“Meditation is
really very simple; there is not much need to elaborate techniques to teach us
how to go about it. ... Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is
firmly rooted in life.”
-
Thomas
Merton
Contemplative Prayer (1969)
“Language shapes consciousness, and the use of language to shape consciousness is an important
branch of magic.”
-
Starhawk
Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and
Politics (1988)
"Science is
not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of
spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years
and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of
life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined,
is surely spiritual." (29)
-
Carl
Sagan The Demon-Haunted World
(1996)
Perhaps because
I’ve written a lot in my blogs about meditation, I’ve been asked the question
recently, “What is meditation?” I’ve practiced meditation – under one guise
or another – for forty years, and – as a general runing – I would say that meditation is a procedure for centering
oneself in oneself, and also as a
process through which to come to peace in one’s body and in one’s life in the
Earth & Cosmos. It is a
practice, often daily, of stepping out of the flux and flow of daily our
ordinary routines for a brief time for resourcement through a return to one’s
still-point. Its benefits include a
reduction of stress, a refreshing of our natural energies and an opening of our
vision. It prepares a person to return
to the daily ordinary in a way that allows for increased insight, humility and
a healthy connection with others.
I open this blog
with quotes from differing spiritual perspectives to honor the traditions through
which I have come to understand and practice meditation over the years. I first learned to meditate in the context of
wicchan mysticism in the 1970’s, and later practiced it within a Goddess-centered
spirituality in the mid-1980’s. Along
this path, Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance
(1989) deepened my spiritual praxis and led me to a more mature Pagan framework
for meditation than I’d been using up to that point. I employed her exercises for meditation on
the Circle and the four cardinal directions for several years, eventually augmenting
it with Celtic mythological references. Through Merton’s Contemplative Prayer (1969) and other texts – including those by
Richard Foster, Fr Thomas Keating, John O’Donohue and Noel Dermot O’Donoghue – I
learned to translate the practice of meditation into a Christian worldview,
first in the late 1970’s and then in the late 1980’s. Through the mid- to late 1990’s I was
immersed in a hybrid Christian/Pagan Celtic meditative practice that was
inspired by the works of Nigel Pennick, Tom Cowan and Caitlin and John Matthews
and many others.
What I found,
though all of these transformations, was that the basic ‘procedure’ for meditation
stayed the same, while the artifices of belief and the myths in which it was
encoded and through which its effects were understood changed.
Finally,
beginning around 2001, I began translating my praxis into more naturalistic
terms as I came to realize – through devout study of the revelations of science
– that meditation is, at root, a process grounded in our neurology and
cognition. I have come to realize that there
is nothing supernatural about the process itself. It is something that all human beings are
capable of learning and is an intensification of experiences common to all people,
regardless of culture, gender or class.
Have you ever stopped in the course of your day, perhaps taken a deep
breath and suddenly felt a sigh of relief?
A student of mine once characterized such moments as the “Ah_ life is
good” moments. Have you ever found yourself
caught up in a moment of beauty? Perhaps
seeing a sunset or in the presence of an wondrous natural vista? _And then found yourself more at peace or
feeling ‘connected’ to life in a healthier way?
Have you ever just stopped in the midst something you were doing, sat
down and suddenly felt a brief respite that seemed to refresh you? Experiences such as these are the rudimentary
‘meditations’ in which we all occasionally participate. The practice of meditation builds upon this
kind of experience, expands upon it, deepens and sustains it – in order to
increase the benefits and the effects.
This ‘practice of
meditation’ is common to all humanity and is found expressed in many cultures
under various guises and descriptions. It
is not dependent upon one’s being religious. It does not require a belief in ‘God.’ It ‘works’ regardless of one’s religious beliefs
or lack thereof, because it is, at root, a learned behavior that grows out of
the particular kind of consciousness we have as the particular evolved animals
that we are. It has taken me a long time
to realize this.
I had an
experience in the late 1980’s that has become a touchstone for my naturalistic understanding
of meditation. At that time, I was seeking
to work out an ecumenical approach to faith and the divine, and I had the good
fortune to meditate in a group that consisted, first, of two Buddhists, three
Christians and myself. We had good
experiences, and in our meditation sessions sometimes a kind of ‘group state’
of peace and well-being embraced all of us in the circle. We had this ‘group-experience’ three or four
times, at which point I invited two wicchan friends of mine into the circle to
meditate with us. Everyone used their
own symbols and chanted words and did imaging exercises appropriate to their
own belief system. There was often
cacophony at the beginning, but then a kind of harmony would emerge, leading
ultimately to a sense of peace in our collective silence and a deep sense of
love and togetherness. For Buddhists,
Christians and Witches? Yes. It
seemed to ‘prove’ the ecumenical belief that all religions are variations on
the One Theme and that what one calls God and another Nirvana and another The
Goddess are all human – if also revealed – ways of expressing the Truth of the
Divine-Beyond-Names.
