Notes on Contemplation — by Mary Sargent

#19 – Cherish The Silence

Cherish The Silence
Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.org or www.wccm-usa.org
Notes Complied by
Mary Sargent

Don’t seem to be making progress in Meditation? What should we do about it?  Abandon the idea of making progress.  We are always beginning and always remaining fresh. Meditation is a journey; an unusual journey; a pilgrimage to where we are, a return to our roots.  Meditation is a focusing of our attention into the now; being wholly present to the now of what is.

For this clear consciousness, each one should be reduced to a single-mindedness.  The real self is the point of a diamond cutter, who cuts through distractions and dishonesty, and who opens the way to truth – the pure light of God.  Each one of us is lead to meditation.  Each of us starts at our own moment.  We must be responsive in that moment.  In order for our consciousness to expand, our self-consciousness must retract.  Silence.  The silence of death that precedes the resurrection to new life.  Cherish the silence of our meditation.  The mantra is the way into the eternal silence of God.  It is a purification that is stripped of everything that would hinder our closeness to God.  Egoism must go. Possessiveness must go.  Self-consciousness must go.   The power to overcome is infinite.  The power in the heart of each one of us is that power – the power when Christ was raised from the dead.

Meditation is when open ourselves to that vitalizing energy.  Whatever the suffering or challenges, that power is always with us. The way we follow is to stay on the pilgrimage.  All that is required is that we are faithful to our meditation, to our mantra.

#18 – Conversion

 “Conversion“

Notes compiled by Mary Sargent

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures presented by the World Community for Christian Meditation

www.wccm.org or www.wccm-usa.org

Christian life is an on-going conversion; it is a lifetime commitment to the truth.  The Benedictine vision involves the whole person and the complete life.  Coming within the light of God through meditation, we cease to have the searchlight of consciousness on ourselves.  It is rather turned on God.  The searchlight is His light.  Conversion is the revolution principle that insures freshness, honesty, integrity; the best revolutions are peaceful ones.  It is an orderly process to spiritual life.  There are no dramatic histrionics.  It is a  daily, orderly return to the process.

We see clearly that the basis of all sovereignty of our own knowledge and conviction is that Jesus is Lord.  We then live not out of our own moods, feelings and emotions.  Conversion is learning to live by the will of God.  We discover in meditation that conversion is the process of learning to see as God sees, and learning to love as God loves.

To enter into the process of conversion , we makes significant readjustments.  God is the center of all being, the center of our being- beyond all compromises we make with the truth.  We come into the full light of his love, and we see who we are, what reality is, and who He is.  We learn the truth about ourselves and learn that we have nothing to fear for we learn that God is truth, compassion, gentleness and forgiveness.  We can leave fears behind as they are cast out with love.

Be energized by God’s infinite love.  Christian’s sins are blotted out in the light of God’s love  We get the confidence we need to respond to the vision of Christian life.  We respond to that vision in the power of his love.

We need to wake up, rise from the dead.  Waking up means opening our eyes to the light.  Meditating is taking a further step into the light.  We return each morning and evening with deepening joy – leaving our thoughts behind and journeying into the light.  Awake, sleeper!  Let the Holy Spirit fill you.  Give thanks everyday for everything.  We place ourselves within the ambiance of that wakefulness and light as we open to the power of Christ.

#17 – Commitment to Poverty

“Your faith may be built upon the power of God” – Saint Paul.  The same experience that we discover as we meditate is that the truth of Christ is not a philosophy but a spiritual path. Confidence comes from contact with that power on that path.

By opening our hearts to the power that dwells in us, we communicate that power.  The sign of progress in your meditation is found in the quality of your life; the depth of your love, the selflessness of your actions, and the depth of your perspective.  The deepening of your way of life makes you see life as a mystery rather than a problem.

The practice of meditation takes us into the depths and out of the superficial.  There is a harmony we come to know.  That harmony
becomes deeper and more resonant.  It is a source beyond ourselves.  We know that harmony is the unifying love of God.  The presence of God now seems more real to us.  The presence becomes a reality of consciousness of our being. We make a commitment to poverty.

Where we are, God is.  God is with us.  The natural evolution is that we think less about ourselves and more about God.  We are not the center of our lives.  He is. As we meditate we discover that the way into that deeper level is so simple and obvious.  We are then in harmony with the power of the love of Christ which is open to us.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.org or www.wccm-usa.org

#16 – New Path of Life

When we set our feet on a new path of life, we are able to do it because of Christ’s resurrection.  All are invited to share in his glory.  Jesus, after he has arisen, could only be seen with the eyes of faith.  His is mistaken as a gardener or workman, and then, is recognized by Mary Magdalene.

