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!
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.
One young woman
At a time when institutional religion is in decline there is, nonetheless, a deep hunger for authentic spirituality. This is where the story of a young Jewish woman studying in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, when thousands of Jews were being deported to Auschwitz (where she herself was to die aged 29) has become an inspiration to so many. She had no religious background, never went near a rabbi or synagogue, and never spent a large sum of money learning mindfulness meditation. She taught herself to meditate and in the process this is what she found:
Not thinking but listening to what is going on inside you. If you do that for a while every morning you acquire a kind of calm that illumines the whole day. I listen all day to what is inside me, and even when I am with others I am able to draw strength from the most deeply hidden source in myself. There is really a deep well inside me and in it dwells God. God is our greatest and most continuous adventure.
From: Etty Hillesum, A Life Transformed, by Patrick Woodhouse.
Journeying to the frontier
All myths of the frontier are maps of an interior reality. At the deepest level the frontier is within each one of us. And the frontier leads to others that we must cross as we search for the unfolding mystery of life and its meaning. Only at the end of the journey may it be said of us, as it was of Gilgamesh, ‘He was wise, he saw mysteries, and knew secret things. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn out with labour, and returning, engraved on stone the whole story.’
Travelling slowly
The writer Pearl Binder once remarked, ‘I always travel slowly and obscurely, on cargo ships and slow trains. I travel for the sake of what I see on the way.’ Today, however, we seem more concerned with getting as quickly as possible from A to Z. How rarely on a train journey do we put down our mobile phones and look out of the window at the passing scenery?
Snakes and ladders
We should not be distressed by lapses from grace. They may well be necessary. We may have been trying too hard, or have become inflated by what we imagine as our progress in the practice of meditation, so that a sudden fall jerks us back to earth. It is like the game of Snakes and Ladders. In our practice we shall, time and again, slide to the bottom of the snake. As Jesus said, ‘No one, having put their hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of Heaven.’ We plod on!
In a dark place
Even in the closest relationships misunderstandings can spring up like weeds, and violence can erupt, with accusations flying back and forth. It is here that the practice of meditation can enable us to look into the eye of the storm and wait for it to pass. As we find in the book of Ecclesiastes, ‘There is a time for words and a time for silence.’ Above all, we should never be afraid to apologise. As the famous Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts, expresses it: ‘To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed, till by turning, turning, we come round right.’
The open-eyed meditation
In Rebel Without A Cause, James Dean cries out, ‘But Mom, we are all involved!’ It is no good shutting our eyes twice a day to meditate if we regard it as a retreat from reality. And so, with open eyes, perhaps using as a mantra the words ‘Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us’, our practice should permeate every aspect of our daily life, whether it is washing dishes, making love, preparing a meal, or taking a child to school. God is in the midst of us.
Healing
Jesus was a man of deep compassion. He was also a healer. Interestingly, whenever someone sought him out to be cured of an ailment, his first question always was, ‘Do you really want to be healed?’ He knew that healing is more than just curing the physical symptoms. The word ‘heal’ is rooted in an older word ‘hale’. To be healed means being made whole, not only a physical level, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Deep down the cause of sickness often lies within. Many illnesses are caused by stress, and when we fall ill our body is signalling that something may be wrong with our lifestyle. Only if we remove that cause will we be truly healed.
New year resolution
There is just one resolution above all that we need to make if we practise meditation, and that is to persevere. In season and out. Even when distractions surround us like a swarm of gnats! Our life may seem barren; yet always, deep down, are untapped resources. We have only to reach down into our inner depths and wait for the new life to bubble up.