Mantras

 I have finished, for the second time, Laurence Freeman's book, Jesus, the Teacher Within. I highly recommend it, whether you are a meditator or not.  It is a beautiful, thoughtful  and inspiring book. 

I will say that my Lenten decision this year to practice meditation in the Christian tradition is beginning to bring some subtle gifts to my life.  I worry  less and impatience is slowly loosening its grip. I am trusting my path a little more because I sense Jesus' presence there.  I am grateful and humbled. 

I  want to share what Laurence Freeman included in his book about mantras. I find having a mantra a helpful navigation tool, and I think this must  be generally true regardless of what meditation tradition is practiced, or if one does not practice at all. We all have those moments in our lives that threaten to upend us. Slowly repeating a mantra can help bring us back to our center, back to the Christ within us. There, we can find compassion and love that is almost always needed, either for ourselves or for others.  Here, Lawrence Freeman is quoting John Main's book, Word into Silence:   

 

"We usually begin by saying the mantra, that it seems as though we are speaking it with our mind silently, somewhere in our head. But as we make progress the mantra becomes more familiar, less of a stranger, less of an intruder in our consciousness. We find that less effort is required to persevere in saying it throughout the time of our meditation. Then it seems we are not so much speaking it in our minds as sounding it in our heart, and this is the stage that we describe as the mantra becoming rooted in our hearts..."* 

I think it is important for us to remember we all have mantras running through our heads that often we are not even aware of. These are the habitual thoughts that propel us into our lives. Many of these soundings are not positive nor helpful.  Too often, they lead to distraction and a sense of isolation, rather than illumination and a sense of union. 

If you would like to meditate with others on Zoom, but 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday does not work for you, drop me a note. Advent is on the horizon, and adding an evening session so we can come together to meditate in that beautiful season sounds wonderful to me. Meditating with others is an experience I cannot yet put into words. Perhaps it is simply that when we come together in silence, we can actually experience that yes, God is love, and we are knitted together in wonderful ways. I believe this is how we can bring peace to our world: one breath, one syllable at a time. 

 

And this I know in the secret silence of my heart

Where your awareness dwells 

And embroiders me into the fabric of the physical world 

Out of the slender thread only your eyes can see 

Recorded by your hand into the book of the world

All the days of recordable life 

Even before I live them   

 

from Psalm 139, Opening to You, 

Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms, 

Norman Fischer      

  

photograph: Oakland, October 2021   

 

*Jesus the Teacher Within, Laurence Freeman, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000, page 222