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Christian Meditation
Fr. Laurence Freeman, World Community for Christian Meditation (www.wccm.org)
Compiled by Mary Sargent, May 19, 2013, (www.saintvictor.org meditation blog)
- Sit quietly in a good posture. You may use a comfortable chair or the lotus position. Sit still. Keep your back relatively straight and place your hands in your lap. The body is important because meditation is an embodied activity. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
- Empty your mind of all thoughts by concentrating a word or Choose a word like Maranatha, an Aramaic word which means “Come Lord.” Repeat the word slowly, thinking only of the syllables, Ma-ra-na-tha. Don’t worry about distractions. Just keep coming back to the word. Listen to the word silently for the whole duration of the meditation.
- Make a commitment to meditate every day for six months. Each day should have two 20-minute periods, one in the morning and one in the evening. It is not that much of an effort compared to the possible results. You may not notice the difference in your life at first, but people close to you will.
- Meeting in a Meditation Group once a week in which a discussion and a question-and-answer period follows the 20-minute period of meditation is helpful. It will encourage you and guide you. In fact, it can be a source of spiritual direction.
- The teacher of meditation is not the members of your group or a book or video but the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of God is within you. Jesus Christ is in the depths of your being. Meditation allows the Holy Spirit to surface.
- Meditation is not just a 20-minute period that calms you down, but something that pervades the 24 hours of your day. You may not be aware of it, but subconsciously, the Holy Spirit is with you in each breath you take and in each beat of your heart.
- In meditation, you meet Jesus Christ in your heart. Pascal said that the heart has reasons that reason does not know.
- Water on a mountaintop finds its way down to the sea. Sand and dirt can only block the flow for so long. Meditation removes the obstacles that prevent the Holy Spirit from flowing into your heart.