Preparation & Meditation itself

If we are teaching from the richness of the Christian contemplative tradition, then we have to make a distinction between preparation for meditation and meditation itself. You can prepare for meditation the way we did it with some stretching, some physical preparation; or reading of scripture, or some other form of awareness exercise where your mind calms down; or music. You can use different ways to prepare for the meditation, but don’t confuse the preparation with the thing itself. We have to go into the thing itself, into the meditation; this is what people want. We have to give the full meal of prayer to people. So we have to make this distinction between preparation and the meditation itself.

Meditating as a Christian by Laurence Freeman OSB