This is part 1 of a presentation given to Benedict’s Well – a weekly group organised by the Oblates of the World Community for Christian Meditation.
John Main often taught about the importance of gentleness during meditation. While speaking about saying the mantra he would say “only the smallest effort is required”. Also, in asking us to attend to the mantra, he would also say “ignore everything else”. Our time of reflection will look at these two elements of gentleness and ignorance, using this text from Luke’s Gospel as a guide.
When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him [Jesus] out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the cliff on which their town was built, intending to throw him off the cliff, but he passed through the midst of them and walked away. (Luke 4:29-30)
This comes from the story of Jesus visiting his hometown of Nazareth. Whilst there he went to the synagogue, read from Isiah and then preached. What made the people so angry? Jesus drew a parallel between himself and the prophets Elijah and Elisha, pointing out that his fellow Nazarenes weren’t listening now, much like how their ancestors didn’t listen to Elijah nor Elisha in the past.
For our purposes, let’s look at this crowd a little differently. Let’s see this crowd as our own crowded minds which can be distracting, jostling, pushing, fearful, reactive, perhaps at times enraged.
This mind can claim and capture attention. Because of this, we can lose touch with, lose sight of, our deeper, true selves. This losing touch is a bit like being on the edge of a cliff.
Living a busy, modern life at this time of political extremes and environmental collapse has many of us on the edge.
As we know, a regular practice of meditation can help.
Humanity will always be evolving. A foundational part of this evolving is the evolution of human consciousness. Unfortunately, at least in the West, crisis and collapse have for too long been the way of learning, if we do learn. This pattern of crisis and collapse is now global and digital, with its own fast-paced unfolding of tragic and violent consequences.
A practice like meditation evolves the human consciousness differently. We willingly grow in abandoning our egocentricity (the inherent cause of all violence) to God. We do so with emerging gentleness and self-forgetfulness.
Meditation is a commitment to non-violence. We learn, over many years, the art of attending to the mantra gently, without force.
A faithful practice cannot, ultimately, be a forceful practice. It is the ego that needs force. It needs the energy of force to feed on.
The gentleness of simple, uncomplicated conscious, consciousness that by nature just lovingly is and expresses without self-reference (that is, forgetting itself) – to this the ego, ultimately, has no answer.
In meditation we attend, via the mantra, into this consciousness. As this happens, our whole humanity grows in being an expression of this consciousness.
This consciousness is spirit, it is who we truly are.
A busy, distracted, crowded mind cannot become conscious. The risk is that it will instead grow increasingly violent. And a violent mind will eventually try to throw us off a cliff.
As we meditate, as we listen to the mantra in growing gentleness, force lessens. Consequently, ego recedes, and the heart (which John Main described as the centre of consciousness) is revealed in consciousness and can be experienced.
As we attend gently to the mantra, attention, like Jesus in our Gospel story, simply passes through the crowd on its way to the heart.
It is from this receding that the ego will always attempt to distract attention.
If anything like this is happening, ignore it, that is, say you word.
This is consistent with John Main’s teaching to ignore everything else except the mantra during meditation.