The mantra falls into the good soil of our heart, what Jesus calls a ‘good and honest heart’. We could describe this as a pure heart. And in meditation, in the saying of the word, the faithful perseverance in the listening to the word, we come with practice to listen to the mantra. Then, this work of listening to the word or saying the mantra listening to the mantra purifies the heart. So our heart at the beginning, that means that level of consciousness which we need to open up and develop through meditation, this level of the heart may be at the beginning very hard, be a very hard heart. It could be a brick wall of the ego. We may find at first that we’re meditating, but we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. But as Jesus says here, those who persevere with it will find that the heart itself begins to become good and honest. In the Beatitudes, he says that the pure of heart, see God.
( Breakthrough by Laurence Freeman OSB )
