Meditation awakens the heart. Awakens the heart to what? To who we truly are at the deepest level of our being, to our true-self, to who we are in God and who God is in us. And when we truly awaken to that – not as an intellectual idea, not as an abstract concept, but as an experiential truth – and when we truly awaken to that, we find we are changed. When we see from that perspective everything looks different because we have come to apprehend very deeply that in which we live and move and have our being. Meditation is both the doorway and the path to that discovery. That is the essence of what I have to say in this talk.
The prayer, written by John Main, that we say before we begin our daily meditation captures this essential truth beautifully. As you will know it reads ‘Heavenly Father, Open our hearts to the silent presence of the Spirit of your son. Lead us into that mysterious silence where your love is revealed to all who call.’ It begins by asking us to open our hearts – not our minds but our hearts. It invites us to leave ourselves open and vulnerable to being changed by our experience; changed mysteriously by the love that our practice reveals to all who walk this path.
It describes the silence we enter into as a mysterious silence – it is not something that the mind can comprehend. I think the word ‘apprehend’ captures it better. Because the knowledge that arises from our practice is experiential, not intellectual. The scientist Max Plank once wrote that ‘It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him’ (or her). In other words, it is faithful practice that gives rise to the rich and deep fruits of meditation. Meditation awakens the heart and the aim is to keep our heart awareness open, not merely for the time of meditation, but always. That is why the closing prayer I offered our community reads ‘Lord, may our hearts remain open to your presence and guide us to love like you.’
Walking the path with an open heart is what we are called to be. As Ram Dass said ‘All we are doing all the time is walking each other home.’ This is how we are called to be. Not to do, but to be – living out of that insight that we are already and always intimately connected to God and one another. Because we so easily get caught up in doing, in the busy-ness of our lives that we fail to life from our true centre, from our true-self, from that abundance of life and we identify instead with the desires, needs and preoccupations of the egoic self and lead our lives from that centre, from a sense of need and scarcity. But faithfulness to our daily practice can keep us on track, even if we can’t fully comprehend why that is so. Language is inadequate to the task of explaining it; the intellect is not capable of comprehending it because language divides and separates. But we can apprehend this truth experientially. There is, in other words, more than one kind of knowing and meditation increases our sensitivity to spiritual knowledge, to experiential knowledge, to deep spiritual insight. So, while words are inadequate to grasp its essence, we can still know it.
Although language is inadequate, some forms of language point to these truths more readily than others. For example, myth and metaphor, parable and paradox – each of these can point it its own way towards a truth that cannot otherwise be expressed. So let’s take a look at some examples of how effectively they can do this. Let’s begin with scripture. In a letter to the Ephesians, St Paul writes that ‘When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ’ [Eph 3:4]. And he goes on to write ‘This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every fatherhood, in heaven or on earth, takes its name. In the abundance of his glory may he, through his Spirit, enable you to grow firm in power with regard to your inner self (some versions say your hidden self), so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, with all of God’s holy people you will have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, so that knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, you may be filled with the utter fullness of God.’ [Ephesians 3:14-19]
In this passage, St Paul prays that God, through his Spirit, will enable us to grow firm in power with regard to our inner selves so that Christ may live in our hearts and then planted in love and built on love – the same love that John Main tells us is revealed to us through our practice through the silent presence of the Spirit of God’s Son – St Paul prays that we may have ‘the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, so that knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, you may be filled with the utter fullness of God.’ When I read this my heart fills with joy. I know what it means, not because I read it but because I have experienced it through my faithful practice of meditation. When I break it down and examine the words and phrases St Paul uses, I realise he has gotten his point across through ambiguity and paradox. For example, what does it actually mean ‘to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth’? The breadth and length and height and depth of what? He simply doesn’t say, but we know what he means. And then he goes on to say ‘so that knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge …’ So here we have a contradiction, a paradox: we can know the love of Christ even though it is beyond knowledge! We cannot know it fully intellectually, the mind cannot comprehend it, but the heart can know it intimately. The 15th Century theologian Jan Gerson described this deepening awareness as ‘experiential knowledge of God gained through the grasp of unitive love’ And we know that Jesus used parables all the time because the truths he was pointing towards cannot be expressed literally, they have to be expressed metaphorically.
