COMING HOME
AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN MEDITATION
7 weeks course
Extracted from the
‘COMING HOME’
RESOURCES BOOK TO INTRODUCE MEDITATION
ACCORDING TO THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION
Compiled and edited by Kim Nataraja – International Coordinator of the School of
Meditation
Design and extract by Marina Müller
WCCM / Argentina
meditacion.cristiana.grupos@gmail.com
www.meditacioncristianagrupos.blogspot.com
Each meeting includes a presentation with
comments of the group leader, followed by a 30
minutes meditation, and finally a session of
questions and answers
First meeting
CONTENTS
What is Meditation according to the Christian
tradition?
Two doves: symbol of Christian Meditation
What is prayer?
The World Community for Christian Meditation
What is Christian
Meditation?
• Meditation = meditatio, “remain at the center”
• Meditare = meletan, “to repeat”
For ancient Christian monks it was to repeat a portion of the
Scriptures as taught by a teacher to his /her disciples
Meditating on the Scriptures meant to memorize and repeat
them in order to focus the attention, heart and mind in onepointed concentration, leading to silence and inner attention
To repeat only a word or phrase from the Scriptures dispels
“the riches of thinking” and cultivates “ the poverty of
heart”
INTRODUCTION
John Main is the founder of a Community
within the wider context of Christianity.
He proposes a way back to the basics of the Christian
experience, the prayer of the heart, the experience of Christ
within, the Spirit who dwells within us.
Meditation and its teaching are "caught” rather than
"taught." It is a personal communication, that begs to
be shared and is based in the meditative experience.
To teach always means at the same time to learn. Teachers are
students and students are teachers.
You have to think:
Why do I want to meditate?
We must want to meditate.
This should be something you have a hunger to do.
We introduce a way that seeks
silence
stillness
attention / simplicity
It is a path of contemplative prayer
through repetition
of a "sacred word" or mantra:
maranatha
which means
"Come, Lord" or "Lord, come”
Two doves
Symbol of the World Community
for Christian Meditation
This symbol is inspired by a V century mosaic in Galla Placidia,
Ravenna.
The dove drinking is a metaphor for the sacred. Water evokes the
symbolism of baptism. It is the feminine principle in nature,
associated with the all life-giving power. As wine, it becomes
the blood of Christ.
The dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. In Greek mythology, this
image was the bird of love. The seven gifts of the Holy spirit as
doves came to be represented as doves perched in the Tree of Life,
drinking the waters of wisdom and eternal life.
The chalice evokes the mystery of sacrifice, the heart of the
Christian Eucharist, where the Son offers himself to the Father
in the love of the Holy Spirit, and unites all the creation in
his oblation.
The two birds suggest the underlying unity of the active and
contemplative life in every human being. Martha and Mary, according
to the Gospel, are inseparable sisters in the lives of all who worship God
in the depths of their spirit.
.
The Prayer´s Wheel
Stillness in the Centre
Prayer is the wheel that moves our life spiritually towards God.
To turn, the wheel must make contact with the ground. If it does
not touch the ground, it cannot move the cart; the wheel will just
spin.
So there must be a real time and place in our daily life dedicated to
prayer.
The spokes are the different forms of prayer. All forms of prayer are valid
and produce results. The spokes converge at the hub,
The hub is the prayer of Christ that dwells in our hearts.
At the hub of the wheel there is stillness. Without the still point at
the center, the wheel cannot turn.
Meditation is coming to stillness at the center of our being.
What is Prayer?
When we meditate, we achieve stillness at the center of our being,
the source of all our actions, our movement to God through
Christ within us.
A definition of prayer is described as "the raising of the heart and
mind to God." The mind is the organ of knowledge, the heart, the
organ of love.
Mental consciousness must eventually give way and open up to
the fuller way of knowing which is heart consciousness. Because
love is complete knowledge.
Most of our training in prayer is limited to the mind. We were
taught, as children, to say our prayers, asking God what we need
for ourselves or for others. That's one half of the mystery of
prayer.
