A Simple Concept

Meditation is a very simple concept. There is nothing complicated about it, nothing esoteric. . . . In essence, meditation is simply being still at the centre of your being. Being still. The only problem connected with it is that we live in a world of almost frenetic movement, and so stillness and rootedness seem quite foreign to most of us. But in nature all growth is from the centre outwards. The centre is where we begin and again that is what meditation is about. It is making contact with the original centre of your own being. It is a return to the ground of your being, to your origin, to God. . . .St. John of the Cross, in his reflections on the nature of meditation, wrote that "God is the centre of my soul." [. . . .]

Meditation is a wonderful opportunity for all of us. . .because in returning to our origin, to the ground of our being, we return to our innocence. The call to meditation, for the early Fathers of the Church, was a call to purity of heart and that is what innocence is---purity of heart. A vision unclouded by egoisim or by desire or by images, a heart simply moved by love. Meditation leads us to pure clarity--clarity of vision, clarity of understanding and clarity of love--a clarity that comes from simplicity. And to being to meditate requires nothing more than the simple determination to begin and then to continue. . . .

[Meditation] is the way of attention. [W]e must go beyond thought, beyond desire and beyond imagination and in that beyond we begin to know what we are here and now in God, "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). The way of simplicity is the way of the one word, the recitation of the one word. It is the recitation, and the faithfulness to that recitation every morning and every evening, that leads us beyond all the din of words, beyond all the labyrinth of ideas, to oneness. . . .[M]editation is a way into full communion, oneness of being. In meditation, and in the life enriched by meditation, we just are fully ourselves, whoever we are. -- John Main OSB, "God is the Centre of my Soul," THE WAY OF UNKNOWING

"Meditation Creates Community"

View this video of National Coordinators around the world celebrating the community that meditation creates.

"Breathe Christ"

“Turning attention away from ourselves toward the greater reality ‘outside us’ that contains us is the great act of contemplation. It is the same act of contemplation, however we manage to do it—in relationships, in art, in service, and in prayer. Certainly, learning to meditate—a lifelong art to learn—is a fundamental way to do it. But it is not limited to the actual work of meditation. To meditate is to learn how to live contemplatively in everything we do, [to], as St Antony of the desert once called his disciples to do: ‘always breathe Christ.’” — Laurence Freeman OSB, Common Ground.

Our True Self

The more conscious of the true self we are, the more we see our attitude to others change in the way we live out our relationship with them. Fear diminishes, generous love grows; reactive anger yields to the wisdom of forgiveness; judgement is absorbed by patience. In the place of the control and manipulation which, in the ego’s eyes, makes the world go round, an amazing freedom is glimpsed as a real possibility in human affairs: the freedom that arises when people let each other be who they are. [. . . ]

But what a risk. The great risk we take in meditation is first of all to be ourselves. This is the first step. But if we do not take the corresponding next step, we would never move from where we are; we would be hopping on one leg all our life. The next step is to take the risk of letting others be themselves. Perceiving their reality as distinct from our own is the way to do this. [. . . .]

Turning attention away from ourselves toward the greater reality “outside us” that contains us is the great act of contemplation. It is the same act of contemplation, however we manage to do it—in relationships, in art, in service, and in prayer. Certainly, learning to meditate—a lifelong art to learn—is a fundamental way to do it. But it is not limited to the actual work of meditation. To meditate is to learn how to live contemplatively in everything we do, [to], as St Antony of the desert once called his disciples to do: “always breathe Christ.” -- Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter Nine,” COMMON GROUND.

Presence

"Meditation is a discipline of presence. By stillness of body and spirit we learn to be wholly present to ourselves, to our situation, to our place. It is not running away. By staying rooted in our own being we become present to its source. We become rooted in being itself. Through all the changing circumstances of life nothing can shake us.

"The process is gradual. It requires patience. And faithfulness. And humility.

"The humility of meditation is to put aside all self-important questioning. To put aside self-importance means to experience ourselves poor, divested of ego, as we learn how to be. To be present to the presence. We learn, not out of our own cleverness, but from the sources of wisdom itself, the Spirit of God." - John Main from Door To Silence.

Conversion of Heart

“One of the most difficult things for Westerners to understand is that meditation is not about trying to make anything happen. But all of us are so tied into the mentality of techniques and production that we inevitably first think that we are trying to engineer an event, a happening. . . The first thing to understand, however, is that meditation has nothing to do with making anything happen. The basic aim of meditation is indeed quite the contrary, simply to learn to become fully aware of what is,  . . to learn directly from the reality that sustains us. [. . . .] So often we live our life at five percent of our full potential. But of course there is no measure to our potential. The Christian tradition tells us it is infinite. If only we will turn from self to other, our expansion of spirit becomes boundless. It is all-turning; what the New Testament calls conversion. We are invited to unlock the shackles, to be freed from being prisoners within our self-limiting egos.” — JOHN MAIN: ESSENTIAL WRITINGS

The Human Spirit

“Every great spiritual tradition has known that in profound stillness the human spirit begins to be aware of its own Source. In the Hindu tradition, for example, the Upanishads speak of the spirit of the one who created the universe as dwelling in our hearts. The same spirit is described as the one who in silence is loving to all. In our own Christian tradition Jesus tells us of the Spirit who dwells in our heart and of the Spirit as the Spirit of love. This interior contact with the Life Source is vital for us, because without it we can hardly begin to grasp the potential that our life has for us. The potential is that we should grow, that we should mature, that we should come to fullness of life, fullness of love, fullness of wisdom. The knowledge of that potential is of supreme importance for each of us. In other words, what each of us is invited to do is begin to understand the mystery of our own being as the mystery of life itself. [. . . .]” — Moment of Christ, John Main OSB