Tag: reflective meditation

Obstacles to Meditation and Contemplation: Part 3

Obstacles to Meditation and Contemplation: Part 3

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In recent years, I have been working in Behavioral Health as a chaplain in order to promote spiritual growth as well as other aspects of a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

It is important to share the tools for meditation and contemplation that can often bring hope and sometimes relief to those who are challenged with mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, grief, depression and anxiety, and related issues. 

Group meditation has been a key component of my spirituality groups. Typically, after an introduction and assurances of inclusiveness of culture and religion, we enter a discussion of those things that we tend to bury deep inside. 

Often this includes grief, anger, forgiveness, fear, guilt, and other emotional trauma. But it sometimes includes spiritual and positive emotional experiences that are deemed too personal to share.

From this discussion, we proceed with a meditation starting at the top of the head and “emptying” ourselves of thoughts, feelings, etc. and working downward to the heart. 

We “open our heart.” 

This completes the meditation, but it is suggested that the individual finish the meditation through the rest of the body, in a quiet place, later in the day.

We then share what those in the group experienced in the brief 5-minute meditation. This sharing is often revealing and sometimes brings out stories and group members ministering to one another. 

A handout on meditation (similar to the one at the beginning of this website and in the Obstacles to Meditation and Contemplation: Part 4) and scripture provides an ongoing reference for the patient to reflect on if he or she so chooses.

Check out Obstacles to Meditation and Contemplation: Part 1 and Check out Obstacles to Meditation and Contemplation: Part 2 and Obstacles to Meditation and Contemplation: Part 4

Meditation: Early Stages

Meditation: Early Stages

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While my early mystical experiences seemed to come directly from God “out of the blue,” so to speak, meditation deepened my faith, my prayer discipline, and from time to time brought the fruits of the Holy Spirit or spiritual gifts.  

In fact, I view meditation itself as a gift. Meditation is the process of reflection that implies a certain initial action but whose object is a state or sensation of “being.” This state of “being” is an intense focus or becoming absorbed in the “now” of the object.  

For example, meditative reflection, especially in the early stages, maybe centered on objects such as symbols, images, events in scripture, an image of God, or even nothingness. 

This latter is a sort of cosmic universe described in many Eastern forms of meditation and even some Western mystics.  Initially in the process of meditation, these objects are separate or external from self.  However, as the process continues and deepens the “self” tends to become absorbed in the object.  

Meditation because it is a reflection, is a process of “turning within” oneself to fully experience the object.  In its focus, meditation attempts to eliminate all distractions to arrive at a state of relaxation without extraneous or wandering thought.  Thus, a quiet place or sacred space without noise or traffic or interruption is usually sought.  A mantra or repetitive word, or breathing exercise may be helpful to set a mood or ward off distraction. 

These aids or techniques of meditation are well documented even by those who would describe themselves as non-religious.  Many have experienced the stress-relieving and concentration benefits of meditation.  However, it is the daily encounter with “self” that is perhaps most beneficial.  

We are free to choose the objects of our meditation and I have always chosen God (and at times Christ or the Holy Spirit) as the object of my meditation.  In this choice, meditation became a daily form of prayer for me since the age of twenty-three.