What is Meditation & How To Meditate

Laurence Freeman, a Benedictine monk and the spiritual guide of The World Community for Christian Meditation, explains what meditation is and how to practice.

Transcript

The word meditation and the word medicine are closely related.

The prefix med implies care and attention.

So for example,

If you go for medical treatment,

You want to receive good care and the personal attention of the person looking after you.

And similarly,

When you meditate,

You are in a sense caring for yourself in a very deep selfless way.

And you are doing that through the work of attention.

Meditation is a very universal aspect of human wisdom.

The history of meditation goes back into prehistory.

The universality of meditation,

Why it can open up the common ground for us between different faith traditions,

Between modernity and the past,

The very simplicity of meditation is what makes it universal.

And that simplicity also makes meditation something that can be practiced by all types of personality,

The introverted,

The extroverted,

People in all ages,

All stages of life,

And people with any kind of belief system.

It's this radical simplicity of meditation that makes it so universal.

The essential wisdom of meditation is that it is not what you think.

In meditation,

We lay aside our thoughts.

Now that's challenging for us in the modern world because we live so much in our heads.

We are so stimulated by the media and by input that we are constantly thinking,

Imagining,

Fantasizing.

But in meditation,

We're not repressing that.

We're not doing any harm to ourselves.

It's not a violent practice.

But in meditation,

We are simply laying aside these waves of thought that are continually breaking upon the shore of our consciousness.

And that means all thoughts,

Both good thoughts and bad thoughts,

Both the thoughts we'd like to remember and the thoughts we would prefer not to have.

The meditation is not what you think.

And it's this letting go of thoughts that opens us to a whole new dimension of our own being.

How we do that is,

Of course,

Very important because you can't think your way beyond thought.

So we follow a very simple and universal tradition of the mantra.

The mantra is a word,

A meditation word,

That you are given or that you take.

And you repeat this word continually,

Faithfully,

During the time of the meditation.

Choosing the word is therefore important because you stay with the same word both during the meditation and from day to day.

Meditation,

As we'll see,

Is a daily practice.

The word I would recommend is a beautiful meditation word,

A beautiful mantra,

Maranatha.

The word Maranatha has four syllables of equal length,

Ma-ra-na-tha.

It's not in our own language,

And therefore it doesn't stimulate our thought and imagination.

And the sound of the word is calming to the mind.

These are the word I would recommend and that I'll be recommending during the meditation talks in this series.

If you want to choose your own mantra,

Of course,

You're free to do that.

But I would recommend that you stay with the same word and that it's a word that is not in your own language.

The repetition of this word during the meditation brings us directly into a new way of being that we could describe as a way of simplicity,

A way of silence,

And a way of stillness.

The simplicity explains why children can meditate so easily and happily.

It also means for us as adults with a lot more baggage that we are not analyzing or evaluating ourself while we're meditating.

So simple means not evaluating,

Not analyzing.

The stillness of meditation is both a physical stillness,

Because we try to sit physically still during the meditation,

But also that physical stillness leads us to a stillness of mind.

And as we know,

Our minds are very agitated,

Very turbulent sometimes,

And it's the repetition of the word that allows gradually the mind to become more stable and therefore more clear.

And silence.

Silence is something that we have almost lost an understanding of in our modern culture.

We think of silence very often as the absence of noise or when something is not working,

It becomes,

It falls silent.

But silence is a much more potent and a much more necessary experience for us to keep returning to,

Especially in our very distracted and noisy world.

And silence is the fruit of attention.

When we pay attention to anything,

We are doing the work of silence.

So rather than saying any more at this moment,

I'd like to invite you to practice it and to try it for yourself,

Because if you want to learn to meditate,

You will learn much more quickly by doing it than by listening to talks about it.

So let me run through briefly the essential elements.

First of all,

Your posture.

Sit still.

Sit with your back straight.

Put your hands on your lap or on your knees.

Close your eyes lightly.

Relax the muscles of your face,

Your jaw,

Your shoulders.

Take a few moments to be aware of your breathing.

That will help you to take the attention off your thoughts.

And then begin gently and attentively and simply and above all faithfully to repeat your word.

The word again I would recommend is the word Mara Natha.

Four syllables,

Ma ra na tha.

Don't visualize the word,

But listen to it as a sound.

Listen to it as you say it.

We'll begin our meditation now.

One,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight,

Nine,

Ten.

You you you you you you you In the Gospel of Luke,

Jesus was asked,

When will the Kingdom of God come?

And he replied,

You cannot tell by observation when the Kingdom of God will come.

You cannot say,

Look,

Here it is,

Or there it is,

Because in fact,

The Kingdom of God is within you.

The Kingdom of God is in your midst.

This response of Jesus to a very natural question,

We all ask in meditation at some point,

How long will it take?

When will something happen?

When will the Kingdom of God come?

Jesus' response to this question is very enlightening.

He tells us we cannot observe it.

In other words,

We cannot stand outside the experience and look at it objectively from the outside.

That isn't what meditation is like.

He gives us the reason for this.

We cannot say it is here or there because he says the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Well,

That's one translation.

It can also be translated as the Kingdom of Heaven is among you or in your midst.

And that ambiguity also takes us into the non-dual,

The unified consciousness,

Which is the Kingdom of God,

Which is within us and in all our relationships.

Reviews

Really helpful introduction to meditation …thank you 🙏

Lovely calming bell to lead into meditation

Nice introducton and clear explanation. Beautifull thought at the end grom Luke’s gospel. Thank You so Michael 🙏🏻🕯

Thanks a lot. It was a bit difficult for me to stay all the way trough the silence. Mind keeps talking all the time! Also, my legs and back hurt. Would it be possible to lay down to do this type of meditation? Best regards.
I love the sensation of stillness though. I want to keep doing it and maybe go from less time? 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thank you. So glad I’ve just found you. Looking forward to sharing more with you. 💛🙏

Excellent! I feel like my meditating will improve greatly with what I learned in this meditation today. Thank you!

Thank you for helping me to begin the path to proper meditation as a follower of Christ.

I've been following John Main's teachings for thirty years. This is truly a useful resource and contribution. Thank you.

A wonderful exposure to Christian meditation. Thank you.

Enlightening, thank you. Your voice is calming and soothing.

Love the long period of silence!

Beautiful- highly recommend especially for those looking to integrate their Christian tradition into a meditation practice is a spacious, loving, inclusive way.

Very enlightening and informative.

Very helpful, thank you!

Lovely soft meditation and wisdom. Thank You !

Very very good! I would have preferred very subtle music during the meditation portion as it seemed very long to me, but the information given on meditation at the beginning was great, and the closing especially was my favorite part. Thank You for your wisdom 🙏🏻

I needed to hear this. Thank you.

Simple and straightforward meditation is observing the kingdom of peace within
Amen

This was a surprise. No nonsense, very straightforward, get-right-to-it approach, effective coaching, clean ending sharing a rarely accurately translated passage (speaking here as a Greek scholar who has translated that same passage).

Simple and unambiguous. Wonderful way to come back to basic.