Celebration of Discipline

Spiritual Disciplines

Meditation

Inward Disciplines

• Meditation

• Prayer

• Fasting

• Study

Meditation / Contemplation

• Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a writer and Trappist monk at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky.

“True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace.”

Opposition to Meditation

• In our society our adversary majors in three basic things:

1. Noise

2. Hurry

3. Crowds

Busy(ness) is not Fruitfulness

• If our adversary can get us and keep us engaged in doing “everything”

• Keeping us busy about everyone’s business

• He will be very satisfied.

Discussion Point

1. Are you too busy?

2. What is busy to you in your day to day life?

3. Can you do anything about it?

• Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology.

• Jung's unique and broadly influential approach to psychology emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy.

Quotation

Dr. Jung said,

“Hurry is not of the Devil, It is the Devil.”

Hurry

• Hurry has its place.

• But it does not always work the will of God.

• Nor does it bring a peacefull outcome.

Moving Beyond the Basics

• If we hope to move beyond the superficial concepts

• The supercifial doctrine of our culture,

• Inclusive of religious culture, we must follow this reasoning:

1.We must be willing to delve deeply into the recreating silences (meditation),

2.Walking into the inner world of contemplation

3.To become pioneers in this frontier of the Spirit.

Discussion Point

1. What do you need to do to begin experiencing the benefits of periods of contemplation?

2. What are some of your Hindrances?

Active Participation

• Knowledge is not enough, • It must be applied to glean its benefits

• We must enroll and actively participate in the school of contemplative prayer.

Meditation

• The discipline of MEDITATION was familiar to the authors of scripture.

• The bible uses two Hebrew words to convey the idea of meditation

• Together they appear some 58 times.

Meditation Meanings

These words have various meanings:

1. Listening to God’s Word,

2. Reflecting on God’s works,

3. Rehearsing God’s deeds,

4. Ruminating on God’s law, and some more nuances.

The Main Focus

• In each case, there is a focus on changed behavior as a result of our encounter with God.

Psalm

• One Psalm says, “Oh, how I love the law! It is my mediation all the day …”

• Eli the Priest knew how to listen to God and helped Samuel not only recognize his voice but also to listen and hear his instruction.

• Those renowned men to whom God spoke were not specially endowed, they were willing to listen and so God spoke to them.

A Definition

• Christian MEDITATION then, put in its simplest terms, is our ability to hear God’s voice and obey His word.

The Process

• It’s not a complicated process,

• It is a process of discipline and obedience.

Is it Mysterious?

• The process requires no mysterious actions,

• No particular repetition of words or phrases,

• No mental calisthenics to be able to hear and obey.

Disconnected

• When Adam and Eve fell, there was a disconnection, a rupture of our communion with God.

• God still reached out to us and in so many stories,

• Cain and Abel, Noah and in other stories like those we see God reaching out to lost man.

Do We REALLY want to Hear?

• Some of us, like the children of Israel, believe that being in God’s presence is risky business.

• So we would rather someone else speak to him for us

• We Would have them speak to us for him.

We Aren’t Ready?

• In this way we can remain, “religious,” without the risk of inner change.

• Meditation is perpetual communion …

Jesus

• Today we are so ignorant of what we could experience in season of quiet meditation.

• Even Jesus himself would take the time to leave the crowd and meditate,

• To consider his ministry, • To contemplate his life and his task

ahead.

Why Meditate?

• We have talked about it, but, how would we articulate the real purpose of MEDITATION?

• One person said it is growing into, “a familiar friendship with Jesus.”

Full Immersion

• We are immersing ourselves into the life and light of Jesus Christ and becoming comfortable in that position.

• “He walks with me and talks with me” is no longer a familiar verse of a good hymn, it has become our daily life.

Heavenly Relationship

• It’s not the casual,

• Not an earthly friendship

• We experience that with our contemporaries,

• Rather, it is an intimate and reverential relationship.

Personal Meditation

• In our times of meditation, we construct an emotional an spiritual space

• This allows Christ to enter and speak from that inner space in our hearts.

A Metamorphosis

• Inner fellowship of this kind, transforms the inner personality.

• Everything that is foreign to his way, has to be let go and we voluntary and easily do so.

• Our desires and aspirations will be more and more conformed to his way.

• Our entire life, our body, our mind and our spirit will move toward Him.

New Lesson

“If anyone is thirsty

Let him come and drink

If anyone believes in me …

Streams of living water shall flow

From out of his body.”

Jesus of Nazareth

Misconceptions

• Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions.

The Difference

• Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind;

• Christian meditation is and attempt to fill the mind.

• They are quite different.

Eastern Meditation

• Eastern forms of meditation encourage a detachment from the world.

• Emphasizing the loss of personhood and individuality, and

• Merging with a cosmic mind.

Christian Meditation

• Christian meditation goes far beyond the notion of detachment.

• There is a need to be detached, a period or time of contemplation,

• “a Sabbath of contemplation” - Peter of Celles a Benedictine monk of the 12th century.

Luke 11:24-26

• Emptying oneself with filling with God opens us up to be filled by any and everything.

Meditation is difficult

• Meditation is the simplest form of communication with God

• Takes not super intellect

• No exceptional academic prowess

• It just takes time and commitment

Desire the Living Voice

Only to sit and think of God,

Oh what a think the thought, to breathe the Name

Earth has no higher bliss

Albert the Great

“The contemplation of the saints is fired by the love of the one contemplated: that is God”

Sanctifying Imagination

• A God given ability

• An instrument of faith

St. Teresa of Avila

“… As I could not make reflection with my understanding I contrived to picture Christ with me”

• Just an intellectual approach to God does not bring us to him

• It take the innermost being finding him within.

Frances de Sales

“by means of the imagination we confine our mind within the mystery on which we meditate, that it may not ramble to and fro, just as we shut up a bird in a cage or tie a hawk by his leash so that he may rest on the hand”

How To?

• We learn how to meditate by meditating.

• A place of solitude

• Shutdown the disturbance of the world

• Contemplative prayer is not a religious act for a specific schedule

• Contemplative prayer is a way of life

Pray without ceasing

• 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Holy Leisure

• Any mind saturated with the cares and noise of the world may not be at all ready for such contemplation.

• We must be at peace with our world and be in balance with our activities.

Celebration of Discipline

END: Meditation