The other half is the prayer of the heart where we are
not thinking of God or talking to him or asking
for anything. We just stay with God who dwells in us
in the Holy Spirit given to us by Jesus.
Meditation is the prayer of the heart that connects
us with the human consciousness of Jesus in the
Spirit.
For further information and
contact with the WCCM:
www.wccm.com
welcome@wccm.org
2nd meeting
We must go beyond the level of
mental prayer, to reach the
depths, where the very spirit
of Jesus is praying in our
hearts, in the deep silence of his
union with our Father in the Holy
Spirit.
Contemplative prayer is the
dimension of prayer to which we
are called.
This entails contemplative
consciousness as lived in daily
life.
Meditation is part of
the total mystery of the prayer
of anyone who is seeking fullness
of being.
Meditation as a way of contemplative prayer
Prayer is an essential part of a fully human life
If we do not pray, we are
only half -alive and our
faith is only half developed.
Prayer is like a big wheel,
which turns our whole
life towards God.
We pray in different
ways at different
times. Different
people prefer
different forms of
prayer. What makes these
different forms
Christian prayer is that
they all are centered in
Christ.
The central hub of the wheel
is Jesus' own prayer
Any form of prayer flows into and out of the spirit of
Jesus, worshipping God in and on behalf of creation.
The wheel of prayer in the light of Faith
At the hub of the wheel,
at the center of prayer, is the stillness. Without stillness at the center, there
could be no movement or growth in the circumference.
Meditation is the work of finding and becoming one with that stillness, which is
the hallmark of the Spirit.
"Be still and know that I am God."
Contemplative prayer
as opening to Jesus prayer
Contemplation is the heart of Jesus' prayer and his
communion of love with the Father, turning his
attention toward the Father in the Holy Spirit.
We do not express our needs to God either to inform
God of what he does not know or to persuade him
to change his mind. We pray to deepen our trust
that God knows our needs, knows us and cares for us.
Unless our faith is clear and deep, our prayer can
easily stop in its development, stuck at the level of ego.
For many Christians this is the crisis of their
faith today, and reflects the often-shallow level
of Christian spirituality.
Christian Meditation
=
Contemplative Prayer
The prayer of the heart, contemplative prayer, or meditation,
is essentially a prayer of faith.
Silently we accept that God knows our needs, and that this
knowledge is responsible for all Creation, that will
eventually complete us.
3rd meeting
The essential teaching 1
St. Paul says we don´t know
to pray, but the Spirit prays
within us (Romans 8:26).
how
We learn to pray not by
trying to pray, but by giving up or letting go
of our trying. And instead, learning to be.
This paves the way for prayer of the heart,
where we can find "the love of God
flooding our inmost heart through the
Holy Spirit given to us by
Him" (Romans 6:5).
This is pure experience, beyond thought,
dogma and imagination.
Meditation is an universal
spiritual practice that leads us to the prayer
of Christ. It leads us to silence, stillness and
simplicity.
The essential teaching 2
As Christians, we meditate because we believe in the risen Christ,
that he lives and lives within us. As disciples of Jesus, the Teacher
within, we have faith when he calls us to put aside the concerns of
the ego and to follow him into the Kingdom of God, to “share in the
very being of God."
Meditation has to do with being in relationship with Jesus.
Jesus knew that he was both from and of the Father, who was in
him.
This self-awareness of Jesus leads us to recognize ourselves as
temples of the Holy Spirit.
We understand that we do not need to seek Jesus because Jesus has
already found us.
We do not choose, we are chosen.
The essential teaching 3
It is our faith that makes our meditation Christian, being focused on the
human consciousness of Jesus, in our inner being.
As Christians, we naturally meditate with other Christians, and our lives
are guided and enriched in community by Scripture, the sacraments and
the different ways of ministering to others in the love and compassion
ofthe Spirit.
Jesus, by his life, death and resurrection, has opened up for us a way to
God and by sending the Holy Spirit to us, he has become our way and our
guide.
