The theme for 2023 for the world community of Christian meditation is ‘metanoia’. The full theme reads: ‘Metanoia – Let your minds be remade’. I’d like to reflect on metanoia as a contemplative path and as we go along I’ll use some poems to help us engage with the theme.
Fr Laurence Freeman writes that: ‘Metanoia is a Greek word that simply means change your mind. This is something that comes right from the heart of the Gospel. The call of Jesus at the beginning of his public teaching was to repent. The Greek word behind that is in fact metanoia: Change the way you’re looking, don’t beat yourself up for the mistakes you’ve made but understand where you are and change your perspective.’
Meditation mysteriously changes us – it changes how we see the world because it changes how we see ourselves. The word ‘meta’ in Greek means ‘beyond’ so in fact ‘metanoia’ calls us to look beyond the mind, and to discover who we are at the deepest level of our being, who we are in God and who God is in us. It calls us to discover who we truly are as children of God, to recognise that every person is a beloved child of God and to live our lives from that perspective.
So we might say, as Barry White did in the first of the series of online talks on the theme, metanoia is recognizing the continual contemplative path and committing to travel along the path with commitment. As meditators, this is what we are called to do in the hope and expectation that our practice will change us. That it will change how we see the world and how we act in it.
As we move through the world from childhood, through adolescence, to adulthood we learn from our family, the norms of our society, our culture and our education system how we are meant to be in this world. And we are encouraged to develop our intellectual, emotional, physical and psychological capacities for our own benefit and, hopefully, for the benefit of all. All of this impacts on the development of our ego, which is an essential part of our psyche. However, when we have come through the education system in early adulthood, there is a danger that we think we are fully developed and it is easy to become limited by the prevailing worldview of our society.
The trouble with any worldview is that we take it for granted that this is how things are – that there is no other way of seeing the world. That is why, down through the centuries, slavery was accepted for so long as perfectly normal. And why Magdalene Laundries were accepted as ‘normal’ for so long. And it may take 30 or 40 years more before we can look back and see what injustices we have accepted in our time as perfectly ‘normal’ and just the ‘way things are’.
All the great contemplative traditions tell us that the only thing we can change is ourselves. Like charity, all change begins at home, within ourselves. All the contemplative traditions also tell us that meditation is a powerful, albeit mysterious, means of change, that it promotes human flourishing at a very deep level. This is, in part, due to the fact that when we choose to sit in the stillness and silence of meditation we find that while it is relatively easy to become still in body, it is very difficult to become still in mind. We become keenly aware of our preoccupations and slowly it dawns on us that we see the world through the lens of our preoccupations and conditioning and that lens distorts reality for us.
Can we look at our first poem: Randomised by Mary Wahtola Trommer – the poem was inspired by a statement from Native American Joi Sharp, who once wrote ‘I feel like I’m this experiment called Joi:
Now that we’re calling this life an experiment,
it’s suddenly more fun to notice
what makes a Rosemerry angry?
How does a Rosemerry learn?
Can we make her annoyed?
What if we frustrate her with insurance claims?
With slow traffic? With politics?
With fill in the blank?
What conditions help her forgive?
How quickly might a Rosemerry
be moved to tears?
What makes her want to cast blame?
What if she meets guilt in a crowded room?
What if she has nowhere to hide?
What makes her feel small?
What makes her feel vast?
How does a Rosemerry
heal from a wound?
What happens when she is infused with love?
What if it’s more than she can hold?
What inspires a Rosemerry to laugh?
What if she deviates from her thoughts?
If we minimize the variables,
can we predict what brings her peace?
If we control confounding factors,
can we repeat our findings?
Faced with the data,
can she still embrace the unknown?
Can she stay open to possibility?
Lose her attachment to outcomes?
Such a curious subject,
elusive as a song.
What if we change the stimulus again?
Who is she now?
Prompt: What line or phrase stays with you from this poem? And, how does that relate to our theme ‘Metanoia: A Contemplative Path’?
Reflection: I’d like to reflect for a moment on this poem. I love how the poet stands back from herself in this poem and tries to see her own true colours – what has made her who she is, what motivates her and drives her behavior in the world, what provokes her to respond in certain ways. I like the way she moves from being the subject to seeing herself as an object, as a Rosemerry. Choosing to see herself as an experiment enables her to observe herself – a typical Rosemerry – from a distance and wonder ‘What makes a Rosemerry angry? What might make her laugh? What makes her feel small and what makes her feel vast?’
