Category: Spirituality

Meditation: Early Stages

Meditation: Early Stages

By |

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. 

Silent Prayer – A Path to Meditation and Contemplation

Silent Prayer – A Path to Meditation and Contemplation

By |

Silent prayer can be defined as meditation, but a meditation focused on Mystery, God, or Higher Power.  Silent prayer is to empty ourselves of all concerns, burdens, activities, and thoughts that can distract us and let God speak to us in our hearts.  In order to set the proper tone, there can be a brief opening prayer and/or reading and reflection on a brief scriptural passage. 

Approximately 3-5 minutes of silence after the opening prayer (an individual should start at 3-5 minutes and gradually increase the time spent to 20 minutes or more as they become more practiced). 

Invariably, distractions or sleepiness will enter in.  It is important not to struggle too much against these interruptions but to allow them to pass through your consciousness until they no longer hold sway over your mind/soul.  It may take many sessions for this to occur.  A mantra (i.e., a sacred word), deep breathing, or focus on a sacred image may be helpful in overcoming distractions as well.

Note: If distraction or thoughts tend to the depressive, overly negative, or the dark side, the individual should seek help from a minister, spiritual director, or another professional counselor familiar with meditative practice and the contemplative way.

If desired, at the end of the period of silence, the individual may wish to offer prayers for others or continue with a more traditional form of prayer. It is best to continue to use other forms of prayer and ritual that the individual may be accustomed to and to integrate silent prayer with these.  Contemplative prayer can only heighten the experience of religious practice.

Prayer before meditation

  • God, I place myself in YOUR presence, to open myself to hear YOU
  • Lord, I remove all barriers that interfere with our direct relationship 
  • God, let me lose “self” and love of self in the vastness of YOUR LOVE
  • Lord, I turn within to find YOU, WHO resides at the center of my being

Short term benefits of silent prayer

  • Increased focus and concentration
  • Release from burdens and distractions
  • Calmness in crises or emotional situations
  • Adds spiritual balance to life’s activities
  • Distraction from pain and increased healing power

Long term benefits of silent prayer

  • Self-knowledge of “who I am” without deception
  • Continual renewal and contact with God (daily and in the moment)
  • Ever deepening relationship with God, growth in the personal relationship to God
  • Receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit
  • Continual sense of the peace of God’s love
  • Infused spirit of God’s love through union with God (no longer separate) – contemplation

Click to view Open Your Heart Meditation

My Calling

My Calling

By |

I recall the first time that I was called upon to “heal” someone through the “gift of healing.”  I was teaching an introductory computer course at a local community college at the time to a very large class of 100 students or more.  

During the course of the semester, a “vision” of one of the students came to me during meditation late at night. The vision was of me laying hands on the student’s head healing her, although I didn’t even know her name.  I found it curious but essentially dismissed it from my mind.  

However, in the next few days, the vision reappeared to me vividly twice more on different occasions during meditation.  After that, I shared my vision with my wife and also asked the student about her and her family.  She related that she was in her early thirties, with two small children, she lived in a rural area and her passion was horses. 

She told me that she had recently been diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and was to undergo surgery after the final exam of my class. Because of my visions, numbering three now, this medical knowledge sent me into a great deal of fright and questioning of my own sanity. 

I strongly resisted the idea that I could be used to heal anyone and, more likely in my mind, I was taking on a “messiah” complex. Nevertheless, I had learned to trust what I received from God in meditation, so I was struggling with a real dilemma.  The dilemma was soon resolved for me.  

As I was putting my five-year-old son to bed saying his prayers and asked that we pray for a student of mine, a woman who was sick, he said, “Did God come to you in a dream and ask you to heal her, like He came to Saint Joseph in a dream?” After this astounding word from the mouth of a babe, I could no longer deny what God was calling me to do. 

After the last class of the term, I asked the student to stay after and told her the whole story of what I had experienced and asked her if she wanted me to pray with her for healing. In an otherwise empty classroom of more than 100 seats, I prayed with her for healing and lay my hands on her head as I had seen in my visions. 

