The Discipline of Meditation

Bienhome Muivah *

A meditation during Easter Sunday at MBC Church, Chingmeirong, Imphal in 2012 :: Pix - Bunti Phurailatpam

True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace: Thomas Merton

In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in 'muchness and manyness; he will rest satisfied. Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, 'Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil'.

If we hope to move beyond the superficialities of our culture, including our religious culture, we must be willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation. In all the writings of the masters of meditation, beckons us to be pioneers in these frontiers of the spirit. Though it may sound strange to modern ears, we should without shame enroll as apprentices in the school of contemplative prayer.

Biblical Witness

The discipline of meditation was certainly familiar to the authors of scripture. The Bible uses two different Hebrew words to convey the idea of meditation, and together they are used some fifty-eight times. These words have various meanings; listening to God's word, reflecting on God's works, rehearsing God's deeds, ruminating on God's law, and more.

In each case there is stress upon changed behavior as a result of our encounter with the living God. Repentance and obedience are essential features in any Biblical understanding of meditation. The psalmist exclaims, 'Oh, how I love your Law! I meditate on it all day long. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me' (Ps. 119:97, 101,102). It is this continual focus upon obedience and faithfulness that most clearly distinguishes Christian meditation from its Eastern and secular counter parts.

Those who walked through the pages of the Bible knew the ways of meditation. 'He (Isaac) went out to the field one evening to meditate' (Gen. 24:63). 'On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night' (Ps. 63:6). The Psalms virtually sing of the meditations of the people of God upon the law of God: 'My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises' (Ps.119:148). The Psalm that introduces the entire Psalter calls all people to emulate the 'blessed man' whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night (Ps.1:2).

The old priest Eli knew how to listen to God and helped the young boy Samuel know the word of the Lord (I Sam. 3:1-18). Elijah spent many days and a night in the wilderness learning to discern the 'Still Small Voice of Yahweh' (I kings 19:9-18). Isaiah saw the Lord 'high and lifted up' and heard his voice saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' (Isa. 6:1-8). Jeremiah discovered the word of God to be 'a burning fire shut up in my bones' (Jer.20:9). And on march the witnesses. These were people who were close to the heart of God. God spoke to them not because they had special abilities, but because they were willing to listen.

In the midst of an exceedingly busy ministry Jesus made a habit of withdrawing to 'a lonely place apart' (Mt. 14:13). He did this not just to be away from people, but so He could be with God. What did Jesus do time after time in this deserted hill? He sought out His heavenly Father. He listened to His father, He communed with Him. And He beckons us to the same.

Hearing And Obeying

Christians meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey His word. It is that simple. It involves no hidden mysteries, no secret mantras, no mental gymnastics, no esoteric flights into the cosmic consciousness. The truth of the matter is that the great God of all universe, the creator of all things desires our fellowship. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve talked with God and God talked with them-they were in communion. Then came the fall, and in an important sense there was a rupture of the sense of perpetual communion, for Adam and Eve hid from God. But God continued to reach out to his rebellious children, and stories of such person as Cain, Abel, Noah, and Abraham, we see God speaking and acting, teaching and guiding.

Moses learned, albeit with many vacillation and detours, how to hear God's voice and obey His word. In fact, scripture witnesses that God spoke to Moses 'face to face, as a man speaks to his friend' (Ex. 33:11). There was a sense of intimate relationship, of communion. As a people, however, the Israelites were not prepared for such intimacy. Once they learned a little about God, they realized that being in His presence was risky business and said to Moses so, "speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die" (Ex. 20:19). In this way they could maintain religious respectability without the attendant risks. This was the beginning of the great line of the prophets and the judges, Moses being the first. But it was a step away from the sense of immediacy, the sense of the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.

In the fullness of time Jesus came and taught the reality of the kingdom of God and demonstrated what life could be like in that kingdom. He established a living fellowship that would know him as Redeemer and King, listening to him in all things and obeying Him at all times. In His intimate relationship with the Father, Jesus modeled for us the reality of that life of hearing and obeying. "The son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his father doing, because whatever the father does the Son also does" (John 5:19). 'By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear' (John 5:30). 'The words I say are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work' (John 14:10). When Jesus told His disciples to abide in him, they could understand what he meant for he was abiding in the Father. He declared that he was the good shepherd and that His sheep know his voice (John 10:4).