In meditation we look for the treasure within, we need to abandon
everything to find it. It is "the hidden treasure in the field", as Jesus
says in the parable of the Kingdom. We are called to experience Jesus
in our life, in our spiritual journey and help pass on that tradition to others.
The essential teaching 4
Meditation is not a way to trying to accomplish
something, of wanting to get somewhere, or of twisting
God’s arm, as it were: "Not my will be done but thine be
done."
Meditation is about realizing, rather than acquiring.
Realizing the indwelling presence of God, realizing what has
already been achieved.
It´s about leaving the goals aside.
Jesus did not teach any particular method
of prayer, but by what he says about prayer in the
Sermon on the Mountain, we can see that meditation is
entirely consistent with his teaching on prayer.
The essential teaching 5
Prayer must be interior.
Jesus told us to go to "our private room" to pray in the "secret
place". The "private room" is a metaphor for the inner chamber of the
heart. (Matthew 6:5-6).
Prayer is not about quantity, the amount of "prayers" do not matterbut about quality - "attention." (Matthew 6:7-8).
Prayer is not first asking God for things, because "he knows what we
need before we ask." (Matthew 6:8).
We need to prioritize the spiritual treasures of the Kingdom rather
than material well being. (Matthew 6:19-21).
Anxiety is the enemy of prayer. It makes us too self-centered and
prevents us from realizing the gift already deposited in love in
our hearts.
The essential teaching 6
Jesus said that prayer is “to set your mind on the Kingdom of God
first." In other words, pay attention to the "one thing necessary“.
Then all the other things will come. (Matthew 6:33).
In meditation we practice these seven teachings of Jesus on prayer:
humility, interiority, silence, trust, spirituality, peace and care.
In meditation we stop thinking of the past and the future and learn
to live fully in the present moment. We do not need to master difficult
techniques or theories
We need only be comfortable and alert. This is what the mantra
helps us to do.
4th meeting
What is Meditation?
Meditation is a journey of self-knowledge and self-acceptance.
This is the first essential step for any knowledge of God. It isn´t primarily
an intellectual knowledge. It is reached by a deep harmony in
the stillness of mind and body, because the body is part of the spiritual
path to God.
It is not an isolated or lonely journey. The solitude of meditation
makes us realize the profound interdependence with others and therefore
"meditation creates community." That´s why meditating in a group is very
important.
John Main saw the future Church as a Community. The spiritual
renewal of Christianity will bring a new appreciation of prayer. Prayer is
not talking or thinking about God, but to be with God, transcending our
narrow and egocentric reality.
The essence of Christian prayer is the human consciousness of
Jesus worshipping God in the Spirit in the center of the human person.
Opening mind and heart
In meditation, our way forward to this growing awareness of the Spirit
praying within us lies in the deepening fidelity to the saying the mantra.
The faithful repetition of our word integrates our whole being. It does
this because it leads to silence, concentration, to the necessary level of
consciousness to allow the opening of the mind and heart to the work of
God's love in the depths of our being.
As we begin to meditate, we have three objectives:
Say the mantra for the duration of meditation.
Take some time to get to that first stage. We must learn to be
patient. We can not force anything to happen, but we must
simply say the mantra without haste, without expectation.
Say the mantra throughout the meditation
without interruption.
To remain calm in the face of distractions. In this phase, the
mantra is like a plow going through the field of our rough mind
without deviating because of obstructions or disturbances.
Say the mantra throughout the meditation
time, entirely free from distractions.
Surface areas of the mind are in tune with the deep peace at the
heart of our being. In this state we go beyond thought,
imagination and images. We are in touch with reality, in the
presence of God dwelling in our hearts.
Meditation and Christian message
The mantra leads to this central Christian experience, leading us to
know, from our own experience, that the love of God has flooded our
inmost heart through the Holy Spirit.
Meditation is the way to expand our hearts, broaden our vision and
clarify our minds and perception. The stages of our progress will
come about in their own time, God’s own time.
