Deepening Your Meditation

Meditation never has a dull moment. People sometimes say, ‘it’s boring, doing the same nothing every day’. But when you come to see meditation as continuous deepening, even boredom becomes interesting. The process takes you through highs and lows, vast peaceful panoramas and hard slog up the mountainside. Times when you glide on the air currents like a bird. Times when you crawl through the mud.

It’s more than interesting. Novelty is ‘interesting’, (for a while), but then you relapse again into boredom and start hungering for a change, just for the sake of change. That is boring. It diminishes the human and turns us into consumers in search of entertainment.

Meditation helps you understand Psalm 138 which begins:  

O Lord you search me and you know me. 

You know my resting and my rising where can I go from your spirit?

This mystical poem composed 3000 years ago describes human life and consciousness as never-ending, and ever-beginning.

For it was you who created my being

Knit me together in my mother’s womb

 thank you for the wonder of my being

For the wonders of all creation.

Our online series on Deepening Your Meditation is designed to help you revive this childlike wonder. This way of seeing your self renews your practice and your whole life. Then, it bestows the simple grace of feeling grateful. Meditation is not a difficult journey once you see it as a gift. It is the gift that allows you to fully accept the gift of your being. And the next gift that comes is being able to share who you are through your relationships and your daily work. Your individual being is not a separate entity.

Each of us is interwoven with everyone, every thing. It is our way into the mystery of the One who ‘knows our purpose from afar’. As you accept the gift of your being, it is like activating a cosmic credit card whose credit limit is continually increasing.

Our new series of talks on Deepening Your Meditation will explore the gift of integrating meditation into your daily life through four interweaving tunes:

1. Faith: Different from belief. Moves mountains. Heals. Becomes vision

2. Hope: Different from wish-fulfilment. Develops resilience. Reveals meaning

3. Love: Source, goal and the way of life. Born in attention. Raises the lifeless

4. Christ: The meaning of the human. Alpha and Omega. Healer of sick souls

Each of these online sessions will begin with a talk, followed by meditation and a time for discussion. 

I hope this series will remind you of the gift of meditation and the wonder of your being.

Laurence Freeman, OSB