A Manual for Practicing and Teaching Meditation

The reason people persevere with their meditation practice is because for them it becomes both important and urgent. The question for each of us today is: How much do you want spiritual freedom? Is meditation a nice hobby, or a spiritual necessity, as necessary as breathing? If our meditation practice has no urgency to it, other pressing matters will take precedence. As is human nature, life’s important priorities take a back seat to the urgent ones. Integrating a consistent meditation practice is as simple and as difficult as integrating any other practice for our well-being. In the book “Immunity to Change,” Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey observe the resistance people have to making lifestyle changes, even when the status quo will kill them: “A medical study showed that if heart doctors tell their seriously at-risk patients they will literally die if they do not make changes to their personal lives- diet, exercise, smoking- still only one in seven is actually able to make the changes.” What is at stake here is nothing less than what we hold most dear. Look at your day, and what activities fill its waking hours. How much time do you devote to your physical health, to your emotional health, and to your spiritual health? How much time is for family? How much for work? While prioritizing physical health is more accepted today (in theory, if not in practice), and prioritizing emotional health is becoming more commonplace, spiritual well-being still feels like a luxury. Two thousand years ago, Jesus said, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these… But strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6: 25-33, NRSV) Life then and now has many urgent demands. Knowing this, Jesus told his disciples not to make daily sustenance their top concern. Instead, love and trust God first. This is Jesus’ first commandment, and why he says to seek first God’s kingdom. With all this in mind, how important is your spiritual health and freedom to you? If it’s just a nice idea, it probably won’t stick over the long term. However, if this is something that you long for with all your mind, heart, and gut; something you crave for like water in the desert, then chances are that meditation will stick. There are many reasons why people fall away from meditation. It can be scary. It can bring up fears and anxieties that we don’t want to confront. On the surface level, we say we can’t meditate because we don’t have enough time. We bring to meditation unrealistic expectations for quick-fix results that aren’t met. Perhaps we try to do meditation all on our own. It may also simply be the force of habit which keeps us living out the momentum of the way things have always been, rather than the way they could be. What will make the difference for you? What makes the difference for anyone that truly shifts their long-term behavior? Desire. A sense of spiritual urgency, without anxiety. As the wise adage says, “make haste, slowly.” If we wait for more time in the day, we’ll never meditate! Meditation will become a reality when we make the time for it. That will only happen when we see it as a necessity for our spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being (which in turn benefits our family and friends). The paradox is: we don’t just meditate for ourselves. We meditate for our loved ones too. We meditate for the world. We receive, in order that we might give from a place of spiritual fullness, an overflowing cup. When we give from a full place, then perhaps people will be inspired by our example 2000 years later, as they continue to be with Jesus, and with Buddha. When you think of meditation, get rid of “shoulds.” Meditation with the energy of obligation won’t last for long. Let your guiding question be the one that Barbara Brown Taylor was once asked: “What is saving your life now?” There are lot of practices that you can do, and meditation is not for everyone. So, don’t start meditating because you think it’s what your spouse, friend, or even your Pastor wants you to do. Do it because it is the spiritual discipline that is saving your life right now, bringing you joy, peace, and spiritual radiance to share with others. That may be too lofty. Meditate simply to love God; to talk and listen to God; to commune with God. Meditate in secret. But let the meditation spirit so permeate your life that everyone will wonder “what are they drinking?” In meditation, we drink from the vine of Spirit, taste from the river of Life, and are nourished by a fountain that never runs dry. An intoxicated man once stumbled up to Paramhansa Yogananda, who was full of the Spirit of God. “Say, what are you drinking?” the man asked. “Let’s just say it has a lot of kick to it.” Yogananda replied :)