Once or twice an
atheist friend of mine, who was learning to meditate, sat in on the sessions,
and the second or third time he was with us, to our amazement, he came to a
profound peace and silence in his own self, and felt – so he said, “at one”
with the rest of us and with “the universe.”
It was a sublime moment for him – being in a circle full of religious
people who were being as open as they could be to his non-belief. It was a sublime experience for us!
The problem arose when someone suggested that even atheists must ultimately
be connected to the Divine-Beyond-Names and that my atheist friend was,
somehow, experiencing the Divine. He
left and never returned to our circle, and I fully understand why! We were co-opting him, even if with the best
of intentions and out of a sense of wonder that he might have been experiencing
the same thing as we were; namely “the Divine,” by whatever name we each called
it.
We just didn’t
understand how this was possible!
For years this
experience nagged at me. On the one
hand, I wanted to affirm the ecumenical ideal that all religions can lead their
adherents to the Truth and to the Divine-Beyond-Names (God, Allah, Yahweh, the
Goddess, Buddha, etc.). But my atheist
friend’s experience was a fly in the honey.
Over the next few years I shed my religious aspirations and
beliefs. Along that path, I believed
that ‘God’ led me to turn to science as a way of re-grounding myself and my
spirituality, and then what I called ‘God’ ‘vanished,’ _whatever that might mean. I am neither an atheist nor a theist at this
point; I prefer to study Nature and seek Wisdom, and I don’t spend much time
talking about ‘the Divine,’ by whatever name or under whatever religious guise. My journey from religion into science has
inspired in me a desire to re-frame the wisdom of religious traditions in naturalistic
terms, as I learned a great deal about being and becoming human from my
religious experience; whether I was Wicchan, Celtic or Christian in my
orientations.
I still meditate;
almost every day. And I have come to see
the solution to the conundrum of my atheist friend’s experience all too clearly. It’s not that by meditating we were all brought
into communion with the Big Something; the Divine-Beyond-Names, but that by meditating
in a genuine way we each ended up in a similar bodily state; neurological and cognitive—one of peace, in which we
were unstressed, revivified physically and mentally, and feeling very good
together as a result. It has been true –
in my experience, at least – that meditating in a group can generate a positive,
collective experience. Everyone is
feeling relaxed, unstressed, and you can sense that the people around you are full
of a positive energy. I now understand
that this is what was happening in
that circle 30 years or so ago. I don’t
mean to say that those of us who were religious in that circle weren’t experiencing ‘the Divine.’ I’m saying that the experience of peace and
silence that was the result of meditating was at root a physical state, and that we were wrong to confuse that with an experience of ‘the Divine’
_whatever that might mean.
Today I meditate using
the same praxis that I learned when I was religious. Whether I was a witch, a Christian engaged
with monastic or Celtic spiritualities (or all at the same time) there is a procedure
for centering oneself in oneself. A Naturalistic Praxis of Meditation begins
with three preparations and then
unfolds according to three basic steps. I’ll present these here in brief for anyone
who is interested. The three
preparations are:
(1) Finding a
place to meditate
(2) Establishing
a time to meditate, and
(3) Choosing a
‘posture’ for meditation.
In
the beginning days and months of meditation you should use a single place that
you have ‘set aside’ for the practice of daily meditation. You should also start off by meditating at
the same time every day, if at all possible, but don’t force it. I have found that gently re-organizing one’s daily
rounds is the best way for beginners to get to a place of regular daily
meditation. To meditate is to re-train
our bodies, and regularity-reinforcing-repetition is one of the best
methods. Once you find a place and pick
a time, you need to decide how best to posture yourself. Most people sit on a chair or on the
floor. I’ve known one person who could
meditate standing up, but I think it was an acquired taste; something he didn’t
do regularly or in the beginning when he was learning to meditate. I’ve also known two or three people who lay
down to meditate; but the great danger there is falling asleep. In my experience, sitting is the moist common
posture, and if you sit on a chair, choose one that will allow you to sit
comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your spine relaxed. Whether you sit on a chair or on the floor,
position yourself so that your torso is ‘balanced’ over your hips, so you are
not struggling to sit still or to maintain your posture. You don’t have to get this right at the very
beginning. Just do your best; over time,
the ‘right’ posture will emerge as you let go of stress and your body comes to
peace.
The three basic
steps to meditation are
(1) Breathing
(2) Centering (sometimes called Detachment),
and
(3) Focusing (sometimes called Attachment).
