Laurence Freeman OSB, “Meditation,” JESUS THE TEACHER WITHIN(New York: Continuum, 2000), pp. 212-213.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus identified material concerns as our main source of anxiety. How can we make ourselves more comfortable and reduce personal suffering? This is the major preoccupation that obscures the present moment and disrupts true priorities.
Therefore I bid you put away anxious thought about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes (Mt 6:25).
When he tells us not to worry Jesus is not denying the reality of daily problems. It is anxiety he is telling us to abandon, not reality. Learning not to worry is hard work. . . .[Yet] despite its “attention-deficiency disorder,” even the modern mind has its natural capacity to be still and to transcend its fixations. In depth it discovers its own clarity where it is at peace, free from anxiety. Most of us have half-a-dozen or so favorite anxieties, like bitter sweets we suck on endlessly. We would be frightened to be deprived of them. Jesus challenges us to go beyond the fear of letting go of anxiety, the fear we have of peace itself. The practice of meditation is a way of applying his teaching on prayer; it proves through experience that the human mind can indeed choose not to worry.
This is not to say we can easily blank the mind and dispel all thoughts at will. In meditation we remain distracted and yet are free from distraction. This is because---however minimally at first---we are free to choose where to place our attention. Gradually the discipline of daily practice strengthens this freedom. It would be childish to imagine that this is fully realized in a short time. We stay distracted for a long time. We soon get used to distractions as traveling companions on the path of meditation. But they do not have to dominate. Choosing to say the mantra faithfully and to keep returning to it whenever distractions intervene exercises the freedom we have to pay attention.
It is not a choice in the sense in which we choose a particular brand off the supermarket shelf. It is the choice to commit. The way of the mantra is an act of faith, not a movement of the ego’s power. Within every act of faith there is a declaration of love. Faith prepares the ground for the seed of the mantra to germinate in love. We do not create the miracle of life and growth by ourselves, but we are responsible for its unfolding. Coming to peace of mind and heart—to silence, stillness, and simplicity---requires not the will of a type-A high-achiever, but the unconditional attention, the sustained fidelity of a disciple.
Meditate for Thirty Minutes.... Remember: Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. Silently, interiorly, begin to say a single word. We recommend the prayer-phrase "Maranatha." Recite it as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently, but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything—spiritual or otherwise. Thoughts and images will likely come, but let them pass. Just keep returning your attention—with humility and simplicity—to saying your word in faith, from the beginning to the end of your meditation.
After Meditation, from Simone Weil, “Forms of the Implicit Love of God,” WAITING ON GOD (London: Fount/HarperCollins, 1972), pp. 91-92.
There is only one way of never receiving anything but good. It is to know, with our whole soul and not just abstractly, that people who are not animated by pure charity are merely wheels in the mechanism of the order of the world, like inert matter. After that we see that everything comes directly from God. . .All that increases the vital energy in us is like the bread for which Christ thanks the just. All the blows, the wounds and the mutilations are like a stone thrown at us by the hand of Christ. Bread and stone both come from Christ and, penetrating to our inward being, bring Christ into us. Bread and stone are love. We must eat the bread and lay ourselves open to the stone, so that it may sink as deeply as possible into our flesh. If we have any armour that is able to protect our soul from the stones thrown by Christ, we should take it off and cast it away.
Please note:
These readings are meant for your personal use. As you know, the work of our Community relies on the generosity of visitors like yourself. Please consider making a regular donation to the WCCM. (See the "Please Donate!" link at the right of this page.)
If you would like to have these "Weekly Readings" delivered to your email inbox each week, use the "Stay in Touch" box at the top of this page.
Laurence Freeman OSB, “The Fear of Death,” THE SELFLESS SELF (London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1989), pp. 129-131.
By meditating. . .we are facing death every day. And if we face death every day, if we allow ourselves to die a little more each day, then the experience of death will allow us to live each day more fully. Death faced with faith takes us beyond the fear of death and has us live each day with the certain hope of eternal life. That hope is why meditation is a way of life.
Because it is a way to die. Death cancels out our sense of the future and so forces us to concentrate wholly in the present moment. Where else is there to go? When we really face death we are totally in the present moment. We enter eternity before we die, if we can face death with this unevasive attentiveness. But we always try to escape the present moment.
