Meditation I

I've got a few thoughts that I've been wanting to express on the topic of meditation for a while now. But it has been a hard topic to get to, because I have gotten so busy at work (I'm sure the declining quality and quantity of my little essays here has been noticeable. :-)

All meditation systems I have ever seen - Eastern or Western - have one thing in common: breathing. Controlling breathing, usually taking deep breaths, is the way most meditation starts. The reason for this is simple: breathing is an autonomous function, but one we can easily take off auto-pilot and control. By breathing deeply you are sending your body a very clear signal that your higher mental functions are now taking complete control.

Meditation traditions tend to focus on three things to varying degrees, even centering on one element to the exclusion of the others: intellectual, emotional, or physical sensation. Traditional Christianity shares with Buddhism and Judaism a belief that the physical and spiritual aspects of ourselves are completely united. Soul is not something apart from body - where Buddhism might consider their separateness an illusion, Christianity simply declines to acknowledge there is a separateness - our afterlife beliefs cling stubbornly to the notion our ultimate destiny is a body & soul ressurection, as unlikely as the physical universe may make that seem.

As such, Christ-focused meditation, where we go within to find God, is not the same kind of self-divinizing quest some new age practices hint at. It simply acknowledges that if God wishes to communicate and commune with us, our physical bodies are where he's got to do it; this is why we can look inside for the paraclete, the comforter - its the only place we can be reached by the divine. The recent discovery of a "spirituality gene" lends support to this idea.

The first meditation technique I learned that really worked for me is an emotional one. I find it very valuable in developing a sense of my relationship with God, but it has to be used with caution. It is a form of visualization, and as St. John of the Cross warned, what we see can be deceptive. Nonetheless, I am convinced this technique shows us an aspect of Jesus as he really feels about us. And I will try and post the method of this technique in my next posting...