Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who had a deep sense of her spiritual nature, once wrote: ‘Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.’
We all experience suffering at some stage in our lives. Yet, meditation helps us to realise that we can be suffering and still be at peace because we have learned to see ourselves in a way that enables us to integrate our trials and troubles into a wholesome sense of who we truly are.
This may seem like a paradox but it is nonetheless true. While the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ have the capacity to make us lose our sense of balance in life, meditation helps us to restore that balance. And we discover – or recover – a deeper appreciation of what it means to be whole. We have all experienced how, when suffering assails us, our mind begins to identify with negative thoughts and feelings, crowding out possibility and hope. One of the ways the mind does this is to replay over and over again the negativity of the situation and this heightens our sense of despair. Ultimately, the phrase ‘peace of mind’ is a contradiction; our minds seem to be designed to keep stirring things up!
We discover the truth of this when we begin to meditate. Meditation is ultimately the practice of being still in body and mind. Most of us find it relatively easy to be still in body, but stillness of mind is a real challenge! Thoughts arise of their own volition, out of nowhere, and they are continuous, relentless and repetitive. They crowd our space and make us feel very confined. One of the very practical benefits of meditation is that we learn this experientially, for ourselves, and we become keenly aware of the pattern our thoughts take and how useless such inner chattering is.
Richard Rohr, one of the foremost contemplatives of our day, suggests that: ‘When you’re in your mind, you’re hardly ever at peace, and when you’re at peace, you’re never only in your mind.’
The first part of that sentence is easily understood, but what does he mean by the second part? He is pointing out that when we do find inner peace, it is because we have accessed another, deeper, dimension of what it means to be human, a dimension beyond the mind. While rational thinking is very important to our survival and development, it is also limiting. To achieve our full human potential we need an open heart as well as an open mind. When we access this hidden dimension, which is our innate spirituality, inner peace arises within us and our way of being in the world changes.
Meditation awakens the heart. It stirs in us an awareness of who we are at the very depth of our being. It animates the true-self so that, as John Main described it, our centre of gravity moves from the head to the heart. The rational mind tends to be egoic – it focuses first on me, on my needs. But when the mind is re-centred in the heart, as a result of regular meditation, our way of seeing everything is changed and our behaviour changes as a result. We begin to live life out of a sense of abundance, not scarcity. We discover that we can develop a freedom from reactivity, from the need to defend or assert ourselves. We learn how to be fully present wherever we are, rather than caught up in the past or projecting into the future. Because our centre of gravity has moved to its true centre, we find we are not so easily knocked off balance by whatever challenges life throws at us.
To discover that inner peace, we must begin by taking our attention away from the mind. In Christian meditation we do that by bringing our attention to a word. We choose a word that will not by its nature give rise to thoughts. John Main recommended the word ‘Maranatha’, an Aramaic word that means ‘Come, Lord’. Because it is in a language we are not familiar with, it doesn’t distract us. If anything, knowing what it means reminds us that our intention in Christian meditation is to be still in the presence of God, open and vulnerable to the discovery of who we really are in God and who God is in us.
Inner peace is not brought about by peace of mind but the other way around. It is when we discover the peace that is already within ourselves that we begin to experience peace of mind. If you would like to experience that for yourself, why not take up the practice for lent? Christian Meditation Ireland and Contemplative Outreach Ireland have groups in towns and cities all over Ireland where people gather once a week to sit in silence together to anchor themselves in their true-self. Check out their websites, find a group near you and discover the truth for yourself.