We usually evade the present, either by living in the past, or by creating a world of fantasy. But when we are meditating, the saying of the mantra closes off those two options or escape routes. There is nowhere to go except to be here. The mantra points in one direction, towards the center. It is a narrow path, but it is the path of truth. As we follow the way of the mantra, as we learn to say it with courage and humility, it leads us along a way in which everything in us dies that would hold us back from fullness of life.
We die each day in faith and that is the supreme preparation for the hour of our death. But as a way of dying in faith it inevitably brings us to confront two very powerful forces that we must also be prepared to face. They are the forces of fear and anger. [. . . .]
[But] anger, and the fear that it springs from, is everything that meditation is not. The deepest anger comes from our deepest fear—of death. But it comes from all sorts of secondary causes too, from everything that makes up our psychological history. We need to be aware when we meditate, and as we cleanse ourselves of that anger, that it is not our immediate concern to trace where it comes from.
All that is really important is that we are shedding it. . . What is important is that the love active in the faith of the mantra casts out anger from the heart. We begin to meditate with a great advantage if we start with a developed faith because we begin by being able to understand that anger is cast out by the power of Christ. . .Christ in the power of the Spirit can cast out anger because he is the one who has overcome the primal fear of death and who is now empowered to free us from that fear. . . .[In the words of 1 John 4:16-18], ”God is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in God, and God in him.
This is for us the perfection of love, to have confidence on the day of judgement, and this we can have, because even in this world we are as he is. There is no room for fear in love; perfect love banishes fear.”
Meditate for Thirty Minutes.... Remember: Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. Silently, interiorly, begin to say a single word. We recommend the prayer-phrase "Maranatha." Recite it as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently, but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything—spiritual or otherwise. Thoughts and images will likely come, but let them pass. Just keep returning your attention—with humility and simplicity—to saying your word in faith, from the beginning to the end of your meditation.
After Meditation from St Augustine, Sermons, noted in THE ROOTS OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM, Olivier Clement (London: New City, 1995), p. 249.
Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
Please note:
These readings are meant for your personal use. As you know, the work of our Community relies on the generosity of visitors like yourself. Please consider making a regular donation to the WCCM. (See the "Please Donate!" link at the right of this page.)
If you would like to have these "Weekly Readings" delivered to your email inbox each week, use the "Stay in Touch" box at the top of this page.
John Main OSB, “The Wholeness of God,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 83-85.
We have to learn, and it is absolutely necessary that we do learn it, that only one thing is necessary, because only one thing is. All of us must therefore address our own lack of discipline. We must bring our restless wandering minds to stillness. It is one of the first great lessons in humility we learn, when we realize that we come to wisdom and stillness, and we pass beyond distraction, only through the gift of God. . . .[A]ll we have to do is to dispose ourselves, and this we do by becoming silent, to the infinity of God. We learn to be silent by being content to say our mantra in humble fidelity. Read more »
From Fr Laurence Freeman, OSB: Dearest Friends, January 1997 WCCM International Newsletter.
To allow [the] pattern of daily meditation to take hold amid all the other patterns of our lives, not just imaginatively but actually, is a challenge to the best of us; to the best in us. It is a mundane introduction to the cosmic law of sacrifice. There is an Indian story which tells how Vishnu came every day to offer worship to Shiva by offering a thousand lotuses at her feet. One day, after a few thousand years of such worship, he discovered as he lay the lotuses down that were only 999 that day. (Such things happen occasionally). Without delay he plucked out one of his eyes, beautiful, shaped like a lotus and completed the offering with it by placing it among the 999. Read more »
John Main OSB, “Second Conference,” THE GETHSEMANI TALKS (Tucson, AZ: Medio Media, 1999), pp. 35-37.
We must take extreme care about using terms like “self-renunciation.” In prayer we do truly seek to turn our whole being to a contemplation of God’s goodness, of his infinite love. But we can only do this with any degree of effectiveness when we have first truly come close to ourselves. Prayer itself is the way to experience the truth of the words of Jesus: “The man who would find his life, must first lose it.” But we have to take a preliminary step. And this first step is to gain the necessary confidence to lay down our life in the poverty of the single verse in meditation. This is the tremendous importance of Christian community---when we live with [others] and experience ourselves as revered and loved we build up the confidence that is necessary to enter into prayer where we practice this total poverty, this total renunciation. And Christian self-renunciation is always self-affirmation in Christ. Read more »
John Main OSB, "The Oceans of God" (December 1982), THE PRESENT CHRIST(New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 111-112, 116-117.
