Notes on Contemplation — by Mary Sargent

# 6 – Serious

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

Notes compiled By Mary Sargent

The Prayer of Jesus or The Jesus Prayer goes like this:  “Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

It is His prayer that we need to be part of.  In meditation, the mantra keeps God within your heart so that extraneous things cannot enter in.  The mantra is like a watchdog guarding your heart.  Your heart is wholly open to Christ.

Avoid distractions; avoid allowing your mind to become involved in trivia.  Do not allow yourself to be nowhere.  Be fully entered into the prayer of Jesus. Do not waste your life allowing it to slip through your fingers.  You are coming into fully consciousness, allowing the light of Christ to shine in your heart.

We must be serious about our life once we begin Meditation.  It is not an endless series of distractions.  As Christians, we must be serious.  The gift of our life and redemption – we are made one with Jesus – a one-ness to proclaim to the whole world.

Our meditation is our acceptance of the gift, our life, Jesus.  His spirit is infinite and requires our full concentration.

We seek to live in the eternal moment.  Live in the eternity of God. We are call to do this, if only we will be serious.  We have the liberty of spirit.  Meditation
is the full acceptance of that liberty.  Christianity is not about laws and obligations as much as it is about having our hearts full of wonder.

When we let go of our thoughts and feelings and plunge into the depths of the mystery of God. When we pull away from distractions and return to our mantra, it leads us to peace.  This peace guards our hearts so that, free of distractions, we are open and available to Christ in our hearts.

The magnificence of the Christian vocation is:  to enter into the fullness of Christ; to know our Father.  This is the call for all Christians:  the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  We are citizens of heaven.  The only thing it takes to become a saint is the willingness to be one.

# 5 – The Path Forgets Itself

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

God’s love, or any love, that is, involves a total acceptance of the other.  It is unconditional acceptance that is so total, that the self is lost, there is only
the other.  It is in that state of utter selflessness that we find ourselves.

In meditation, saying your mantra is an act of pure selflessness.  We renounce, leave behind our own thoughts and concerns.  We become as the Japanese say, “the eye that sees, but cannot see itself.”  Meditators look straight ahead reflecting the pure light of God without egoism.  Meditation is the way of love because its result is communion.  We must leave ourselves absolutely behind in order to find ourselves.

Listen to the ancient Hebrew prayer, the Shema…”Hear oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”  Shema, (pronounced sh-mah) means to hear, to listen.  In meditation, we are listening for the silence of God’s voice.  Our hearts are directed towards God’s light.  We are infinitely loveable and loved.  We fasten our minds and hearts upon the knowledge that God is love and we are one with him.

Jesus came to establish this “one-ness” in our hearts.  To be a Christian is to live out of that conviction.  So we return to the mantra every morning and evening.  In prayer, we are in communion with love and with God.  Meditate twice every day.  Do not allow yourself to get sidetracked.  Be like the eye looking straight ahead at the vision in front of us.  Not seeing itself, but seeing the infinity of God’s love.  This vision is for everyone, everyone who would be fully human, fully loving and fully themselves.

# 4 – Simple Enjoyment

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

Saint Thomas Aquinas said:  “Contemplation consists in the simple enjoyment of the truth.”

Thinking, analyzing, comparing and contrasting all have their place in theology, but meditation is not the time for those things.  Meditation is the time for being; the time for simple enjoyment in the one-ness, union and simplicity of just being.

There is an ancient Islamic parable that goes like this:  Once there was a man alone at night, under a street lamp, looking for a key that he had dropped.  A man passing by asked him what he was looking for.  The first man said. “I am looking for my key.”  The passerby asked him, “Where did you drop it?”  The man replied, “About 50 yards down the road.”  The passerby asked, “Why are you looking for it here?”  The man answered, “Because there is more light here.”

We have to leave the street lamp and be willing to go into the dark in order to find the light within ourselves.   What we are searching for is not a matter of getting more knowledge, but of letting go of thoughts.  We are not looking for

God because he is lost.  He is not lost.  We know he is present now in this space and time.

In meditation, we say our word; our mantra.  The mantra is the key to simplicity.  We leave complexities behind.  Meditation is the simple enjoyment of life.

When we meditate, we are reduced to our essential being.  We become small enough to enter through the eye of a needle.  In that reduction, in that humility, we go out into life – unlimited life.  We are making full contact with our own spirit, making full contact with truth, and making full contact and unity with the spirit of Christ.

Meditate every morning and every evening for 20 to 30 minutes.  Sit still.  Sit upright.  Close your eyes, let all thoughts go, and say your word from the beginning until the end.  Ma-ra-na-tha.  Contemplation consists in the simple enjoyment of the truth.  Be open to what is, to the “is-ness of God, to the “is-ness” and truth of our own creation.