For some time now I have been exploring how contemporary, contemplative poetry can point to deep truths in its own unique way; poetic language, because it is ambiguous and metaphorical, can give rise to deep insight about the spiritual nature of the human person. Let’s take a look at one or two examples. Let’s begin with a short poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from German into English by Robert Bly. The poem is titled ‘A Walk’ and you will find the wording on the page I distributed before I began.
A Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance–
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on,
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly
Take a moment to explore what line or phrase resonates or stays with you from this poem? What kind of insight, if any, arises for you? Reflection: I reflected on this poem so let me explore briefly what it said to me. The poem opens with the line ‘My eyes already touch the sunny hill, going far ahead of the road I have begun’. These opening lines remind us of our ability as human beings to have a vision of the future, to be able to imagine how life might be lived differently, to envisage a better future without losing touch with the present. Even if we cannot physically touch it yet, we can be touched by it and spurred to contemplative action to bring it about. We have hope, indeed faith, that the journey will be worthwhile. We are drawn to contemplative practice because something in our lives had deepened our sensitivity to who we are at the deepest level of our being.
We know that there is more to our being than meets the eye and we know that the ego will not lead us to that true centre. And when he hear about meditation and its deep fruits, we find our heart being drawn inexorably and mysteriously towards a commitment to take up the practice, to commit to walking along that path every day. We take a leap of faith and choose to allow ourselves, as the poet expressed it so beautifully, to be grasped by what we cannot grasp; because it has its inner light, even from a distance. Isn’t that our meditation journey is about, ultimately. We sit in stillness and silence, open and receptive to being grasped by that which we cannot grasp. There’s a mysterious loving tension here, paradoxically apprehended immediate yet also just beyond our grasp. At least, we can never comprehend it fully with the head – but we can and do apprehend it with the heart without fulling understanding what it is that has grasped us in its loving embrace.
We discover, as Rumi wrote: ” What you seek is seeking you.” We know, experientially, spiritually, that we are in communion with the love, with the spirit of Christ, which is beyond knowledge; that we have somehow accessed the breadth and the length, the height and the depth’ of that love, which knows no boundaries and is accessible to all. In his last letter, John Main referred to this as The Oceans of God. He wrote that meditation teach us that ‘we have to put our whole heart into this work of the Spirit if we are genuinely to respond to the call to leave the shallows and enter into the deep, direct knowledge that marks a life lived in the mystery of God.’ As our meditation practice develops we begin to find ourselves more and more living out of ‘this depth dimension of divine Presence’ and we discover that everything and everyone mediates the love of God.
Etty Hillesum, whose diaries describe both her religious awakening and the persecutions of Jewish people in Amsterdam during the German occupation exemplified this truth when she wrote: ‘Why is there a war?… Because I and my neighbour and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live.’ Meditation changes our way of seeing, broadening our perspective beyond ‘me, me, me’, beyond my needs, my desires, my preoccupations, my concerns. Main writes that we come to see ‘beyond mere appearances, into the depth and significance of things.’ We begin to see the bigger picture, to understand that all of life is inter-connected, grounded in the Divine: ‘Meditation opens up for us this precious form of knowledge, and it is what enables us to pass beyond mere objectivity – merely looking at the mystery of God as observers – and to enter the mystery itself.’ He goes on to say: [W]e come no longer to look for God’s presence in the externals of our life but to recognize him in them because our eyes are opened interiorly to his indwelling Spirit. We no longer try to grasp hold of God, to possess him. Rather we are grasped by his presence, interiorly and exteriorly, because we know that his presence is all pervasive and the ground of all that is.
The greatest difficulty is to begin, to take the first step, to launch out into the depth of the reality of God as revealed in Christ. Once we have left the shore of our own self we soon pick up the currents of reality that give us our direction and momentum. The more still and attentive we are, the more sensitively we respond to these currents. And so the more absolute and truly spiritual our faith becomes. By stillness in the spirit we move in the ocean of God. If we have the courage to push off from the shore we cannot fail to find this direction and energy. The further out we travel the stronger the current becomes, and the deeper our faith. For a while the depth of our faith is challenged by the paradox that the horizon of our destination is always receding. Where are we going with this deeper faith? Then, gradually we recognize the meaning of the current that guides us and see that the ocean is infinite.
