Justluckie

Is Meditation Dangerous?

Of course it is! Is it not dangerous to step out of line with the usual run of things? Is it not dangerous to pay attention to reality rather than find ways of avoiding it? Is it not dangerous to wake up?

There have been recent reports about the difficulties that can arise for people who are practising meditation and these difficulties are real. If you are not used to spending time in silence, it is quite possible that serious unresolved issues will come to the surface. Our mind has successful strategies for 'parking' difficult things so that we do not constantly have to face them. This is a useful defensive mechanism but it is not a long term solution to these difficult things. On a slightly lower level, we may simply become mroe aware of ongoing agitations that we had not been aware of before. Another problem that can arise is a sense of disorientation, particularly if one is spending long periods of time in silence. If the usual constructions of our mind are absent for a time - the perceptions, self-descriptions and internal narratives - then we can find ourselves feeling a little at sea.

These experiences are natural and, though not everyone will experience them, it is important that those who are practising meditation regularly and for long perdiods of time have access to someone with experience and a good understanding of what is happening in meditation. Such a person would be able to suggest ways of addressing those unresolved issues, perhaps by pointing to a trained counsellor, and might suggest adjustments to the practice where necessary. I would say that religious traditions of meditation and prayer have significant resources to offer in this regard both from the point of view of centuries of experience and from the point of view of offering a conceptual framework for our experiences. It really does help most of us to have some sense of how our experiences fit into our broader sense of reality.

There is one further danger involved in undertaking the adventure of meditation. One might meet God. And this is a danger for the theist as much as for the atheist because the God who meets us might bear little resemblance to the God we imagine. It may be that the God we meet in silence is more silent than we had thought, or more free, or less distant, or more challenging, or more ineffable. In any case, we should not undertake the practice of regular meditation unless we are prepared to be changed. I think that is a danger worth facing.

Meditation - is it all you need?

Meditation has become a popular and powerful practice for many people who find it to be a source of peace, personal authenticity, inner transformation and changed perception. For many, if not most of these people, the practice does not take place within the context of a religious tradition, though some will have a notion that what they are doing owes something to Buddhism. On one level, this does not matter at all because the practice of meditation is clearly beneficial. It is a simple, human activity that unlocks a whole area of our ability to perceive the world more truly, seeing beneath the surface and beyond the artificialities that we so often imagine to be an integral part of our identity. It allows us to focus less on what we are and more on that we are.

Conversely, many religious people do not see the need for any meditative (or contemplative, to use the more traditional Christian terminology) practice in their exercise of a religious faith. So are these practices fundamentally distinct from each other? Could I use the analogy of an Anglican Choral Evensong, which is enjoyed by many people who do not have a religious faith? I think I would want to argue that the link is, in fact, more intimate and vital than that. The enjoyment of evensong is more in the realm of aesthetic pleasure and, while I would never deny the importance of aesthetic pleasure in Christian worship, the relationship between meditation and faith is, in my mind, more essential.

From the point of view of religous practice, contemplative prayer is a fundamental gift available to all. It is one of the most sure means of expressing our love towards God and of being inwardly transformed by the One who calls us to newness of life. For the Christian, it never exists in isolation from the worshipping community, the church's sacraments, the ethical dimensions of faith or the teaching of the church. However, without it, all these things risk being soulless, lacking the essential personal engagement with the Source of all life. Meditation also allows us to see beyond the external aspects of religious observance and get to the heart of the matter. It can save us from idolatry.

But what about the non-religious person? Are they missing out on something if they practice meditation without reference to its religious context, whether Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or whatever? I lead a meditation group in our Cathedral which attracts people who do not have a religious faith. I always introduce each session with some thoughts about the purpose of our practice and I can usually manage this without overt reference to the Christian traditions that form the basis of that practice. The one place where I find that there is no language I can use other than the language of faith is when it comes to the inderstanding of meditation as a simple act of love towards God. There may be a way of expressing this in other langauge, but I have yet to find it. This disposition of love which directs our gaze away from ourselves towards the Giver of all good gifts is a life-changing disposition and without it, I do not think the practice of meditation can reach the depths that it might otherwise reach.

Where to Begin - Opening a Dialogue.

One of my preoccupations over the last few years has been the question of where to begin conversations between those who do and those who do not belong to a religious tradition. The purpose of such conversation is mutual understanding and learning to achieve a more rounded sense of reality. But there is a problem, I think, with the traditional approach of religious people, especially theists who want to start that conversation with questions about God. Many of those who might be willing conversation partners find this a major stumbling block, partly due to assumptions about the nature of God and the nature of belief and these assumptions are rarely challenged by mere argumentation. I am convinced that successful conversations of this sort almost always begin with shared experience.

I attended an excellent talk last Friday by Fr Laurence Freeman OSB, director of the World Community for Christian Meditation. He was addressing the relationship between meditation and sanity and did so in dialogue with a Buddhist nun, Sr Candasiri. His contention was that we lack good mental health because of our lack of connection, our isolation,  and the discovery of connectedness was the pathway to sanity. He described four kinds of connection - with ourselves, with others, with the phenomenal world and with God or Ultimate Meaning. He suggested that it didn't matter much which of these four you began with because it would inevitably lead to an awareness of the other three, but he did say that our sense of connection with ourselves was probably the most sucessful one for most people in our contemporary Western culture. His proposal for the best way to discover this connectedness was the practice of meditation, a simple if demanding practice that is common to most religious traditions. Meditation is the practice of awareness, of a clarified consciousness that seeks to set aside rationalising thought, letting go of preformed notions of success and control in favour of a simple awareness.

I was pleased that both he and Sr Candasiri recognised the painful and turbulent nature of this journey because meditation is often presented simply as a relaxation exercise. It is not that, though it will ultimately put us in the place where we experience a profound kind of peace, a peace that is not predicated on external factors.

Although I have been fully supportive of this approach for some time, and I am soon starting a meditation group in our cathedral, I think that it is also worth exploring those other 'entry points' to the conversation about our connectedness. Not least, I believe that our interaction with the phenomenal world is one which will appeal to others who may not feel an immediate affinity with the practice of meditation. The exploration of a contemplative consciousness among those who experience the natural world as a place of wonder and connection is, I think, a largely unexplored area. Why does a scientist like Brian Cox talk about the world as 'amazing'? This is not a rational category but a spiritual one, a profoundly human response to a keen awareness of the scale and intricacy of nature. Why would a writer like Robert Macfarlane take his shoes off to walk in the forest if not to experience a deeper sense of awareness and connection?

Here is my invitation to religious people and those who share a sense that we must find connection in order to live well: let's meditate together; let's take a walk together in the depths of a forest, let's look up to the skies together and wonder at what we see. And, after that, let's begin to talk about what these things have shown us. Only after that will be able to talk together about God without misunderstanding each other. As Merton said, 'I want not knly to observe but to know living things, and this implies a dimension of primordial familiarity [connection] which is simple and primitive and religious and poor.'