We can see Christ and all of life with this new dimension of faith.    We need the wisdom to penetrate beyond all appearances;  to be open to a new dimension beyond reality.  We are getting in tune with the basic structure of reality.  Everything we see is the reality of God.

Meditation is seen as a way of vision.  We open the eyes of our hearts and learn to see with love.  When we fall in love, we love someone deeply and see them in a new light. Falling in love takes us out of and beyond ourselves into the reality of the other.  Profound meditation follows the same pattern.  We abandon our isolated view of life and travel through the limitless ocean of God’s love.  When we open the eyes of our heart, we begin to see with a new vision startlingly and profoundly intoxicating.  We see knowledge.  We see the one who knows that he is.  We see one-ness; all divisions must be transcended.

We see love.  All is revealed in this love. Revelation takes place in the moment of God’s choosing.  It is a tragedy not to be ready for this moment of love.

Meditation is the commitment to setting out on this road of faith and leaving egoism behind. Meditation is the acknowledgement that God is God; God is One, God is love.  The discovery is the revelation that each one of us is summoned into that One-ness and into that love.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.orgor www.wccm-usa.org

#14 – Fulfillment Through Dispossession

“Maranatha” – Say this mantra from the beginning until the end of your meditation silently without interpretation and…” nothing happened”, you say to yourself.

The way toward fulfillment is not on the basis of success.  We are not seeking to acquire anything, but to let go of everything.   Most of what we’re letting go of, we’re better off without anyway.

Go beyond thought and imagination.  Being is what life is all about.  Learning to be the person you are without justifying or making excuses for your existence. You simply enjoy the gift of your own being. Begin in faith.  You can’t come to faith with demands.

The way to faith is the way of dispossession.  Let go of thoughts, ideas and just be.  Say your mantra and gradually unhook.   Sit upright, sit still, close your eyes, relax your face, and quiet your mind.  Listen to the Jesus:  “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

During meditation, forget results for the first twenty years or so.  Keep up a daily fidelity to your meditation practice.  We find the strength and power by our encountering with the spirit that dwells in our hearts -the fullness of God Himself.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.org or www.wccm-usa.org

#13 – The Myth of Eternal Youth

In our society, one great fear and source of sadness is the fear of aging and of declining.  The sadness arises because the aging process leads us to believe that the myth of eternal youth is an illusion. We feel a limited store of energy and a period of long decline.

The myth of eternal youth contains and expresses a profound truth of human condition – to discover the spring of eternal youth hidden deep in the forest.  This journey symbolizes an interior journey.  If we search for the eternal youth-spring in the externals only, we will suffer
mortal disappointment.  But if we face the discipline of the journey, we find the spring that Jesus speaks of; the spring that is there for all of us to drink deeply from, the spring of living waters.

If we follow this internal journey as we get older, we become more childlike and open.  We experience happiness and freedom along with the knowledge of experience.  Together, we have Christian maturity.

A child has this innocence naturally.  We lose this innocence when we feel we have been hurt and betrayed.  We become, not
wise, but cynical.  Instead of being reachable, we become hardened where we’ve been wounded.  We build up defenses around ourselves to
protect our vulnerability. At that point, we begin meditation.

We often have an urgent sense that we must find our way back to that innocence; to recover the innocence of Christ.

Follow the stream that flows from the spring on our journey.  All the refreshment and guidance we need are there.  Meditation is the stream in our hearts.  The mantra clears the way through the forest.  Stay on the journey.  Say the mantra.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.org or www.wccm-usa.org

#12 – From Isolation to Love

Listen to Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:  “Your world was a world without God or hope, but now, in union with Christ Jesus, you have been brought near.  He is our peace.”

Meditation is the natural, obvious thing to do.  We know with certainty that we must pass beyond our own closed minds.  We must pass from isolation to love.

Introspection is the mind turned in on itself.  If I try to analyze an experience of my own, I end up in the state of observing myself which is fixating on my own self-consciousness.   We end up in a hall of mirrors, trapped where we take the image for reality.  All we have are images of ourselves.  Why is meditation different?

The first crisis we experience in meditation is sterility; dryness, nothingness – we ask ourselves, “What am I getting out of this?”  The temptation is to give up, but we must commit ourselves to meditation and to the mantra. When we commit ourselves to letting go of our own self-consciousness, we receive in God all riches and all love; a poverty of spirit.  Saint Francis of Assisi knew and experienced the commitment to total poverty.

