The weather is constantly changing: one day there is blazing heat, on another day drenching rain which causes floods and ruins people’s homes; while other days are simply cloudy or damp. And so it is with our emotions. It is here that a particular mantra can be of very practical use. Some time ago I read about one such mantra in an article by a Catholic nun who had been to India to learn meditation from a famous guru. He taught the following: ‘Today I feel lousy; it will pass.’ ‘Today I feel wonderful; it will pass.’ A very salutary mantra!
Month: May 2021
Listening all day
‘I listen all day to what is inside me,’ wrote Etty Hillesum. Most people will meditate for perhaps fifteen minutes a day or even thirty, but Etty sets the example of an ongoing practice which might take the form of mentally repeating one’s mantra, or simply withdrawing into the inner silence, while doing chores. It is what a seventeenth-century Carmelite, Brother Lawrence, called The Practice of the Presence of God. As someone who wakes several times in the night I often find myself whispering into the darkness the words of the mantra I was given: ‘God is present. God is here. God is now.’ Repeated at intervals throughout the day it becomes a lifeline connecting one to the deep centre within one.