He told us that the comforter would come, the spirit of truth, who would guide us into all the truth (John 16:13). In His second volume Luke clearly implies that following his resurrection and the ascension Jesus continues 'to do and teach' even if people cannot see him with the naked eye (Acts 1:1). Both Peter and Stephen point to Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophecy in Deuteronomy 18:15 of the prophet like Moses who is to speak and whom the people are to hear and obey (Acts 3:22, 7:37).

In the book of Acts we see the resurrected and reigning Christ, through the Holy Spirit teaching and guiding his children: leading Philip to new unreached cultures (Acts 8), revealing his Messiahship to Paul (Acts 9), teaching peter about his Jewish nationalism (Acts 10), guiding the church out of its cultural captivity (Acts 15). What we see over and over again is God's people learning to live on the basis of hearing God's voice and obeying his word.

This, in briefs, forms the Biblical foundation for meditation, and the wonderful news is that Jesus has not stopped acting and speaking. He is resurrected and at work in our world. He is not idle, nor has he developed laryngitis. He is alive and among us as our Priest to forgive us, our Prophet to teach us, our King to rule us, our Shepherd to guide us.

All the saints throughout the ages have witnessed to this reality. How sad that contemporary Christians are so ignorant of the vast sea of literature on Christian meditation by faithful believers throughout the centuries! And their testimony to the joyful life of perpetual communion is amazingly uniform. From Catholic to Protestant, from eastern Orthodox to Western free church we are urged to 'live in his presence in uninterrupted fellowship'.

The Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse says, 'To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you'. The Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor declares, 'Meditation is the duty of all'. The witness of scripture and the witness of the devotional masters are so rich, so alive with the presence of God that we would be foolish to neglect such a gracious invitation to experience, in the words of Madame Guyon, 'the depths of Jesus Christ'.

The Purpose of Meditation

In meditation we are growing into what Thomas a Kempis call a familiar friendship with Jesus'. We are sinking down into the light and life of Christ and becoming comfortable in that posture. The perpetual presence of the Lord (omnipresence, as we say) moves from a theological dogma into a radiant reality. 'He walks with me and he talks with me' ceases to be pious jargon and instead becomes a straight forward description of daily life.

Please understand: This is not some mushy, giddy-buddy-buddy relationship. All such sentimentality only betrays how little we know, how distant we are from the Lord High and lifted up who is revealed to us in scripture. John tells us in his Apocalypse that when he saw reigning Christ, he fell at his feet as though dead, and so should we (Rev.1:17).

What happens in meditation is that we create the emotional and spiritual space which allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart. The wonderful verse 'I stand at the door and knock …' was originally penned for believers, not unbelievers (Rev. 3:20). We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us. He desires a perpetual Eucharistic feast in the inner sanctuary of the heart.

Meditation opens the door and although we are engaging in specific meditation exercises at the specific times, the aim is to bring this living reality into all of life. It is a portable sanctuary that is brought into all we are and do.

Inward fellowship of this kind transforms the inner personality. We cannot burn the eternal flame of the inner sanctuary and remain the same, for the Divine Fire will consume everything that is impure. Our ever-present Teacher will always be leading us into 'righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit' (Rom. 14:17).

Everything that is foreign to His way we will have to let go. No, not 'have to' but 'want to', for our desires and aspirations will be more and more conformed to His way. Increasingly, everything within us will swing like a needle to the polestar of the spirit.

To sum up, the purpose of meditation is to enable us to hear God more clearly. Meditation is listening, sensing, and heeding the life and light of Christ. This comes right to the heart of our faith. The life that please God is not a set of religious duties, it is to hear His voice and obey His word. Meditation opens the door to this way of living. Jean-pierre de caussade wrote, 'There remains one single duty. It is to keep one's gaze fixed on the master one has chosen and to be constantly listening so as to understand and hear and immediately obey His will'.

Meditation is a more passive Discipline. It is characterized more by reflecting than by studying, more by listening than by thinking, more by releasing than by grabbing. In the Discipline of meditation we are not so much acting as we are opening ourselves to be acted upon. We invite the Holy Spirit to come and work within us-teaching, cleansing, comforting, rebuking. We also surround ourselves with the strong light of Christ to protect us from any influence not of God.