the ArmenianQuarter and many minorities and others besides.” But are cities thatmust be divided into quarters truly an indication of peace? No more sothan schools within the U.S. that operated under a doctrine of separatebut equal. So long as one party to a division of resources has greaterpolitical and economic power, a doctrine of equality is not what itsname implies.
Throughout Jerusalem, it was obvious that neighborhoods inhabited byIsraeli Jews had substantial homes and efficient government services. Not so the Palestinian Christian neighborhoods. There, trash waseverywhere waiting to be picked up as cats roamed the streets feastingon discarded food. This was true in even the better neighborhoods withhotels, such as ours, that catered to bringing tourist dollars into thecountry. As an example of how unresponsive the government had becometo caring for these neighborhoods, we came across neighborhood mentrying to repair a burst pipe under the cobblestones in their streetone night knowing that the government would do nothing about it.
You would think that after the indignities the Jews had suffered beforeand during World War II at the hands of the Nazi regime, they would notbe forcing others of different faiths to live in conditions similar tothose they had to endure. Or maybe they had learned their lessonwell. The Israeli government appears to have adopted a doctrine tosegregate those who are not of their faith into ghettos and diminishliving conditions there to the point that those living in them mustleave or slowly perish.
I fought for sleep as I continued to wrestle with the question, “But what can I do?”
The answer is I don’t know yet. Hidden deep within theIsraeli/Palestinian peace issue are people who share a claim to havedescended from Abraham, who all believe in the basic teachings of theBible’s Old Testament, who share in the revelations of many of the sameprophets and who acknowledge that Jesus walked in this holy land, yetdisplay an outward feeling of mutual distrust and hatred toward eachother. Is there a way to breach generations of hostilities toward oneanother?
“Honey it’s our wake-up call. We have to get our bags outside the door in half an hour,” I heard from somewhere distant.
“Oh, Okay. Start your shower and I’ll be awake by then.”
“Boy, you look tired.”
“I started thinking about the clock and couldn’t sleep”
“Over that clock?”
“Yeah, in a way. I’ll explain it when we have more time.”
Late that night, after a long day of visiting other Christian pilgrim’ssites and a hurried dinner I started to sort through the upper layer ofclothes in my suitcase. As I hit the second layer, there sat theorange plastic clock. Out of curiosity I unfolded the clock and staredin disbelief. It was running. I checked the time against my watch andyes, it was accurate to the minute. I thought about how the clock’sfailure the night before had led me to disturbing thoughts about thepeace prospects for Israel.
So has the time for peace ended? I can only say that like the cheaporange clock, the current peace accord does not appear to be puttogether well, and at times it appears to falter. Yet, given a chance,peace, just like my cheap orange clock, might just continue to work. Let us pray that it does.
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