Recently, I have been watching this dvd
titled The Journey of Meditation by Laurence Freeman. I am
trying to implement meditation into my life to see if it would help with some
of my health-related conditions. I don’t hear much mention of meditation as a
Christian practice amongst the Chrsitian communities that I interact with. And
those people in church who do talk about it present it in a bad light.
According to their belief, meditation is the emptying of the mind, which allows
for evil spiritual influences to assume the void.
But I do think that it would be a pity
for Christians to avoid or castigate a practice that has the ability to bring
inner peace to the practitioner. And for myself, I am trying to resort to means
that may help me deal with my problems while adhering as closely as possible to
the stipulations regarding spirituality from Christianity. So the conjunction
of Christian with meditation seems most intuitive as a way for Chrsitians to
engage in meditative practice without feeling guilty about it.
From my watching of the DVD, as well as
viewing a video on youtube of Laurence Freeman teaching meditation, Chrsitian
meditation isn’t all that distinctive from common concepts of what meditation
is about. Freeman even recommends the employment of a mantra as an aid in
meditation, not quite unlike the instructions I have read about from other
religious practices of meditation. For Freeman, his recommended mantra is the
word “Maranatha”, which is
an Aramaic word which has the meaning of Our Lord has Come. I actually think
that there is a cool esoteric quality to the word. The interesting thing though
that Freeman says about the use of the Mantra is that the person saying it
should not attempt to conceptualise the meaning of the word when he is
meditating with the mantra. It is more to guide the focus of the meditation,
which is why Maranatha is such a apt word for the purpose as it does not
instinctively provoke the meditator to think about its meaning.
Compared to what I have read about
Eastern practice of meditation such as from Buddhism, I prefer the more simple
and unphilosophical method of meditation that has been described by Freeman. I
don’t like it when meditation has to be too complicated, such as having to
empty desires, or an overfocus on breathing etc. A simple mantra and gentle refocus
of the thoughts of the mind style of meditation seems more appealing and
approachable to me as a layman to meditation.