# 3 – God Is The Center of My Soul

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

Meditation is a simple concept; nothing complicated or esoteric.  It is the simplest concept you can imagine.  Meditation leads us to being still at the center of our being.  The only problem is that we live in a world of movement.  Stillness and rootedness seem foreign to us.

All growth in nature is from the center and out.  Meditation is a return to the ground of our being where we make contact with the center of our being.  Saint John of the Cross wrote, “God is the center of my soul.”

The religious try to understand God with the mind.  The non-religious dismiss God.  In meditation, we discover God
ourselves.  It is a pilgrimage to our own essential being.  In that discovery, we
are made free.  This is the great invitation of Christianity:  to discover
your own liberty.  Progress in not measured by the distance we cover between our origin and our destiny.  We come to discover the vast potential we
have in our origin.

In meditation, in this process of becoming rooted in the ground of our own being, we return to our innocence.   A call
to meditation is a call to purity of heart – a vision unclouded by the egoism of desire.

Meditation leads us to that clarity of vision, to understanding, and to love.  Meditation requires nothing more than to begin and to continue.  Discover your own destiny; the way of simplicity, beyond thought, desire and imagination; a place where we know  that we are in God.

The way of simplicity is the way of the mantra.  Sit upright with your spine erect.  Be still.  Close your eyes.  Say your word – the mantra.  Repeat the word internally and silently.  The mantra leads us to one-ness beyond all words and ideas.

Meditation is a way into full one-ness of being where we are fully ourselves in the school of community.

When we discover our own one-ness and potential, we discover the one-ness and potential in others.  The ultimate end of meditation is communion.  It is the path of silence and simplicity – the silence discovered in our own hearts.  This silence is revealed to us because we pay attention to it.  We know because we are known.  We are sons and daughters of God in union with Christ Jesus.  Listen to Saint
Paul:  “…there is no Greek, no Jew, no slave, no free men and women.  We are all
one in Christ Jesus.  So put aside all dividedness.  Seek to be one in Christ.”

# 2 – Trying To Keep God Happy

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

We have this desire to please.  So often we cannot be ourselves, because we don’t experience ourselves as being rooted in any solid basis.  The world is unstable which makes it difficult for us to form relationships.  We don’t know what we think about ourselves.  We are always wondering what other people are thinking about us.

To live our lives in union with Jesus means we are unshakeable.  We don’t care if the world loves us or criticizes us because we are rooted in love.  We are not trying to make ourselves acceptable to others.  We are certain that the truth is that we are infinitely loveable and infinitely loved.  We must know this with personal certainty in
our own hearts.  Meditation is the pilgrimage which leads us to this…that which is essential…the essence of what
it means to be alive…the spirit of God dwelling in our hearts.

In our meditation, we experience ourselves as being loved and forgiven, not just acceptable.  When we know
this, we don’t have to go around trying to make ourselves acceptable to people or to God.  We don’t have to try
and make God happy.

We need to respond to God’s infinite love with total attention, with total stillness, not thinking about his love, but being
open to it.  Not thinking about his mercy, but receiving it.

This is the Christian experience:  the certain knowledge that God is love and lives in our hearts.  Meditation brings us to total openness, total stillness, and total attention to that love.  Meditation is not a dialog with Him, but the experience of being in union with Him…in total harmony with Him.  We are then completely rooted in God.  Meditation is the time for that rootedness when we enter into that stillness, that stability and that infinite love with unshakeable confidence.

# 1 – Being Yourself

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

In modern life, we have lost contact with what is essential.  We have lost contact with our own essential being; our own essential center. We have not looked at our spiritual practice as a discipline.  We have looked at it from the perspective of “what can I get out of it.”

What we have to learn when we embark on the pilgrimage of Christian Meditation is that the spiritual journey requires a serious commitment.   The challenge is that it is a journey away from your own egoism;  a journey away from self-obsession, and a journey away from images of yourself that you may have.  It is a commitment to being yourself.

When we sit down to meditate, it is not about making something happen.  It is about being fully grounded in what is and “is-ness.”  It is about being wholly open to the One Who is (Christ).

The  essence of meditation is learning to say your mantra with utter simplicity.  Resting in the Lord, and finding yourself in Him. Meditation is not about making something happen.  It has already happened.  Now we need to learn to be ourselves.  We need to learn to be the persons we were called to be; open to Jesus in our hearts.

When we sit down to meditate we:

1.   Sit up straight and remain absolutely still.

2.   Internally say our word, our mantra – the Aramaic
word,     Maranatha.
(Say it slowly Ma-Ra-Na-Tha.)

3.   When thoughts arise, brush them aside gently
and return to the   mantra.  Say your mantra from the beginning of the
meditation to the end.

4.  Meditate twice every day.  Morning and evening is best.