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The thing I struggle with about meditation vs prayer is that I can actually feel something with meditation. With prayer I am pushing into 3 years of just talking to a bedroom wall named God. No answers, no feeling, no reciprocal communication. BTW prayer has it’s fair share of negative stories too. I can think of a family member of an old girlfriend who through prayer and fasting was inspired to retreat to into the mountains to spend the winter with no gear or shelter. She died and her husband didn’t tell the authorities for quite some time due to the guidance of the spirit.
Seems to me that anytime we give ourselves over to the supernatural and abandon common sense things can spiral out of control.
As one who meditates, I do so by my own process, formula, whatever, and not according to any specific technique. I personally think of meditation as “wordless prayer”. I do not support, and actually find some danger in meditation techniques based into other religious systems. All religions, in my impression, are infected with a type of cultural lock-in that can creep into one’s life. When I start walking down a path, I might find myself in a place I don’t want to be. I say this as an experienced wayfarer — there are many paths not worth walking down, in my impression.
Deepak Chopra is an amazing individual, but I don’t trust his motives and end-objective. He is very much in the mold of a hindu guru, except he has opened up his message to be very appealing to the new age. Please don’t take me as being critical — I just think that his pop variety of belief is like candied spirituality — and he has his own dogma in a very real sense. I’m sounding critical, but don’t mean to be — if you get help from taking a Chopra challenge, then great. Be careful where it leads you though.
My first truly meditative experience was at BYU when I lost a contact lens. It was in the days of hard contacts, and it had popped out of my eye in my Deseret Towers dorm room. In those days, every aspect of the room was some shade of green, and my contact was shaded slightly green in order to aid finding it. That works on all surfaces, of course, except green. So, after desparately searching high and low, I went to what always seems like the “last resort”: I knelt by my bed and prayed. It started about the contact, but rapidly went to my own personal defects. I started to pour out my personal fears and insecurities, and at some point, I was no longer in words, but pouring out pure emotion, weaping and writhing in an anguish for my defects. As I was in profound pain, a peace started coming over me… a relief and clarity of understanding — as if all my thought was erased from my mind, and I began, simply to have clarity — no thought, nothing specific, only remarkable peace…and light…and a freedom from any of the angst I had just previously felt. It was as if my entire mental processor was rebooting with a clean memory, and as the new program took hold, I felt as if I could fly — not through excitement, but of weightless (not literally) freedom from burdens.
As I opened my eyes, I passed my hand over my hair and the contact lens fell in front of me on the green bedspread.
That event was forty years ago. I thought, initially, that the contact lens dropping was the answer — it was the miracle that told me there is a god, etc. I have since come to understand something far more profound. The answer was not in the contact lens dropping, but in the peace…the still small voice without words that removed my burdens from me, emptying my mind and filling my soul.
I have journeyed through a lot of meditative traditions: buddhism, hinduism, taoism. Their techniques are interesting, and many times, through manipulation of our own mental processes, we can achieve a reset of the processor, we can find peace — no question about it. But as we find that peace, which through transcendental meditation and non-spiritual meditation approaches simply the physiological part of meditation, I wonder if we have truly connected to the God within, or have we only altered our senses and emotions in order to feel what we feel when we truly connnect to the god within? This is why I see “wordless prayer” as being something a bit different than formulaic meditation techniques — wordless prayer isn’t simply manipulating the mental/emotional processes — wordless prayer is pouring out of the heart, its completely different than any technique I have found around the world. I’m not sure I can explain it, but in my experience, I have found many in the church who know exactly what I’m talking about when I try to explain it. It can’t be taught — it can only be experienced.
I think this principle exists in the phrase “search, ponder, and pray” from the primary song as the “ponder”. Its just underemphasized and misunderstood. Too often now the leadership make it sound like they’ve done the searching and pondering for us and we just have to pray about what they say. Although I think it’s getting better.
Meditation isn’t about contorting yourself into full lotus position. It’s about peacefully pondering the works of God in whatever way brings you the peace you’re searching for.
wuwei wrote:I think this principle exists in the phrase “search, ponder, and pray” from the primary song as the “ponder”. Its just underemphasized and misunderstood.
Too often now the leadership make it sound like they’ve done the searching and pondering for us and we just have to pray about what they say. Although I think it’s getting better.
Meditation isn’t about contorting yourself into full lotus position. It’s about peacefully pondering the works of God in whatever way brings you the peace you’re searching for.
無為,i would suggest that “pondering” can be a form of meditation, but meditation is often distinct. pondering is thinking about something, its etymology is to weigh something: deep thinking.
Most meditation, particularly from easterm traditions, tends to seek for the opposite: an emptying of the mind. by emptying the mind, we detach from our active thoughts, and free up the nonconscious mind to to its work unencumbered by our sensory and active thoughts.
both have a place.
If we’re playing semantics… What does the Latin root of meditation “meditari” mean.
I understand. Language is an immense constraint on our ability to express things of the mind and spirit. Ponder doesn’t adequately describe what I would like to. It’s just a word used at church that approximates it.
I wouldn’t define it as “reasoning” or actively trying solve a problem. More like letting a question or an idea roll around on its own and acknowledging the thoughts it brings up without actively seeking them.
Yes, you are correct, “meditation” is a western word that has come to be applied to something slightly different from the east. Western meditation meant thinking about something intensely, which is slightly different, but still perhaps of value.
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