We prevent this progression only if we are too self-conscious about
our stage of development. The biggest temptation is to complicate the
process and ourselves.
"Unless you become like little children ..." Meditation simplifies us to
the point where we can receive the fullness of truth and love.
5th meeting
The practice
Meditation is experiential.
This is a form of experience, not theory or thought.
It is an embodied form of prayer.
The body is not a barrier between God and us.
It is the sacrament of our being, given us by God. Therefore, the
body needs to be involved in every experience of prayer.
The simple guidelines to meditate
Simple rules are:
•
Sit down: the body is relaxed, but not in a position
for sleep.
•
Sit still: The body expresses the person's attitude
of attention and reverence.
•
Keep your back straight: the body is alert and
awake.
•
Breathe normally. The ideal way would be
to breathe abdominally (through the belly)
•
Stay relaxed / but alert: the formula for peace
•
Gently close your eyes and begin to recite
the mantra: Ma-ra-na-tha.
•
Repeat your word of prayer during the whole time
of meditation
The practice, 2
When meditating, try to find the position that enables you to feel comfortable
and safe. Relax your body’s tension, shoulders, neck, eyes, head. The basic sitting
postures are in a straight backed chair, on a prayer bench, or sit on the floor
with legs crossed, with a small pillow beneath for support.
Choose a quiet time and a place, when you are not likely to be interrupted or
disturbed. Treat your meditation as a priority. If possible, keep the same time
and same place each day as it helps deepen the rhythm of prayer in your life. Above
all be gentle with yourself. Take time to incorporate this new discipline in your life.
The practice, 3
Meditation begins and ends with music
to help you to be quiet and focused.
Meditation can be integrated
with other forms of prayer
as the Eucharist or Scripture.
Meditating weekly with a group is a powerful means of deepening and
supporting the practice. Groups allow you to share inspiration and
encouragement, and provide educational opportunities to listen to the
teaching. "Where two or three are gathered in my
name…” (Matthew 18:20). The practical difficulty we all encounter in
meditation is the constant problem of distraction. It is simply the effect
of constant mental activity.
The mantra is simple, effective means to combat all forms of distraction.
Distractions
Facing distractions:
Do not seek to fight them, whether it be thoughts, images or
feelings.
Pay full attention to the mantra, gently and faithfully returning to it
throughout the meditation.
Do not focus on the distractions. Treat it as background noise.
Be humble, patient, faithful, keep your sense of humor: do not
make a dark night out of every cloud. Do not underestimate the
perseverance that you'll need or the grace you will receive.
Are there success or
failure in Christian
meditation?
The mantra is like a path through
a thick jungle. However narrow the
path may be, follow it faithfully, and it
will take you out of the jungle of the
mind to the great open space of the
heart. When you find you have
wandered off the path, simply
return immediately.
Success and failure are not relevant
terms to describe the experience of
meditation. These are terms used by
the ego, and in meditation we learn
to "leave behind the self, or ego."
6th meeting
Stages in Meditation
Journey
The journey of meditation offers
profound insights into the life of the
mind and ultimately heals the soul.
A diagram can show the levels of
consciousness we all pass through in
the pilgrimage of meditation.
Meditation is a work, both our work of
seeking God as God’s work of seeking
us.
It is a pilgrimage through the
mysterious universe of the human
person, a self-investigation, in which
the transcendence of self gives rise to
the unitive, non-dual knowledge
of God. The meaning and
authenticity of our lives depend on
this self-knowledge.
Levels of counsciousness´diagram
Distraction level of the “monkeys´s mind”
Psychological distraction
Facing the nakedness and ego separation feeling
Place of Union with risen Christ
First level
Anyone who sits down to be still, experiences indiscipline and
restlessness in our "monkey mind." That
proves how superficial and fickle our mind is, how it is linked
to external conditions.
We aim to be still in the present moment,, the encounter with
God who is "I Am." But within seconds we are having
thoughts of yesterday, making plans for tomorrow or weaving
dreams of wish-fulfillment.