And here again we see how powerfully a metaphor can speak to the heart and get us to the heart of the matter. Seeing God as an infinite ocean opens up our understanding and helps us to appreciate what happens to us as we remain faithful to our daily practice. Each time we sit in meditation we get into the boat again and allow ourselves to be carried by the current. So we come to realise that the path isn’t so much a marked way that everyone must follow rigorously, but the path is about allowing ourselves to be carried by the underlying current in which we live and move and have our being. We cease striving to move in a particular direction but we become attentive to and sensitive to the currents of the Spirit. We find ourselves becoming less wilful and more willing. We learn to trust in the wisdom of the current.
John Main reminds us that it can be unsettling at first – we think we are moving closer to the horizon but after a while we apprehend that the horizon is always receding. And so we begin to attend to the journey rather than strive continuously for a wished-for destination. We come to appreciate that the ocean, which is God’s Love, is infinite, and, yet, somehow we are able to apprehend the infinity of the breadth and the length, the height and the depth of the love of God. We launch our boat into this infinite ocean twice each day by saying our mantra continuously, returning to it over and over again each time we are distracted by thoughts of doing, of achieving something, anything. As our meditation practice deepens we come to appreciate that, as John Main says, ‘there is only one step between us and God.’ So, we take that step into the boat each morning and evening and leave the shore behind for the full time of our meditation.
Going back to our poem by Rilke, we can see that all three of the quotes – those from scripture, John Main and Rilke – tell us in different ways how, on our spiritual journey, on our contemplative pathway, we don’t so much grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth as we find that we are grasped by what we cannot grasp. While the opening lines refer to a ‘sunny hill’ that the poet can actually see and envision getting there, Rilke’s insightful poem invites us to expand our understanding further still. To see not with our eyes but with our hearts. The human heart has its own inner light and our practice of meditation allows us to access that light and be changed by it – into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are. Each of the three quotes we have considered capture this truth in their own way – that meditation awakens the heart, that it makes us deeply sensitive to that, which, hardly sensing it, we already are. That is the deep fruit of meditation, that it awakens the heart to its true nature and we begin to live our lives from that understanding. We experience that knowledge as a heart-felt resonance and assurance – we cannot see the gentle breeze but we can feel it nonetheless – and we begin to have faith in who we are at the deepest level of our being. And we come to know meditation as the path that leads to truth. We come to appreciate, as John Main often said, that meditation moves the centre of gravity of our consciousness from the head to the heart. This sense of knowing yet not knowing, of sensing deeply what we cannot fully grasp, is captured in another poem by Mark Jarman, aptly called ‘Almost’.
ALMOST by Mark Jarman
Almost grasped what Grandmother Grace knew
Last Sunday sitting in church, almost knew
What Alexander Campbell grasped when, confronted
With the desolate orphan, he told her, “You
Are a child of God. Go claim your inheritance.”
Almost got it. There it was in the sunlight,
Squared in the clear glass windows, on the durable leaves
Of the magnolia outside. Almost grasped the weather
That turns clear and crystallized in Hans Küng’s brain.
Almost held it in the ellipses and measure
Of my almost understanding. I see the moment
There in my notebook, then the next day’s anxiety
Spilling like something wet across the ink.
I almost put in my hand a vast acceptance
And almost blessed myself, then it slipped away.
All that colossal animal vivacity—smoke
Of the distant horizon, most of it, haze.
But to have known in any place or time
What they knew is worth a record, a few notes.
Almost knew what they knew. Almost got it.
—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
What line or phrase resonates or stays with you from this poem? For you, what kind of insight, if any, arises?
Reflection: I think this poem captures so well what we have been saying about the capacity of metaphor and myth, parable and paradox to reveal a deep truth to us by way of insight even while it remains clouded to the intellect; grasped by the heart while remaining obscure and ambiguous to the head. The poet almost gets that he too is a child of God and that he ought to claim his inheritance – he gets it, and yet he doesn’t. It can be comforting to know that we are not the only one who gets it and yet doesn’t fully grasp it. Because that shared feeling allows us to let go of the head grasping and instead fully embrace the knowledge of the heart, seeing it, however briefly, in the sunlight, squared in the clear glass windows, grasping it albeit just for a moment in the ellipses and measure of my almost understanding; some capturing the insight in what he wrote yesterday in his journal yet the next day’s anxiety spilling like something wet across the ink and obscuring the insight once again. In joy, he almost grasped in his hand a vast acceptance and almost blessed himself but then it slipped away again. And, yet, the poem finishes with the lines ‘But to have known in any place or time what they knew is worth a record, a few notes.’ Although the poem is filled moments of deep insight, followed by its loss, even though the poem finishes ‘Almost knew what they knew. Almost got it’, we know he got it! His heart apprehended it even if his head can’t get around it! There is a simple poem from Rosemerry Trommer which captures the same idea somewhat differently – it is called Awkward, But and reads as follows
Awkward by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
It can be so clumsy,
this loving you.
