Gradual Enlightenment By Laurence Freeman

One teaching of John Main is that meditation is a journey, a process. It’s not a technique that we master, although he, of course, emphasized the importance of the discipline of the mantra at the heart of his teaching. He also said there are no methods of
prayer. People often argue about different methods of prayer, but we don't have to argue about which is right or which is wrong.

Transcript

Gradual enlightenment,

Because I wanted to explore our sense of time and what kind of experience we discover unfolding as we make this journey.

One teaching of John Main is that meditation is a journey,

A process,

It's not a technique that we master.

Although he,

Of course,

Emphasized the importance of the discipline of the mantra at the heart of his teaching,

He also said there are no methods of prayer.

And people often argue about different methods of prayer.

We don't have to argue about which is right or which is wrong.

That's why he says there are no methods of prayer,

As if one method is going to achieve a more sudden and rapid enlightenment than others.

There are no methods of prayer,

He would say,

Because there is only prayer,

The one prayer,

The prayer of the Spirit that is flowing in our hearts continuously.

It might sound like a contradiction.

He recommends the mantra.

This is the part of the essential teaching that we follow,

That he invites us to learn.

But at the same time,

He says,

Don't create this as a model of reality in the left hemisphere of your brain,

And every other kind of approach to prayer is inferior or inadequate.

So there's a paradox here,

Or a tension between the commitment to the way of the mantra and this teaching of the Christian tradition,

With the fact that prayers cannot be reduced to something we get by a particular technique.

And anybody who learns is going at some point to say,

How long is this going to take?

How long do I have to wait?

This is obviously a universal question.

And over time,

The question becomes quieter,

And you become less impatient and less driven by that ego mind.

And it is a demand.

It's the question,

How long is this meditation going to take?

It's a demand to control and to possess the process.

What we learn,

Of course,

Is that the process is about letting go of control and possession.

You can't control and possess a way of dispossession.

It's a radical poverty of spirit.

Learning to meditate is also learning how to live.

There's an old saying from the early church,

Lex orandi,

Lex credendi.

The way of praying is the way of living.

So the way we pray,

We could say,

Is a powerful influence,

Deep influence on how we live,

At the level at which we live,

How we understand the spectrum of life.

Learning to meditate is learning how to live.

And that's why we could say the times of meditation every day are the most important part of the day.

The more we practice,

The more we see meditation as a revelation of meaning.

And then this question,

How long do I have to wait?

Am I a good meditator?

Am I a bad meditator?

Am I successful?

Am I failing?

It saddens me when I meet people who say,

You know,

I've been meditating for 20 years.

I'm a very bad meditator.

I mean,

If they're faithful to it,

That's all that matters.

Not about evaluating yourself,

Good or bad.

One of the important teachings that we give to new meditators is don't evaluate.

Give up this idea of being successful or being a failure.

Just be faithful.

And the more we practice it in this way and come to let go of those questions,

We see it as a revealer of meaning.

So what we discover about meditation by practicing it is what we discover about life.

It gives us a way of seeing and interacting with life.

When I began to meditate,

Seriously,

It took me a few years after I was introduced to meditation.

In fact,

I had to go and join the monastery in order to learn.

After I had been meditating for some time,

I was very committed to it.

And I was also very impatient.

And I asked Father John once,

How can I speed this up?

I'm not really getting there yet.

I'd had,

Of course,

Like we all do,

Had some moments or some experiences which are encouraging,

Experiences of,

If you like,

Temporary enlightenment,

But they would pass.

They might last a certain period of time,

And you feel you're floating on air,

And you feel you love the world,

And the world loves you,

And you feel very well.

It's a deep experience of apatheia.

The Desert Father's called apatheia.

But then when it passes,

And you go into another part of the cycle,

You feel,

I felt I'd lost something and disappointed.

Temporary enlightenment experiences made me want more and want it now.

I don't want to have to go through this cycle anymore.

What was wonderful about him as a teacher was that he didn't say,

Don't be an idiot.

He was very understanding,

And tolerant.

And you could see,

I suppose,

That behind this was a deep desire to make the journey.

But I was still thinking that the journey had a final destination,

Or a concrete achievement.

But he did help me to see,

By engaging with what I was sharing with him,

That the actual speed of the journey varies from person to person.

And it depends upon our commitment to the practice,

Most of all.

So when people complain that they feel they're not making any progress in meditation,

And you say,

What's your practice?

And they say,

Well,

I meditate three or four times a week.

Well,

Okay,

If that's what you're comfortable with,

But just recognize that we say that the minimum recommended dose of meditation is twice a day,

Morning and evening.

There's the reason for that.

One question about how long does it take is,

First of all,

What is it?

What does it mean?

Are you thinking of enlightenment as some kind of goal and achievement that you're going to master once and for all?

What is it we're talking about?

And anyway,

The journey that you are on is going to be your journey.

It's a universal human journey,

But for each one of us,

It is a unique journey.

And that means it is conditioned by our temperament,

By our history.

It's not determined by the ticket we buy,

But by our temperament,

Which also includes how much baggage are we carrying.

There are those who travel light.

You can see people,

You know,

Travelers who have lots of bags,

And the stress of the journey is,

Of course,

Increased by the number of bags you've got to look after.

The kind of journey and the speed,

If you like,

With which we make the journey,

And there are different speeds at which we make the journey,

Depending upon the baggage we're carrying and our attachment to the baggage.

Are we worrying about losing the bags or are we prepared to let go?

Passage from the Gospel of Mark,

Chapter 10.

It has two stories.

One is the story of the rich young man who comes to Jesus and he says,

Master,

Good Master,

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

He clearly had a rather mechanical idea about this journey to enlightenment,

To eternal life,

And Jesus helps him to understand,

I think,

What he's asking.

He says,

Well,

You know,

I'm doing all these good things.

I am obeying all the rules,

But how do I get further?

And Jesus says,

Sell all your possessions,

Be radically poor,

And the guy walks away with a sad face,

And we never see him again.

And in a way,

That character is all of us.

Immediately after that,

There's an exchange between Jesus and his disciples,

Because he said it is harder for a rich person to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

And they are shocked by this.

They don't understand what that means.

Peter began to say to him,

Look,

We have left everything and followed you.

So the implication is,

So what are we going to get out of this?

How long is it going to take?

Jesus doesn't reject Peter and saying,

You know,

You're just interested in what you can get out of me.

This is just the ego speaking.

He doesn't say that.

He says,

I tell you,

If you become poor,

If you give up everything,

You will be amazed at what you receive.

You will receive it a hundredfold.

So he's using a materialist image.

The rich young man and that encounter with Jesus gives us a way of understanding the nature of the journey that we're on.

We understand the nature of the journey through time and over time.

We come to see what kind of journey we are making by meditating morning and evening every day.