Holy Ground
“If
discovering the meaning of life is what you want to do, I recommend
that you stay where you are, even if it's a crummy little town. Find
a comfortable place, close your eyes, and then wait for the voice
that will eventually come to you. It's the voice of God, and don't
ask me how I know. Everyone who has heard it over the centuries has
also recognized it immediately...”
Douglas
Brouwer (dougsblog.org)
Meditation has been
around for thousands of years, mostly associated with the Buddhist
and Hindu religions, though we know that both Jesus and Mohammad took
themselves away from people and into the wilderness to pray. The
second you say this word, meditation, to a modern Westerner, however,
you see the eyes glaze over and the denials rise up. “I've tried
that,” they say, “I just can't do it. I can't still my mind.
First thing I know, I'm making my grocery list.” And so on, and so
forth. Me, too. I come up with every excuse in the world. But here's
the deal: I think it's the word “meditation” that is the problem.
It conjures up chanting monks and Om's ringing around a room. It
feels strange, other worldly.
And yet—the desire to
know God, to connect in some individual and personal way with divine
wisdom is a seed deeply planted. I think we should simply change the
word. What if we called it Inner Time, or Silent Prayer, or Time-Out.
What if we were simply to take five or ten, or even fifteen or twenty
minutes per day to sit and do nothing except to be silent and tune
in. We might get comfortable and quiet enough to doze off for a few
minutes, but that silence between sitting down and falling asleep,
and the quietude between being asleep and getting up again—that
liminal time, that threshold between worlds—that is the zone of
intersection where much can happen. That is the meditative state.
And, we all reach it.
Building that few minutes
of silent affirmation into your busy day—doesn't have to reach
Nirvana, doesn't have to strive for enlightenment—it can just be,
well, quiet time. Time for you to listen within to what the Divine—the Self, with a capital S—has to tell you. You don't have
to go into the wilderness, or to the mountain top, or to some shrine,
or sacred cave—because that holy place is right inside you. It's
wherever you are. You are holy ground.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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