Our age increases the problem of natural distraction, by the
enormous mass of information we try to absorb every day.
With this discovery, it is easy to get discouraged
and give up meditation.
We need at this early stage to perceive the meaning of
meditation, and have a thirst that comes from a deeper level of
consciousness from the one we seem stuck at.
Christ is both outside and within us,
pushes us from outside and motivates us from inside
The mantra is a discipline, 'beginning in
faith and ending in love‘ which leads to
poverty of spirit. We say the mantra to
remove our attention from distractions: the
first great awakening.
It is the beginning of the deepening of
consciousness that allows us to leave
the distractions on the surface. We learn
to put aside our religious thoughts as much
as the common thoughts: it is not our
prayer, but the prayer of Christ that we are
interested in.
It may seem that this will never pass. Be aware of this and face it,
it's the beginning of transcendence. Gradually a change occurs. We
manage to sit still, we are less impatient and have more sense of the
Presence of God in traffic jams or queues in the supermarket.
A calmer life and a steady mind arise in everyday relationships.
In meditation, we become familiar with the structures and habits of our
mind and more tolerant of its restless way.
Second Level
At this level we find all that has been stored in our
lives. What we did and we said or thought and
imagined, have their place here, within our psyche.
Here we confront the unconscious processes, lost and
forgotten memories, emotions and thoughts; they can be
awakened and unleashed, if they were blocking the
movement of awareness that addresses the very core of
personal identity.
This is a work of healing, integration and selfacceptance and can be as turbulent as the distractions
of the surface.
It is work that occurs beneath the surface of the conscious
mind.
The mantra becomes like the seeds in the parable of
Jesus, a man planted it in the ground, going then to deal
with his daily life. All the while, the seeds continued to
grow, 'he did not know how.'
Selfknowledge
Self-knowledge, to which we are journeying, is prepared for by
what happens to us at this stage. It can be considered as both
purification and liberation, and sometimes when our deepest
fears and shadows are exposed, even as exorcism.
So, we become aware of the major structures of our
personality, the patterns in our relationships, and therefore we can
trace them back to ourselves instead of blaming others.
We become what we are, by how we react and interact (or we
refuse to) rather than what the others did to us.
This psychological awareness has potential for creativity and
for destruction as well. You can weave a shield of selfsufficiency. Or you can show the power of forgiveness
and tolerance, based on the relationship with
ourselves, and give us the opportunity to live more
fully with all others in the bond of compassion.
Third level
The ego has been a constant companion from the
beginning. Now, in the third level, we really meet it. At
the first level the ego is in its most distracted state,
dressed in the changing garb of daily life. In the second
stage, it wears the more dramatic costumes
of our psychological history.
From the ego comes all resistance to the journey toward
the true Self. Yet the ego is also the vehicle of the
journey. Just as we make the car into an idol, when it´s
only a useful means of transportation, we
may emphasize both the ego and its processes so
strongly that we lose sight of the spiritual significance of
the whole person.
In this third level we confront the ego in its
nakedness. The Cloud of Unknowing describes this as an
'absolute awareness of his/her own existence'that exists
between ourselves and God. Consciousness is affected by
the deepest existential sadness that existence is
essentially separated from Being. We need to confront
and transcend this existential sadness before we
can feel the joy of existence.
Fidelity to the mantra
We are invited to stay at the foot of the
cross at this stage, with an increasing pure
faith.
John Main says there is need for
more faith, as we continue the
pilgrimage. Our faith is deepened by the
cooperation between our spirit and the
Spirit of God.
The fidelity and maturity developed
in previous stages are useful at this level.
The mantra is now established
and those doubts of the early stages give
way.
The Cloud of Unknowing remind us of the
need to be faithful to 'the little word only'
'in peace and war', 'in prosperity and in
adversity'.
John Main's emphasis on simple fidelity to
the mantra 'from beginning to end of each
meditation' is within this ancient tradition
of Christian prayer.
