Why are we meditating? Of course there is a variety of reasons, motivations. What we frequently hear when we ask is a desire for inner peace. People are meditating because it is so different from the other aspects of their lives, which may be busy, noisy, demanding -- and for some, full of anxiety or fear, or regret. For a while they can be still and rest, with permission as it were to set down the load. And that’s fine. If that’s what it is, “not a problem” as everyone seems to say these days.
Christian Meditation however invites us to rather more than that. If our motive is personal inner peace, there are perhaps two things to say. The first is that there are many offers of peace of mind around, such as Transcendental Meditation, TM, and much of it is simply part of the consumer culture. Secondly, it may not work. In half an hour’s time we are back where we came from, amid all that is not peaceful. What we have had is a rest. In the classical Christian teaching, that “rest” was known very well. They called it the pax perniciosa, day-dreaming, a kind of alpha consciousness, an escape from reality.
In Christian Meditation it is important that we are awake and alert, and not hiding from reality. I think the word rest is not appropriate because there is in fact a lot going on. We are the ones who are still and silent, but we are consenting to the work of the spirit over the days, weeks and years, eroding the false self and calling the true self, which was always there, and which God always saw. The much-used hospital cliché has some relevance here -- informed consent. We are consenting, and sometimes that is quite hard work, because it means facing our reality and the present moment.
One frequent question is about results -- what do I get out of this, if not an amazing and instant inner tranquillity...? You see the consumerism again... there has to be some reward, some benefit. If we must look for a result, we should look for it in the area of our relationships. Are we more loving... of ourselves in the first place? Less judgemental and inclined to labels which are exclusive of some and inclusive of others. Are we acquiring more understanding or sympathy with human difference, including our own human frailty and fallibility?
It is a long process of being brought closer to the Way of Christ, to some of those sublime requirements such as the Beatitudes which may have always seemed far above us. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard said that most Christians typically treat the Sermon on the Mount rather as they set their watches deliberately ahead of time, so that they will at least possibly approximate. The work that is going on in our stillness is something we learn to trust, and it becomes apparent in our hearts and in our relationships.
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