A little sharing on meditation...
Hey everyone. Hope everyone's enjoying their well-deserved break right about now. Anyway, I've decided to post a little sharing about my experience during a recent meditation session I had with my parish lectors ministry. It was a wonderfully peaceful experience and I thought I'd share it with you and introduce a new form of prayer that I've come to know of recently. Here goes:
meditation: deluge of thoughts
on tuesday, i had my monthly meditation session with the olps lectors. after a long day in school and hanging out with the freshies, so it was no surprise when i trudged into st mark's room at 8.20pm after cabbing down from town pretty darn tired. i even fell asleep in the cab just before i reached the church. even joe remarked that i was tired after the meditation was all done.
joe started with a few exercises, asking us to recall a person or persons who had given us love before and relive an experience in our minds. after that, we went into breathing exercises, where we regulated our diaphragmatic breathing in line with the word 'maranatha', which means 'the Lord has come'. surprisingly, it was quite an exertion, due to the variation of speeds to our breathing. my nostrils were burning and my chest felt noticeably strained, but otherwise i felt completely at ease and relaxed. what happened next is beyond me, but the feeling of it was extremely powerful and has been firmly etched in my mind.
joe then led us into a series of mental exercises. the strangest thing was that my head started to tilt up towards the ceiling, and at that moment, joe mentioned something along the line of the light of christ. and there, through the skin of my eyelids, was the light emanating from the ceiling lights. yet somehow, it felt brighter and whiter than one would expect. it felt like the light had completely penetrated and passed through my eyelids, and i became fixated on this light completely. i followed joe's instructions for a little while more, feeling the light run through my body and trying to view myself from outside my body before i lapsed into my own path. the strangest thing was that i could hear joe's voice, yet my consciousness was floating around and not deciphering what he was saying. i felt light and weightless, like i was floating on air, like a flower petal on a vast lake. i was fully awake, yet i was oblivious to my physical surroundings. my thoughts took on a natural state of flux and i just drifted between thoughts and memories, remembering none in particular but knowing i had visited a few regions of my mind. i felt energized as i moved from fluid thought to thought.
as the session drew to a close, i somehow managed to pick up joe talking about Christ, "who died on the cross out of love for us" as well as his instruction to slowly count to 10 and come out of the meditative state.
it felt like the whole thing lasted 5-10 minutes, but joe told us we had been like that for around 30 minutes.
considering i've fallen asleep on the past few attempts, this experience really had me excited. in a sense, i felt so awake, so aware of myself, yet i was asleep and oblivious to the world around me. thoughts just poured forth like a spring in a natural flow and fluidity. and it has me wanting to experience that calm once more.
meditation: deluge of thoughts
on tuesday, i had my monthly meditation session with the olps lectors. after a long day in school and hanging out with the freshies, so it was no surprise when i trudged into st mark's room at 8.20pm after cabbing down from town pretty darn tired. i even fell asleep in the cab just before i reached the church. even joe remarked that i was tired after the meditation was all done.
joe started with a few exercises, asking us to recall a person or persons who had given us love before and relive an experience in our minds. after that, we went into breathing exercises, where we regulated our diaphragmatic breathing in line with the word 'maranatha', which means 'the Lord has come'. surprisingly, it was quite an exertion, due to the variation of speeds to our breathing. my nostrils were burning and my chest felt noticeably strained, but otherwise i felt completely at ease and relaxed. what happened next is beyond me, but the feeling of it was extremely powerful and has been firmly etched in my mind.
joe then led us into a series of mental exercises. the strangest thing was that my head started to tilt up towards the ceiling, and at that moment, joe mentioned something along the line of the light of christ. and there, through the skin of my eyelids, was the light emanating from the ceiling lights. yet somehow, it felt brighter and whiter than one would expect. it felt like the light had completely penetrated and passed through my eyelids, and i became fixated on this light completely. i followed joe's instructions for a little while more, feeling the light run through my body and trying to view myself from outside my body before i lapsed into my own path. the strangest thing was that i could hear joe's voice, yet my consciousness was floating around and not deciphering what he was saying. i felt light and weightless, like i was floating on air, like a flower petal on a vast lake. i was fully awake, yet i was oblivious to my physical surroundings. my thoughts took on a natural state of flux and i just drifted between thoughts and memories, remembering none in particular but knowing i had visited a few regions of my mind. i felt energized as i moved from fluid thought to thought.
as the session drew to a close, i somehow managed to pick up joe talking about Christ, "who died on the cross out of love for us" as well as his instruction to slowly count to 10 and come out of the meditative state.
it felt like the whole thing lasted 5-10 minutes, but joe told us we had been like that for around 30 minutes.
considering i've fallen asleep on the past few attempts, this experience really had me excited. in a sense, i felt so awake, so aware of myself, yet i was asleep and oblivious to the world around me. thoughts just poured forth like a spring in a natural flow and fluidity. and it has me wanting to experience that calm once more.
posted by greg | 12/14/2006
1 Comments:
Greg, I felt that experience also.
I was taught the way to do contemplation back in Indonesia. That was a very rewarding experience. As we repeated the words, Jesus, Jesus, until it became silent words echoing in my mind, I feel peaceful and suddenly like my body was surrounded by something and maybe like flying.... Then it was like that God was talking to me "do not worry, look at my face even though you are sinful because I love you."
Errrh, I am not joking, but that was it and the teaching of the church acknowledge this from several talks that I've heard.
Sadly though.....I did attempt to do contemplation several times in this semester, but not many I got similar experience. There were just too much thing inside my mind.....And not much time. I, so called, forgot what is contemplation.
I attended the join uni retreat this 12-14 december 2006, and they taught us lectio divina. There I was reminded what is contemplation.
Lectio divina is simply reading a passage of a scripture and repeating it again and again. Then meditate (chewing the words of God) on it. Then do a dialog with God, ask what is His will, can also protest against Him. Then we fall into contemplation (simply enjoying the presence of the Lord, so called like lovers who enjoy just being beside their partner :p). The ultimate aim for this is building a relationship with God. But they only gave us 5 minutes to try all of those out....
In the end, I sincerely say that people won't be able to maintain this kind of prayer life without the community supporting it. Testimony from a priest and my experience tells it. Hmm, can NTU have a community that periodically do meditation together? Taize is also wonderful
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