7th meeting
The Mantra
in Christian Meditation tradition
and in John Main´s teachings
Fr. John Main O.S.B.
Teaching about the mantra is the heart of John Main's teaching on
prayer. What he taught came from his own experience of the spiritual
journey and the story of his life.
John Main describes how he had his first encounter with the mantra and
began to practice meditation.
His teacher in Malaysia, Swami Satyananda, responded to his need to
deepen his own Christian faith and prayer life, when he introduced
the mantra as a way of calming the mind full of distractions, known
as the "monkey mind."
John Main by responding to this teaching shows us that
he was open to other religious traditions in an unusual
way. This was due to the strong impression his teacher made
on him as a man of God and as someone whose spiritual
teaching was lived out with such active compassion and
social engagement.
We might see this early experience of a spiritual
teacher as underlying the importance John Main later
attributed to having a teacher for the journey of meditation.
More about the mantra
Meditate with the mantra
Learning to meditate is not a matter of
mastering a technique. It involves
learning to appreciate and respond
directly to our own inner
nature ... Ideally, you should find a
teacher who will help to guide you on
your pilgrimage.
Shortly before his death, John Main spoke
about the key recommendation for
meditation, summarized in three
words: say your mantra.
Many forms of Christian prayer, as well
as devotions and liturgy, involve
repetition of the same words, often in
a chant-like way: the Rosary,
litanies, the divine office or the
Eucharist.
The Western tradition does not have the
elaborate ’science of the mantra’
found in the East, although the
practice itself is well established.
COME, LORD
How John Main discovered the riches
of Christian Meditation
Thoughts and feelings are left behind in saying
the mantra. We are dealing not with mental
activities but with the opening of the
treasures of the heart.
John Main persevered in daily meditation, the
foundation of his spiritual life. When
his novice master told in 1958 to end the
practice, he reluctantly returned almost
exclusively to routine mental, vocal and
liturgical prayer.
Some years later, reading Augustine Baker, a
Benedictine monk of the seventeenth
century, made him return to his practice
of meditation. Baker emphasized the
contemplative life as the path of mature
spirituality, he insisted that it is open to lay
people as well as monks
and perceived effectiveness of
the mantra and prayer exclamation.
This caught the attention of John Main at a
crucial moment in his life.
Christian Meditation´s
beginnings
Baker led John Main to John Cassian,
where in his conferences Nine and Ten on
prayer in the Christian tradition he found
the Mantra described with clarity
and confidence.
Cassian, like other teachers of the Desert
Tradition, was interested in achieving
the goal of the monk's life
- “continuous prayer" - and dealing
with the problem of mental distractions.
He recommended to repeat "unceasingly"
a formula by which to reach “pure
prayer" and a deeper union with the
Risen Christ. Furthermore, the mysteries
of Holy Scripture could be known and
experienced with greater intensity.
For Cassian the key to this prayer of the
heart was the first of the Beatitudes:
poverty of spirit.
John Main´s teachings
John Main found the same teaching on the mantra in the
tradition of the ‘Jesus Prayer’ in the Eastern Church,
in The Cloud of Unknowing in the fourteenth century and modern
masters such as the Abbot John Chapman.
John Main returned to the practice of meditation. At first, his
thought was just, how this could enrich the church in monastic
life.
Then he noticed how "this very simple method“ met the urgent
need for a deeper experience of prayer for so many people of all
ages and walks of life.
John Main´s legacy
His main teaching mode
was always oral and personal.
He avoided talking about meditation in the
abstract.
The mantra, he said, is caught,
not taught. When he spoke of it, he
always included meditation with his
listeners.
The most profound teaching and the end of
all words will be a participation in the
creative moment of contemplative prayer.
Your teacher has only one instruction
to give, that is to say the mantra.
What goes beyond this is an encouragement
and support until the mantra is rooted in
your consciousness.
P. Laurence Freeman O.S.B.
For more information and contact with
the World Community for Christian
Meditation (WCCM)
www.wccm.org
welcome@wccm.org