When we react to life’s circumstances out of our conditioning we feel as if we had no choice – our reaction was provoked by whatever had happened to us – that is where the fault lay, not is us but in the thing that happened to us. But when we can stand back from a situation we can begin to see more clearly. For a start, whatever happened didn’t necessarily happen to us – it happened and we were just one those affected by its consequences. And we can see that in all circumstances we do have a choice – we can choose to respond rather than react; that more than one response is possible and that the situation may call for a very different response to that which our conditioning tends to predispose us. Meditation develops our capacity for attention, to really being in the present moment; to appreciating how a situation is affecting us emotionally, how we are getting caught up in it, perhaps becoming defensive and reactive rather than responsive.
Does it help you when you are able to stand back like that? To wonder what a (enter your own name here) might do in any given situation. And to wonder whether a (enter your own name here) is like a closed shop or has the capacity to remain open to new possibilities. And when something happens that makes you feel small, are you able to observe that happening and experiment by wondering how else a (enter your own name here) might see that and respond differently that you might feel otherwise compelled to do.
Meditation improves our capacity for standing back, for seeing the bigger picture. It teaches us the art of detachment – or, more accurately, non-attachment! Because when we sit in silence we find we are inundated by thoughts and feelings that constantly wash up on the shore of our consciousness. And as we return after each breaking wave to our mantra, we find we can gently let them go so that they lose their hold on us. As we do this repeatedly we come to realise how our fears and worries, our needs and desires are a constant backdrop informing everything we do; how fleeting they are and how they constantly change in response to how our ego feels; and we discern how the incessant motion of these waves of consciousness and our habitual reactions to them inhibit our ability to see the world clearly.
Meditation is a very deep form of prayer that helps to free us from fixating on our own conscious thoughts and feelings and from identifying with them, as if we are our thinking. It helps us to appreciate who we are before we have our thoughts and feelings, who we are at the deepest level of our being; to discover our true self deep within. We don’t fight or repress or deny our feelings, but we find that we need not be attached to them. Unless we learn to let go of our feelings, we don’t have our feelings; our feelings have us.
Meditation enables us to break our sense of identification with our stream of consciousness and discover who we truly are underneath all that noise. And as that dawning realization takes hold, we find that our perspective on the world has changed. Our sense of self-identity changes and deepens as we learn to keep our attention on our deepest sense of being so that informs all of our doing. We see things through that deeper understanding of who we are at the deepest level of our being, interconnected with one another and with all of life.
Meditation awakens the heart – it is our heads that get stuck. It is the mind that looks for sameness, for repeat doses of pleasurable feelings, for avoidance of uncomfortable feelings. Metanoia – beyond the mind: when we open the heart we learn to simply be and to enjoy whatever is. We learn to be truly responsive to reality, to what is happening before us – to truly respond to what the situation calls for rather than react out of our conditioning.
Juddi Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, spoke and travelled almost continuously all over the world for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words that which is beyond words, beyond content. At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he asked, “Do you want to know my secret?” Everyone became very alert. “This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.” He might have added ‘next’ – ‘I don’t mind what happens (next).’
In other words he had developed the capacity to be in alignment with whatever happens at any given moment. His happiness did not depend on what happened next. His happiness did not depend on realising his hopes and expectations. To be in alignment with whatever happens is to accept without judgement or resistance the suchness of any given moment – that it is as it already is.
To choose such a stance is not to be defeatist, it is not about giving in to oppression but it means not labelling the moment as good or bad but acknowledging what, for the time being, is. It does not mean you can no longer take action to bring about change in your life? On the contrary. As Eckhart Tolle suggests, ‘When the basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of Life itself.’
What I have described so far goes much deeper than psychological growth. Of course, meditation does contribute to psychological wellbeing but at the heart of the matter, it brings the focus onto what it means to be; it helps us to ensure that all of our doing is informed by our deepest sense of being.
Let’s look at a second poem, this time one informed by the writings of Meister Eckhart. He was a German Catholic theologian, philosopher and mystic, in the late 13th to early 14th centuries. Yet, like other mystics such as Rumi and Hafiz, his teachings – very often expressed metaphorically – remain highly relevant today. As a preaching friar, Eckhart strove to guide the faithful, including monks and nuns under his jurisdiction, with practical sermons which focused on spiritual and psychological transformation. The central and constant theme of his sermons is the presence of God in the individual soul, and the dignity that implies. His work resonates with contemplatives because of his focus of self-emptying of all that was transient and unimportant, so that we might live our lives from the perspective of the indwelling presence of God. Mark Burrows has spent much of his life translating Eckhart’s work from the original German and, with John Sweeney, he has written three books of poetry inspired by Eckhart’s teachings.