I usually ask
novices to begin by taking two or three deep, relaxed breaths. Breath in slowly until your lungs are
full. Don’t strain your lungs. Stop when they feel ‘full.’ Over time, with practice, you may be able to
breathe more deeply. Hold the breath for
a couple seconds, and then begin to exhale just as slowly until your lungs are
emptied. After this initial exercise,
begin breathing in and out, perhaps counting quietly as you do. By inhaling and exhaling neither too
shallowly nor too deeply, we create an ‘environment’ in our body conducive to
the release of stress. If you breathe
too deeply or too fast, you will hyperventilate. If you breathe too slowly or too shallow, the
body will rebel against too low a level of oxygen, and you will start to
breathe more normally. The aim of meditative
breathing is to slightly raise your oxygen levels in the first minute or two of
meditation, as this will help your muscles unclench and relax. Then, you will settle into a rhythm of
breathing that quiets you and brings you to silence. Only by practice will you learn how to do
this.
Associated with
this breathing is what can be called “Centering.” We are often a bundle of disparate
intentions, going this way and that; we need to do ‘this,’ we need to get
‘that’ done; we need to go ‘there,’ we are thinking about ‘this’ and ‘that’ and
cannot seem to stop! _And as a result,
we are all over the place! Centering is
the use of an image or a word or phrase to collect the mind and let go – at least
for a few minutes to up to a half hour daily (the ‘normal’ length of a
meditation session; though it can be longer or shorter) – of all the things
that are making demands on our time and our attention. When I talk in blogs about “The Dolmen on the
Heath” or “The Hut of Dwelling,” these are images of ‘places’ that I ‘go to’
imaginatively wherein I can experience myself in myself; where I can come to
stillness in the solitude of myself—and not be my usual outwardly directed
spiral of intentions and objectives! Centering is a process of letting-go; of coming
to rest and of being still and experiencing my-self as I am in my-self. It is usually temporary, at least for the
beginner, but it is a valuable state to achieve. In time, you will learn to be ‘centered’ as
you go about your daily rounds, and not be as distracted.
Focusing
is the third step in meditation, and usually involves “meditating on”
something. When I spoke in the last blog
about meditating on the Periodic Table of the Elements, I was describing a
focusing exercise. Focusing involves
using something with a bit of content that you find edifying or that you feel
contributes to your knowledge and understanding of Earth & Cosmos. What you focus on should be enriching; it
should remind you of the goodness of Nature or perhaps be a rann of wisdom; a
saying or phrase that you feel promotes your becoming the best version of
yourself that you can be, alone and in community with others. The things we focus on in meditation will
become deeply encoded in our minds and in our being, as the Christian Richard
Foster once said in Celebration of Discipline:
The Path to Spiritual Growth (1978):
“The mind will
always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.”
And
as wicchan practitioner Starhawk said in Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics
(1988):
“Language
shapes consciousness, and the use of language to shape consciousness is an important branch of magic.”
So,
we need to choose the things we focus on with care! Language shapes the way we experience and
understand the world.
When teaching
meditation, I’ve found it best to start with posture and breathing exercises
for the first session or so. Once the
novice has begun to get a sense of their breathing, I usually ask them to add a
word to the breathing; something that intimates peace, health, or balance—whichever
strikes them as most important to them in the moment. The use of such a word will simultaneously
allow for the beginning of detachment and is also a focusing tool. In time, I usually suggest the addition of a
phrase or image; depending upon the cognitive orientation of the novice. [Some people respond more to images than to
words; others rely more heavily on words.]
Over time, as you meditate, it is good to try and use both, and see what
benefit comes from it. Once the novice
is experiencing a sense of centering; the letting go of the daily round—the
instruction usually takes off on one of several paths, depending on the needs
of the novice. To describe all of the
variations would take a book.
Remember that
every person who meditates is unique.
While we have a common human biology and psychology, there is a wide
range of manifestations of our ‘human nature.’
Thus, there is no one meditative practice for everyone. Yet the three ‘steps’ discussed here provide the
common basic naturalistic framework.
There is a lot to
be learned once these three steps are mastered, yet – as Merton so correctly
intimated – eventually is just enough to meditate. Somewhere down the road you may come to see
how effortlessly simple – and yet amazingly difficult, some days – it is to
meditate. Meditation proffers positive change
and growth and – hopefully – intimations of wisdom. It opens the way to self-transformation and
ultimately self-transcendence. To be on
the journey often requires guidance, so devout reading – about topics salient
to your own experience and to the process of meditation – are useful and often necessary. If you can learn to meditate with others and
if you can find a person experienced in the processes of meditation to guide
you along the way, you may flourish mush sooner and go further than you might
alone, though solitary meditation is not impossible.
Well, I did not
intend to quite a manual when I started this blog, and there is no way to cover
everything one can experience and all of the variations of meditative praxis in
a blog. My point was to affirm the idea
that the meditative praxis is a naturalistic one. But if
you find this blog interesting and want to know more or have questions about
what I’ve written, feel free to contact me by email.
Blessed be!
