The New Testament scriptures have quite a lot
to say about people of faith being awake.
Whether it’s the story of the foolish bridesmaids who were half asleep
and not ready when the bridegroom showed up, or the brisk warnings in the
apocalyptic passages about being alert and ready – scripture does not really
permit us to hang around in a dozy frame of mind, in a comfortable religion, needing
only to be spiritually entertained and mildly stimulated.
This is certainly reflected in our practice of
Christian Meditation. As soon as we are
tempted to think that this is a pleasant and welcome time of relaxation and
rest, we are reminded that the point of the stillness and the silence is to facilitate
attention. We are not in a trance or a
reverie – we are awake and paying attention.
Having said that, I think it does need to be added, as a simple
practicality, that meditation is difficult to the point of serious distraction
if one is seriously overtired or unwell, unable to stay awake.
We pay attention to the mantra, not to analyse
it, not to think about it, but as a point of focus. It is what we return to from wandering away,
a kind of personal beacon. Jesus in the
Beatitudes said that the pure in heart are blessed. He is not talking here about moral purity,
but about singleness of attention.
Purity of heart, said Kierkegaard, is to will one thing. We are still and silent in the still and
silent presence of God. So with God we are
sharing a common language. All our
chatter and all our fine intentions are stilled for the time being. Our attention is to the gentle repetition of
the mantra – and in that space, intermittent as it may be, but the best we can
manage at the moment, God is able to teach us and change us, and we consent to
that. I am reminded of the words of St
John of the Cross at the start of his great poem, The Dark Night -- …my house being now all stilled.
This level of attention is difficult, because
we normally don’t live that way. We make
a virtue of being pulled in various ways at once, multi-tasking, we call it
being busy and involved. I saw a TV clip
about the need to turn off your mobile phones in a cinema, and one youth said
there was no way he would do that. He
absolutely had to remain in touch with all his clamorous world. He might miss something. Someone
might try to get me and think I’m dead or something, he said. Something
might happen and he wouldn’t know about it.
I think it is difficult also because it is a
kind of poverty. Meditation is done with
empty hands. We are not relying on our
store of knowledge or wisdom. It is not
some device or strategy for getting what we want or need. The mantra is all we have, and our choice to
pay attention to it at this time at the expense of all else. And so, back in the Beatitudes, there is a
strange resonance not only with purity of heart, but also with Jesus’s mention
of the poor in spirit – theirs is the
kingdom of heaven; those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness – they will be filled;
the pure in heart – they will see God.
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