The day after the operation, I visited her in the hospital and she relayed that the surgery had gone well according to her doctor. A week or so later she stopped by my off to excitedly tell me that she was back horseback riding. 

The doctor had examined her a few days after the operation and could find no evidence that he had operated, no cancer, and could not understand her “miraculous” recovery from the operation.  He agreed that she could go immediately back to horseback riding.

Journey of Faith

Journey of Faith

By |

From a theological perspective, the question arises, “How do I know that my mystical experience is valid?” This question is particularly difficult for those who have been taught to rely only on the “law” or the word of scripture as valid. This question can be answered on at least two levels.  

If one believes, as Roman Catholics and some other religious persuasions do, that tradition and the living word of God are important to their faith, then it is a small step to include experience as valid.  

In my own view, learning, and experience, God continues to be revealed as we move forward in history and in the life of the individual believer as they mature in faith.

It is also my belief that as we continue through our life’s journey of faith and prayer, we go through a series of conversions toward an ever-deepening relationship with God.  

The mystic may eventually enter into that all-encompassing, all-loving embrace of God’s love, but any mystic, I believe, would still describe it as ever-changing, ever-deepening, even though focused on “being” in the presence of God. 

A second way that God is usually revealed to us is through the charisms and gifts of the Holy Spirit.  As we experience more and more of the Holy Spirit in our lives, especially in relationships with others, we come to trust our experiences.  To deny these spiritual experiences would seem to deny the Holy Spirit.  

Finding Proof

Finding Proof

By |

After spending two years at the United States Naval Academy as a midshipman and finding shipboard life stifling, I resigned from my commission and transferred to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. where Philosophy and Theology were part of the required curriculum at Georgetown, even for an economics major. 

 A Jesuit theologian, a lay Protestant theologian and philosopher from France, and an economics professor, who was an atheist, taught me.  Each of these persons influenced me in different ways. 

The atheist provided me contrast and clear choice to a system of intellectual knowledge versus faith and trust in a divine spirit.  The protestant taught me the discipline and flexibility of thought.  The Jesuit satisfied my intellectual need for a proof of the existence of God, along the lines of the philosophy and theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas.  

During this period, I also became aware of the fundamental truth that all human relationships were in a sense passing and that God was the only absolute truth.  

The moment that faith came to me was not dramatic, for it seemed to be there as I took instruction in the Roman Catholic faith shortly after my graduation from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.  

I do recall a moment of enlightenment when I was no
longer questioning everything intellectually and understood that truths would be revealed to me, as well as God’s will for me, as I grew in faith.  

I learned later that my conversion, similar to St. Paul’s experience, began with a mystical experience, the “blinding light” that filled my soul, and led me to a lifelong faith journey.   

Reading & Reflection & Doubting

Reading & Reflection & Doubting

By |

After this experience of seeing the light, through reading, study, and seemingly endless discourse with friends and mentors, it took five years for me to prove intellectually to myself that God existed.  

As I reflect on this period of my spiritual journey, it seems that several streams of thought and experience converged to become the foundation of my belief and faith.  In my early childhood, I remember my mother dressing my brother and I up in our Sunday best and sending us to the closest church of whatever denomination, usually within a block or two of our home.

My mother was estranged from the Roman Catholic Church and my father, a Protestant, never attended church regularly since he was usually leaving on Sunday to drive to his Monday morning appointment out of town. Since our family moved frequently with my father’s sales executive job, I recall being baptized in as many as five different churches.  

During my teen years, I don’t recall attending church at all.  However, after the mystical experience in my eighteenth year and being in the military service, I found much more time for spiritual reading and reflection. 

Two books, in particular, had a significant impact on my early formation. Francois Mauriac’s, The Viper’s Tangle, taught me that it is never too late to come to God and Thomas Merton’s, Seeds of Contemplation, introduced me to a world of inspired spirituality, apart but not wholly separate from religion and the secular world, that could be entered by meditation and meditative reflection. 

