From John Main OSB, The Way of Enlightenment in The hunger for depth and meaning, ed. Peter Ng (Singapore: Medio Media, 2007), pp. 188-9.
All of us are aware that there is much darkness in our world. We hear every day of terrible injustices, of violence, of hatred, of feuds, of greed. We see this both at the personal level and at the global level. All of us too are aware of the darkness within ourselves. . . . .
When we begin to meditate, we begin to understand that we cannot enter into the experience with just a part of our being. Everything that we are, the totality of our being, must be involved. . . .Another way of saying this is that every part of our being must be open to the light. Every part of us must come into the light. We do not meditate just to develop our religious side or capacity. The truly spiritual man or woman is in harmony with every capacity they have. . . .
Meditation is not the process whereby we try to see the light. In this life we cannot see the light fully and continue to live. Mediation is the process whereby we come into the light, whereby we begin to see everything, the whole of reality. We begin to see it all by the power of the light. And we see that, as Jesus tells us, the power of the light is love.
The test of our progress in meditation is how far we are moving into seeing everyone and everything by the light of God. Seeing by the light of love makes us loving toward them all, too. Not judging, not rejecting, but seeing everyone and the whole of creation by this light which we must discover in our own hearts.
After meditation: Petition by K.A. Hays in WINDTHROW (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2017), p. 53.
Petition
Here floats the mind on summer’s dock.
The knees loose up, hands dither off,
the eyes have never heard of clocks.
The mind won’t feel the hours, the mind spreads wide
among the hours, wide in sun. Dear sun,
who gives the vision but is not the vision.
Who is the body and the bodies
that speak into the dark below the dock.
Who to the minnows in the sand-sunk tire
seems like love.
Make us the brightness bent through shade.
The thing, or rush of things, that makes
an opening, a way.
Photo credit: diana_robinson on VisualHunt