Let’s take a look at his poem ‘Room Enough’ from his most recent book published last month, entitled ‘Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light’.
Room Enough by John M Sweeney & Mark S Burrows
We talk and talk and talk, and all
this brings us no closer to wisdom.
If you wish to understand the deep
truth that is in God and in yourself
keep still and listen; become poor
in yourself, desiring nothing and
knowing nothing and possessing
nothing. Only when you are empty
of all your chatter will there be
room enough in you to receive
the gift of wisdom you long for.
from Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light, p. 65
Prompt: What line or phrase stays with you from this poem? And, how does that relate to our theme ‘Metanoia: A Contemplative Path’?
Reflection: I’d like to reflect for a moment on this poem. In other writings Meister Eckhart tells us: ‘Know this: God has imprinted God’s image within you, and nothing you do and nothing that happens to you can erase this beauty, which is with you even when you ignore or betray it. … Within each of us is a divine treasure, and if we hope to discover it we need to go deep into the heart of who we are.’
Richard Rohr expresses the same truth in his own way: ‘God is already present [to us[. God’s Spirit is dwelling within us. We cannot search for what we already have. We cannot talk God into coming “to” us by longer and more urgent prayers. All we can do is become quieter, smaller, and less filled with our own self and our constant flurry of ideas and feelings. Then God will be obvious in the very now of things, and in the simplicity of things. Rohr adds: To sum it all up, we can never get there, we can only be there.’
Elsewhere Rohr has written that people often seem to start with this premise: “If I behave correctly, I will one day see God clearly.” Yet the biblical tradition says the exact opposite: ‘If we see God clearly, we will behave in a good and human way.’ Our right behaviour does not cumulatively lead to our true being; our true being leads to eventual right behaviour. Meditation changes our way of seeing so that we see all of life from the perspective of who we are at the deepest level of our being.
Elsewhere Eckhart wrote about finding the treasure within, that pearl of great price that is to be found in every one of us. He wrote ‘To find that treasure requires that we work like a wood carver who does not work by adding but by cutting away, removing what is rough to reveal what shimmers from within.’
While that may sound like hard work, meditation is the chisel that does this for us, effortlessly. We just have to be attentive to our word. As we return to our practice day after day, slowly but surely our practice chips away, loosening the hold our desires, conditioning and preoccupations have on us; and little by little revealing our true nature – who we are in God and who God is in us.
As the last lines of the poem express it: ‘Only when you are empty of all your chatter will there be room enough in you to receive the gift of wisdom you long for.’
In a moment we will meditate together for twenty minutes. So, let’s recall the two things that will help us to be still and silent. Firstly, let’s check our posture – check you are sitting up with your back straight – relaxed and alert. When the breath can flow unobstructed our meditation is better. And check that your feet are firmly touching the ground, not crossed at the knees or the ankles. That helps us to be still and grounded.
And then begin to pay attention to your breath. Don’t change the rhythm of your breathing, just observe it. As you breathe in, can you feel the coolness of the air at the tip of your nostrils. Keep your attention on that sensation for a moment.
And now begin to say your mantra. If you have a word you always use, then stay with it. Otherwise, our tradition recommends the word ‘Maranatha’, said as four separate syllables, Ma Ra Na Tha, recited at a pace that suits you. And for the duration of our meditation we will continually repeat our word. And it really helps to sustain the stillness and silence of we LISTEN to our word as we repeat it silently. John Main reminds us that in our faithful, continual repetition of the mantra is we are doing what Jesus asked: ‘Set your mind on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well.’ (Mt 6:33)
Bro Richard Hendrick spoke at a meditation day in Cork recently and he reminded us that it can help if we gently allow the repetition of our sacred word to align with the breath. We know that as we meditate thoughts will arise and we will aim to remain attentive to our word. If we regard the our thoughts as waves – waves of consciousness – then being attentive to our breath is like getting into a boat, offering us some protection from the continual churning of the waves. Our breath is like the boat. But our sacred word is like dropping an anchor into the sea, which holds us securely in place. I’m not suggesting that we need to maintain the same rhythm between our word and our breathing but to simply be aware of the breath while our attention is directed to saying our word and listening to it. You may find that suggestion helpful, you may not – be guided by your own experience as we begin now to meditate.
St Teresa of Avila described meditation – contemplation – as simply resting in awareness of God’s presence. So, meditation is not about making something happen. As John Main says in The Way of Unknowing: the basic aim of meditation, is to become fully aware of, fully inserted into, fully grounded in what is … meditation is about isness. Meister Eckhart used the same kind of language. So, let us empty ourselves of all our chatter and be still and silent in God’s presence.