Yet, I still struggled with the intellectual proof that there was actually a Supreme Being, God, who existed apart from me, yet could touch me directly.  

Seeing The Light

Seeing The Light

By |

Near-death experiences are common enough that twenty thousand cases have been documented and these stories have been published in several well-known books, Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., and Life After Life by Raymond Moody, M.D. just to name a couple–both are available online.

In 19 years, as a chaplain in rehabilitation for stroke, brain injury, spinal cord, and general acute rehabilitation, and several recent years in Behavioral Medicine, I have heard many stories of God’s intervention, transforming grace, and return to life and health after “seeing the light.”

My first such personal experience came when I was eighteen years old and in the service of the United States Navy in naval aviation.  Each weekend I had been taking “liberty” and going to surrounding landlocked towns where the girls were as free-flowing as the beer, especially for those in a naval uniform. 

However, this particular weekend, I was confined to the base for guard duty.  Off duty in the afternoon, I lay down in my top bunk in a vast empty barracks that held three hundred double bunks.  As I lay there, I was surrounded by an intense light that penetrated my entire being.  I basked in the glow of this light losing all consciousness of time.  

To this day, I don’t know if I lay there for in the light for two hours or for two minutes, but the sense of peace and well-being was absolute and it created in me a desire to know the source of this light.  

For the first time in my life, I realized that there was a power much greater than my own, but I couldn’t name it.  Thus, began my search for the source of this power, for I had no known concept or image of God.

Seek and You Shall Find

Seek and You Shall Find

By |

How do you seek and find?  Everyone’s journey is different, singular, but universal at the same time.  The journey is usually full of stones of difficulty and at the same time wonderfully full of surprise and even joy.  

It is difficult to describe and put into words what I or anyone experiences, especially when that experience involves the spiritual or mystical.  

Think for a moment what confusion abounds when two persons witness the same accident and then, in some level of certainty, try to explain it to someone else.  The description may vary greatly or, even if they generally coincide, one person may be influenced by the other’s perception or description.  

At the least, part of the problem is that each of us brings our own experience and knowledge to that particular situation and this can color our very definitions and use of words and concepts.

In attempting to describe mystical experiences that are abstract and otherworldly in the first place, probably the best that we can hope for is to present a commonality of experience.  The immediate problem arises in communicating the idea to someone who has not experienced the mystical phenomena in even remotely the same way that you have.  

A larger problem may be that there is an attempt to overreach in explanation through the use of too many words or analogies in order to explain what is actually experienced in the simplicity of that integrating moment when we encounter Mystery.  

Mystery as used here, capitalized, is defined as a direct encounter with God or the Universal Being, however named. Not capitalized, the word is used to mean that which is unknown, defying explanation, and subject to a myriad of other explanations; some scientific, some spiritual.

God is “Spirit” and as such can open the mind and heart to the spirit within each of us. Whatever your belief system, whether the traditional Father/Mother image, or Higher Power, or simply Universal consciousness, etc. I chose to call my Higher Power, God. I will refer to God throughout my writings but of course please feel free to substitute “God” for whatever name you feel comfortable connecting with within your heart.

Whatever we choose to call our connection, this should not limit the openness to spiritual growth, meditation and contemplation can inform and enrich our experience in a continual and direct encounter with the unknown.

It is my firm belief that we all encounter God in many different ways and moments, but often shield ourselves from God’s action in our lives because of the unknown.

Each of us has probably experienced a moment, perhaps in a natural setting, when all seems harmonious and the usual conflicts within us meld into a harmonious whole.  Suddenly, we are at peace within ourselves and with the rest of the world.  

Others may have experienced a dramatic event when God has suddenly intervened at the moment when we seem enlightened with a clarity of understanding or joy.  At those moments, we wish that we could suspend time and enjoy the experience endlessly.  

This has happened to me and that is why I am sharing my spiritual experience with you.