In meditation we discover that we are loved, and that this love is the source and ground of our being, writes long-time meditator, educator and author *Dr Noel Keating. This is Part II of his article expounding the teaching of Benedictine monk John Main, by reflecting on the prayer he wrote for meditators to pray before meditating: ‘Heavenly Father, Open our hearts to the silent Presence of the Spirit of your Son. Lead us into that mysterious Silence where Your Love is revealed to all who call.’ It was John Main’s life and teaching which inspired the formation of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) in 1991. See Part I of Dr Keating’s article here: https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/blog/meditation-like-sunlight-unfolding-a-flower
It is impossible to adequately describe the experience of meditation in words. It is something which we apprehend rather than comprehend, and so we only come to appreciate over time the fruits it brings about in our daily activities and behaviours.
Because it happens at a level of consciousness deeper than ordinary self-consciousness, it is truly a silent experience, an experience of the mysterious silence of the Spirit of Christ within us.
Although it remains a dim apprehension, we do not doubt its authenticity as ‘day by day we are inwardly renewed’ (2 Cor. 4:16). As a daily practice, meditation makes us keenly aware of the mystery alive within us at all times and that awareness changes how we live in the world; it changes our relationship not just with our thoughts but with our self-understanding; and it changes our relationship with others and all of creation.
When we first practise meditation we may be hugely surprised at the amount of pointless thinking and interpretation that goes on inside our heads. When we let them go we begin to encounter that which lies beneath – we begin to apprehend the deep, mysterious silence beneath the noise. I deliberately use the word apprehend rather than comprehend because we never fully understand it.
And what is it essentially that we apprehend? We apprehend that we are loved and have always been loved by God – not for our talents or our achievements, not for our ego or our performance – but that we are loved for who we truly are, that we were created as love and remain intimately connected to the ground of all being. We discover, as Thomas Merton described it, that ‘underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being … [which] is totally different from the experience of self-consciousness.’ Merton described this discovery, this growing awareness, as the discovery of our True Self, which is Love.
This kind of knowing is experiential knowing, it is trans-rational spiritual knowing that arises from personal spiritual experience. And, because the Church doesn’t often talk about personal spiritual experience, we very often don’t recognise it when it happens. Spiritual experience is very ordinary, not extra-ordinary. It is not necessarily an out-of-this-world experience of bliss but a growing realisation of who we really are at the deepest level of our being. Outside of meditation we recognise this truth in fleeting glimpses, in moments of insight when we briefly experience our True Self and we apprehend something of the depth of reality, however obscurely, through a cloud of unknowing.
Meditation, then, teaches us the vital importance of personal spiritual experience to our holistic development. We discern, as the theologian Michael Paul Gallagher expressed it, that ‘spirituality comes before theology’. He wrote that ‘If faith is not an experience of encounter, we have little to reflect on except the words of others. And they will ring hollow unless touched by personal fire’.
As God’s love is revealed, as we begin to apprehend it is the source and ground of our being, it is as if a flame has been lit within us. When teaching meditation to children I sometimes us the image of a meditation space as two candles; one is your spirit and the other is the Holy Spirit. We might say that what happens in meditation is this: the flame of the candle that is the Holy Spirit lights up our own candle, it passes on its flaming energy to our candle. That metaphor helps us to understand how we become energised by grace through meditation. And we know that when one candle lights another, the first does not lose its energy but now, suddenly, there is in that meditation space double the brightness and double the energy burning within.
Love is like that. The more love is poured out, the more it replenishes itself. This image of an unending candle burning within us also shows how we are so intimately linked with and part of the Divine. Once a candle is lit, its flame becomes just like that of the candle which lit it. Ultimately, there is nothing to distinguish one flame from the other – our essence is rooted in God. I remind the children too that a candle burns brightest when it is still, as we are in meditation.
When we say, John Main’s prayer, ‘Your love is revealed’, we mean not just that we come to apprehend that God dwells mysteriously within us but also that we dwell in God. We come to understand that our longing for love has been awakened by Love, who loved us first. This discovery, this revelation, often comes to us as a slow apprehension rather than a dramatic unveiling.