Our life is a unity because it is centered in the mystery of God. But to know that unity we have to see beyond ourselves and with a perspective greater than we generally see with, when self-interest is our dominant concern. Only when we have begun to turn from self-interest and self-consciousness does this larger perspective begin to open. Another way of saying that our vision expands is to say that we come to see beyond mere appearances, into the depth and significance of things. . ..not just . . .in relation to ourselves but . . .to the whole of which we are part. This is the way of true self-knowledge and it is why true self knowledge is identical with true humility. Meditation opens up for us this precious form of knowledge, [and] this knowledge becomes wisdom . . when we know no longer by analysis and definition but by participation in the life and spirit of Christ. [. . .] Read more »
This year as always, the timeless Christmas story speaks to us and enlightens the listening heart at many levels. There is the simplicity of the story and the unfathomable mystery of what it is saying. So, too, the story of our own lives, as we have lived them to this point, can be told in a few words; but no words can express their meaning and the wonder of our joys and sufferings, failures and discoveries.
There is the human fragility and marginality of the characters, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the Shepherds – none of them among the powerful ones of the world. And yet through and around them is the presence of God speaking His Word in a silence that brings down the mighty from their thrones and humbles our own chattering egos.
In the story there is both a tenderness and a mighty, toughness and resilience. We feel deep emotion and yet contemplate a reality that takes us beyond sentiment and emotion, to a place of truth and love in which all desire is fulfilled and all that is incomplete is led to completion. Read more »
From John Main OSB, “Letter Ten: December 18, 1979,” LETTERS FROM THE HEART(New York: Crossroad, 1988), pp. 119-120.
Christmas is a feast that can open the hearts of us all to the presence of Christ. It puts before us the great qualities of innocence and hope that we need if we are to awaken to his light, and it fills us with confidence because it tells us that the old age has ended. The new age, indeed the new creation, has begun and our point of departure for finding it everywhere is finding it a reality in our heart.
Our journey is, then, one to our own hearts. Because all of us are invited to enter this temple and receive this newness of life, we have to recognize this time as a moment to put off everything in us that is dead, everything that prevents us from embracing the mystery of our own creation and entering into the fullness of life we receive as pure gift in God’s eternal act of creation. Read more »
Fr John Main OSB, “Letter Ten, December 18, 1979,” LETTERS FROM THE HEART(New York: Crossroad, 1988), pp. 119-20.
Christmas is a feast that can open the hearts of all of us to the presence of Christ. It puts before us the great qualities of innocence and hope that we need if we are to awaken to his light, and it fills us with confidence because it tells us that the old age has ended. The new age, indeed the new creation, has begun and our point of departure for finding it everywhere is finding it a reality in our heart.
Our journey is, then, one to our own hearts. Because all of us are invited to enter this temple and receive this newness of life, we have to recognize this time as a moment to put off everything that prevents us from embracing the mystery of our own creation and entering into the fullness of life we receive as pure gift in the father’s eternal act of creation. Read more »
An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Reverence,” LIGHT WITHIN (New York: Crossroad, 1989), pp. 92, 94-95.
Religious people tend to be more self-consciousness than others. And if we are honest about our self-consciousness we should see its connection with a certain lack of reverence in our religious life. We may indeed be surprised that at the most sacred moments in our religious life our spirit of reverence is shamefully hollow. A busy, noisy irreverence in our churches is certainly something that non-Christians often remark upon. They remark for example on the lack of silence or of physical stillness. They often remark too about the amount of time spent in asking God for things we want. Read more »
This is a comprehensive course intended to help you introduce meditation to beginners. All you need for this is available online here: including the updated edition of 'A Pearl of Great Price' by Laurence Freeman OSB and some audio files. This will make it easier for you to present this course with confidence. You will find additional materials to support this under 'Resources' - 'Materials' on the School of Meditation webpage.
Laurence Freeman OSB, “Meditation,” JESUS THE TEACHER WITHIN(New York: Continuum, 2000), pp. 212-213.
John Main OSB, “The Wholeness of God,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 83-85.
John Main OSB, "The Oceans of God" (December 1982), THE PRESENT CHRIST(New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 111-112, 116-117.