I wish, sometimes
to love you like a song,
something that soars
and fills you with awe.
Instead, like today,
I seem to love you
like a bird that walks
and hops and bobs
instead of flying
and wheeling high above—
it’s seemingly graceless,
but oh love,
what I want most
is to be close.
Both of these poems ‘Almost’ and ‘Awkward, But’ give expression to the mystery in which we live and move and have our being – how we can truly apprehend the truth of that mystery with our hearts without fully understanding it with the mind. And the wonder and the mystery is, that having once ‘gotten it’, having once truly apprehended that truth, we can never unknow it again!
This sense is captured beautifully in another poem by Trommer about a walk she took through a trail lined with tiny blossoms:
How Sweet It Is by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
They’re small, the flowers
of mountain mahogany—
little white and red trumpets
with barely a scent, but
today, on a trail lined
with millions of tiny blossoms,
the air was hung with sweet perfume
and I breathed deeper,
as if with each pull
I could bring beauty into my lungs.
When I lose faith
that my smallest actions
make a difference,
let me remember myself as one of millions,
remember the wonder of walking today
through the bushes in bloom.
Hours later the scent is long gone,
but I can’t unknow
how sweet it is.
Don’t the closing lines capture so beautifully what we have been saying? When we experience that sense of having grasped an insight only to find we can’t really explain it to someone else, these lines are a deep consolation because we realise that even if hours later the scent is long gone, we know too that we can’t unknow how sweet it is. As Christians we have faith that the day will come when we will know that sweetness intimately. As St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reminds us: ‘Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.’ [1 Cor 13:12] In the meantime we continue to get glimpses into the reality that awaits us as described playfully in our final poem, again by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, called Longing.
Longing by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Like the clicking of crickets
on a warm Nevada night,
or the click of a camera
as it captures what’s here,
like the click of the keys
of an old typewriter,
or the click of the light
as it switches to on—
that’s what I feel when
my mind meets the truth—
as if the gears of the world
have been tickity ticking
and some sweet inner cog
has been snickity snicking
and then with soft precision
all clicks into place and
for a moment, it’s quiet,
and I’m still with what’s real,
and I soften, I lift as I trust
(can you hear it?) the click.
Through our daily commitment we discover who we truly are; meditation exposes us, in the words of Howard Thurman: ‘to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning … in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation. [One] is face to face with something which is so much more, and so much more inclusive [that] in the moment, there are no questions. Without asking, somehow [one simply] knows.’ In her beautiful poem, Trommer describes this same realisation poetically, noting,
that’s what I feel when
my mind meets the truth—
as if the gears of the world
have been tickity ticking
and some sweet inner cog
has been snickity snicking
and then with soft precision
all clicks into place
We discover, as Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, that “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
Howard Thurman describes what happens when that heart-knowing, with soft-precision, clicks into place. He writes that ‘The individual in the experience seems to come into possession of what he has known as being true all along. The thing that is new is the realization. And this is of profound importance.’
John Main describes this realisation in Christian terms when he writes that meditation is ‘the way whereby we become totally available to the gift of our own creation. … unconditionally open to his gift [which is] … your own personhood.’ He adds that ‘This is what the silence of meditation is about and it is to this wonder of love that silence leads you.’ You begin to sense what you already are and you discover you can live your whole life from that perspective.
Etty Hillesum speaks of the need to commit to living our lives from the perspective we have been speaking about. She wrote: ‘Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.’ And Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us that ‘The roots of ultimate insights are found…. on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery. (In God in Search of Man)
Authentic mystical experience connects us and keeps connecting us at ever-newer levels of breadth, depth, height and length “until God is all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Our meditation practice affirms experientially what St Paul has told us, that “The world, life and death, the present and the future all belong to you, for you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:22–23). What we call salvation is a truly universal belonging and universal connecting and, as Richard Rohr says, ‘Our word for that is “heaven”.’
Let us meditate together now, leaving ourselves open and vulnerable to rediscovering, at an ever deeper level, this essential truth.
