John Main

"The important aim in Christian meditation is to allow God's mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more not only a reality but the reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, everything we are." John Main.

Last night at St. Johns, Waterloo Lent course on contemplative prayer we heard the story of two monks walking along a riverside. The younger one keeps asking the other questions about the nature of the river: how long is it? how much water flows past every hour? what kind of wildlife does it support? how wide is it when it reaches the sea? Finally in exasperation the older monk pushes his companion into the water, waits a few minutes, then hauls him out and says, "Well now you know what the river is like!" Liz Watson, our storyteller, had come to push us into the river but first she gave us some guidelines on how to survive in the water; guidelines worked out by John Main whose life of contemplative prayer has given rise to a stream of meditation known as The World Community For Christian Meditation. As with Jill Benet last week, the guidelines are simple (though subtly different from Jill's):

Sit still and upright with eyes lightly closed, relaxed but alert. Silently begin to say a single word (a prayer word or mantra). The word 'Maranatha' is recommnded, recited as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently and continuously. Try not to think or imagine anything, spiritual or otherwise. If thoughts and images come these are distractions during the time of meditation, so keep returning to simply saying the word. Meditate each morning and evening for between twenty and thirty minutes.

As Liz said, it is for each of us to discover what method of meditation best suits our temperament. The important thing is to find one and stay with it; to jump in to the river and find out what it is like.
Afterwards one member of the group reported that she found it quite possible to 'multitask' mentally while saying the prayer word. She could happily think about things which are labelled 'distractions' while saying the prayer word. Result - no experience of real silence. Perhaps this is not so unusual and it may be why some folk find that combining meditation with yoga is helpful (actually, yoga is meditation). We are creatures of the earth and spirituality is never an escape from that fundamental fact. Remaining anchored in the body is often a help with 'distractions'. I'll return to this in a later blog. I will also pick up another member's concern that maybe she is trying too hard.
Meanwhile, by request here is the prayer I use to end each session of our course:

O thou eternal Wisdom
whom we partly know and partly do not know,
in whom we live and move and have our being,
our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.
Grant that we may be still and know the truth of eternal presence,
and in that stillness and that presence may know the love and peace
which pass all understanding.