As we come to appreciate the truth that the Spirit dwells within us, we find we are no longer motivated by any outside reward or punishment but our motivation comes from the knowledge that we are participating in the Mystery itself.
We find we no longer engage in mere rule-following behaviour; rather, it is our awareness of our actual identity in God that drives and transforms us. Our motivation for doing things is because they are true and loving, not because we have to do them or fear the consequences of not doing them. Now we are not so much driven from without, by the false self, but from within, by the True Self.
And we also come to appreciate that what we have discovered is true, not just for me, but for everyone else too. God’s love is revealed to ALL who call.
While we may have learned about meditation through our Christian tradition, we acknowledge that all the major religious traditions – and many others in secular society – practise meditation. And while all who meditate will experience something of the mystery of Being in the silence, each tradition has its own unique way of describing it and assigning meaning to it.
But ultimately the words we use to describe what we experience are just words, they are not the experience itself. While words may help us to understand it better, ultimately they can only POINT towards the truth. The word is never the thing it points to.
And so, our experience of God transcends the capacity of language. So the language in which we speak to God, the language of the tradition into which we were born, is not the only valid language. God’s love is revealed to all who call. While each of us is a unique manifestation of the Love of God, ultimately we are all one.
Likewise, meditation is not just for our benefit but for the benefit of ALL. It is not about us but about the grace our daily practice generates in the world around us.
And meditation is not just about the time we sit in meditation, but it generates a grace-filled energy that informs how we live in the world in every aspect of our life. While our experience of God is always personal, it is never individual but universal. Meditation is not a practice for personal salvation, but for awakening fully to the present moment and responding with compassionate action in the world, in our daily lives. True religion then is not about atonement but at-one-ment.
Of course, as St John of the Cross attested, there are times in our spiritual experience where it seems that love is withheld rather than revealed; when meditation and prayer are experienced as dull, turgid and dry and we sense an absence of love instead. When we experience such a dark night of the senses or a dark night of the soul, we need to trust in our faith, accept that Love is still at work in us at an even deeper level, albeit behind a cloud of unknowing, and persist with our daily practice as lovingly as we can.
I have written a very short closing prayer which is close in theme and style to John Main’s opening prayer.
It reads: ‘Lord, may our hearts remain open to your presence and guide us to love like you.’ It reminds us that we desire to be aware of his presence not merely for the period of meditation, but always. We want as far as possible to remain in this state of awareness, so that it informs everything we do; so that it transforms our way of seeing and being in the world. That we might see the world always as Thomas Merton did when he wrote ‘We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time.’
The closing prayer I offer here asks that our hearts will remain awake to this truth so that it may guide us to love as Jesus did, as Christ would wish us to do. Not just to see with His compassionate eyes, but to be His hands and feet in the world today, in our part of the world where we live right now. The real fruit of meditation, and of all contemplative prayer, is contemplative action in daily life. As Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: ‘If you pray without serving your prayer is in vain; if you serve without praying your service is in vain. Go forward, pray and serve in the power of the Holy Spirit.’
This two-part article is a partial summary of a series of ten talks on the John Main prayer written by Dr Keating and which can be accessed by clicking here.
*Dr Keating has spent forty years in the education sector in Ireland, as a teacher, principal and education officer. He is author of ‘Meditation with Children – A Resource for Teachers and Parents’ (Medio Media) and voluntary coordinator of the Meditation with Children Project, which involves over 40,000 children, who meditate several times each week on a whole-school basis, across more than 200 primary schools throughout Ireland. He can be contacted at mnkeating@gmail.com
For more information about John Main, how to meditate and the WCCM see: https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/christian-meditation
Dr Keating’s article is a slightly edited version of a talk given at Benedict’s Well on 27September 2021. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MduhVebOB8&t=43s
Benedict’s Well is an outreach of the Benedictine Oblates of the WCCM. The weekly event (Mondays) consists of a period of meditation followed by an inspirational talk. See: http://oblates.wccm.org/v2019/news-from-the-oblate-community/events/benedicts-well-6/