It takes time for our conscious mind to keep up with what is happening in our deepest being.  If we continue meditating and saying the mantra, sterility becomes poverty; poverty, simplicity and abandon to God and His love.

God is love.  Introspection transformed into vision, we see in the divine light.  Faith in our own destiny is finding ourselves in God.  We must be serious in our commitment to joy, to love and to God.  There are no half-measures.  You can’t be half committed; you either say your mantra or you don’t.

Allow yourself to be committed to Meditation.  Enter into the inheritance that is yours in Christ.  Liberty of spirit is union with God.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.orgor www.wccm-usa.org

#11 – The Time To Be Silent

To learn to meditate is to learn to be profoundly silent; to learn to sit really still and say our mantra with total attention.  Sit with your spine as upright as possible.  Close your eyes and internally say your mantra silently in four equal syllables – Ma-Ra-Na-Tha, from the beginning until the end.

Use all of your energy saying your mantra.  Meditation is a process.  It takes time.  All of us have to be very patient with ourselves.  We must find the courage and humility to start again every time we stop.  We learn to let go of our ideas, plans, thought processes and memories, and to enter into total silence.

You may ask yourself, “does this mean to let go of everything I’ve learned in order to meditate?” No, we are only suspending all operations of our being;  The mind – rational analysis; The heart – knowing and loving people; The body – movement.

When we stand back from these processes, we discover a harmony, peace and stillness.  This harmony we experience in meditation becomes the basis for our judgments.  We are inspired by love, so we persevere in our meditation.

It appears that nothing is happening.  But gradually, our lives will be changed.  We are made free to love.  We find a holy, new ground to stand on.  We discover a rootedness in being when we discover ourselves rooted in God who is love.  All of this because we found the courage to take the attention off
ourselves and allow ourselves to be.  To be still; to be silent…in God…in love.

Unity in Christ:  Meditation is the great way of unity. We are unified and made whole in Christ.  We find our own essential and unique place in the Universe…in unity with all.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.orgor www.wccm-usa.org

#10 – Detachment

Detachment in meditation means a turning away from your own life situation.  It is detachment from self-pre-occupation and self-indulgence.  Detachment means not using other people for our own events.  Detachment is liberation from the anxiety we have about our own survival of ourselves.  This detachment from self-centeredness liberates us for love.  We are no longer dominated by our quest for survival.

Detachment requires a trust in God, in others and the willingness to let go; to give up controlling and to just be.

In meditation, we simply say our mantra.  We learn to trust and learn to be.  It is a celebration of being – a shared joy in receiving life as a gift; kissing the joy as it flies by and not possessing or controlling it.

Meditation leads us to centered-ness.  It is the still point, and what you learn is that there is only one center – the center of all centers, the profound unity of being.  It is a commitment to be sufficiently detached from self-conscious pre-occupation and to commit time each day to meditation.

God is love.  Jesus said, “Love one another.” By letting go, we have an open-ness to being.  In that we learn to love.

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.orgor www.wccm-usa.org

# 9 – Thought, Feeling Love

Notes from John Main’s Christian Meditation Lectures
Presented by The World Community for Christian Meditation
www.wccm.org   or www.wccm-usa.org

Notes compiled By Mary Sargent

Each one of us can know that the love of Jesus – his power and purifying energy is released and working in our hearts.  When we think of our inner lives, we think of emotion.  Thinking and feeling lead us to imagination, not to the reality of Christ’s presence in our hearts.

Spiritual life based on emotion leads us to religious intolerance.  Our goal is to be rooted in love.  Thought and feeling are essential elements on every pilgrimage, but we can pass beyond them into reality.  What we discover in meditation is that God is the only foundation we can build on.  In Him alone can we find the courage to see
what we need to see and travel the road we must travel.  In Him alone can we find the strength to take up our cross.

If the pilgrimage is to bring us to fulfillment, we need the discipline of meditation.  Do not think about God or analyze our feelings about Him.  We say our mantra with faith in the presence of absolute love.  In meditation, our thoughts and emotions are purified by his forgiveness; his love.  This purity frees us for the great task of brotherly love – to leads others to this purity of consciousness and clarity of vision. There is nothing greater we can do for our neighbor.

Never forget the discipline of The Way:  Say our mantra; return to meditation with love.   Listen to Saint Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews:  “Now Christ has come.  His priesthood is not belonging to created world.  His blood has secured eternal deliverance in his spiritual, eternal sacrifice.”  Meditation is the entry into that reality.