Simple, but not simple - 17 June 2011

Warkworth Meditation Group, 17 July 2011

In meditation, all our normal and worthy busyness comes to a halt, for the moment. No doubt we have a busy day ahead. And doubtless, most that we have to do today needs to be done and is stuff we like to do. However, for the moment, we set it aside. We will pick it up later. It will still be there.

The point now is to be still. And that requires patience and practice, it needs that we pay attention, or in the biblical words, be awake. First it matters that we are physically still. Sitting still, feet flat on the floor, busy hands comfortably at rest. Neck and shoulders relaxed... So far as we can, we permit joints and muscles to take a rest. For most of us in latter life joints and muscles can be rather an issue -- but in this, as in all of meditation, we are gentle with ourselves and we always do what we can, not what we can’t.

Then it matters to be mentally still. This is always difficult. We become as still as we can manage right now. The mantra, the word we have chosen, comes in to help us. The mantra has a rhythm, a resonance -- and our task is to say our mantra, our word, interiorly, gently, from the start to the end of our time of silence. When we realise that we have strayed from stillness, we gently come back to the mantra, and that is all.

Remember, we are not looking for signs and wonders, experiences, or any such thing. What we are doing is quite simply being still, coming to a stop. We are consenting now to be receptive. Not giving, or producing, or achieving, but receiving. Indeed, consenting is what we are doing. We are deeply consenting to God. Remember that for most of the rest of the hours of day and night we are too preoccupied to do any of this.

Faith is this consent to God. It is faith because we don’t know what the outcome will be. We are trusting that God is true and loving, just and faithful, and present, even when are experiencing God as absent. We are not asking for anything. There is no need to do that.

So, contemplative people say meditation is simple, yet not simple. What is hard is to consent to the quieting of the ego, and that never becomes simple. The ego somehow experiences the silence and the stillness as a threat -- and so we find the silence very rapidly gets filled up with every manner of thing, lumped together under the heading, Distractions. Don’t fight them. Don’t feel defeated. Don’t punish yourself. Simply return gently to the mantra every time, rediscover its rhythm and peace.