Evaluation During Meditation

Laurence Freeman speaks on how to deal with evaluation during meditation, followed by meditation and scripture comment.

Transcript

If you work for a large organization or institution or you're in education or you're in medicine,

You're used to being evaluated or evaluating the work that you're doing.

And evaluation,

Of course,

Can be very useful.

It allows us to see whether what we're doing is producing the desired results.

But with meditation,

We need a completely different kind of evaluation,

Not quite as analytical,

Not quite as judgmental,

And maybe more patient.

The value of meditation is really discovered not in what happens during the meditation period itself,

But in the changes,

The subtle but very perceptible changes that it works in our life,

In our relationships,

And in our mental states day by day over time.

That's why even though when you sit to meditate,

You may say on some occasions,

That was a really lousy meditation,

That was such a bad meditation because I was so distracted.

I couldn't say the mantra for more than two or three times,

And then I was compulsively thinking over my present worries and anxieties.

Even though you may think of a meditation as being a very good meditation because you felt very peaceful,

Very calm,

Maybe you even had some kind of breakthrough into deeper serenity or equanimity of mind,

It isn't really useful to evaluate the meditation session itself as either good or bad.

Obviously,

It's better to have a peaceful meditation where we really feel the benefits flowing into us than to have a meditation where we feel totally distracted.

However,

In the long term,

Even those meditations which you feel are failures because you were so distracted,

Could actually be doing a very deep and transformative work in you.

The only way we can really make that kind of evaluation is to keep the focus on our daily life rather than on the meditation period itself.

Meditation of course challenges one of our most common consumer characteristics,

Which is instant gratification.

We want good results and we want them immediately and sustainable.

In meditation though,

We are discovering a deep truth that my own teacher,

John Main,

Expressed in this way.

When you meditate,

Nothing will happen and if it does happen,

Ignore it.

That might not sound very exciting,

But it's actually very good advice about how to develop the practice in daily life.

Some people in the early stages of meditation can have a really wonderful breakthrough.

They discover their capacity for peace and for joy in a way that they'd never imagined possible before.

But you can't expect that kind of experience to be repeated every time you meditate.

That would be too much of the instant gratification principle.

So take a little detachment,

A little distance from evaluating the meditation period itself and keep the focus on being faithful to the practice and allowing the benefits and the fruits of the practice to manifest in your life and in your mental states and in the way that you relate to people and the world around you.

Meditation works at the level of relationship and relationships as we know take time to develop.

They have their ups and their downs.

Even the downs in a relationship are very important to deepening and enhancing the relationship.

That's the same with meditation.

Think of meditation not so much as a technique that you're mastering,

But think of it as a relationship that you're entering into.

A relationship,

First of all,

With yourself.

That's where your physical posture,

Your being physically still and present is the first step to be with yourself.

So take a moment again now to sit comfortably with your back straight,

Sit still,

Close your eyes and begin the work,

Simple work of attention.

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In his teaching on prayer,

One of the things that Jesus tells us is to set your mind upon God's kingdom before everything else and all the rest will come to you as well.

What does it mean to set your mind on God's kingdom?

The kingdom is not a place we're going to.

It's not a reward we get for being good.

The kingdom is not a territory or a nationality that we need a visa for.

The kingdom is an experience.

It's an experience of reality and of reality as communion,

Relationship,

As truthful being in love.

In this sense,

The kingdom is within us and among us.

So to set our mind on God's kingdom means more than having a sense of belonging or a religious identity or any other kind of external identity.

It is much more about knowing ourselves within that reality of love.

So when we set our mind on the kingdom,

We're not thinking about God.

We're not thinking about the kingdom.

We're not analyzing all of this.

There are other times when we may think about it and deepen our commitment to the journey by understanding it better at a mental,

Intellectual level,

Symbolic level.

But to set your mind on the kingdom means to be focused.

It means to be single pointed.

It means to pay attention.

This is precisely what we do in meditation.

We are setting our mind on the kingdom before everything else because this is the ground of reality,

This is the living core of our being and the living core of all reality in our life.

So it's worth setting our mind on this with total attention.

And then everything else will come to you as well,

He says,

Because when we've got the priority straight,

Everything falls into its proper place in relationship to it.

Life then begins to have a sense of proportion,

A sense of balance and harmony and integration.

In modern life,

We are beset by so many demands upon our time,

Upon our attention.

It's a stressful existence in modern society.

It's very easy for our minds to become unmindful,

Distracted,

Jumping from one thing to another with no sense of center,

No sense of grounding.

And this is why daily meditation is such a gift to us because it brings us back after a busy day or at the beginning of it,

A day that's going to be challenging.

It brings us to a place that we can hold the center throughout the ups and downs,

The disappointments and the joys,

The problems and the happy moments of our daily lives.

It gives us a center and a balance and everything else then that we need falls into place around this living center.

Reviews

Excellent series of meditations 😎

Such helpful advice, thank you very much 🙂🙏🏻.

So glad to have found Fr. Laurence here on Insight Timer! This format is wonderful: short talk - period of silence - short reflection. Thank you!

This particular topic is one i need to hear again and again. Would love to see even more talks from you here! Love & Blessings...

Such a clear story of what meditation is and could mean for us! Thank you!

I'm so glad to have found this. Thank you