Dancing With Your Shadow

BY KIM NATARAJA

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INTRODUCTION by Kim Nataraja

What is Meditation?

Dancing with Your Shadow deals with the journey of meditation and with what helps and hinders us in practising this
discipline. Meditation is a universal spiritual discipline central to most of the World Religions and Wisdom Traditions. There are many different forms of meditation in these various traditions, all equally valid in their own way. In all the emphasis is on practise and experience rather than theory and knowledge.

It is also an authentic discipline in Christianity, although sometimes it feels that this is the world’s best kept secret. Jesus taught contemplation and this way of prayer flourished especially in the 4th century amongst the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt and Palestine. John Cassian collected their teachings in his book Conferences. It is in these writings that John Main OSB, a Benedictine monk, re-discovered this tradition for our time and opened it up for all people, calling it Christian meditation. This discipline is now taught by his successor, Laurence Freeman OSB, director of the World Community for Christian Meditation. It is not only the way of prayer of the Desert Fathers and Mothers but also of countless Christian mystics throughout the ages up to our present day.

Meditation is a form of contemplative prayer that leads us into the presence of the Divine beyond thinking and understanding. Rather than talk to the Divine in formal prayers – as we are taught to do from childhood onwards – we let go of words and images and listen to “the small still voice” deep within the silence. Thus we become aware of the Divine within us and
there we discover that in our own deep centre we are connected with everything and everybody.

This way of prayer affects all parts of our being: body, mind and spirit. By relaxing the body and letting go of our daily
preoccupations, we enter a state of deep relaxation, which has many well-known health benefits. In centering ourselves through meditation we are also more able to deal with the hectic pace of life from a position of balance and harmony. Stilling the body and the mind allows the spiritual side of our being to come to the fore and inform our life.

To help us enter the silence we repeat a prayer word or phrase of spiritual significance: a mantra. By focusing on this mantra we learn over time to let go of our thoughts. The one recommended in the World Community for Christian Meditation is maranatha, the most ancient Christian prayer in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. We use a word that has little association for us so as not to tempt us into more thought. This is a prayer said with love; it is not a club to hit our thoughts, but a gentle aid leading to onepointed attention. It allows us to turn our awareness away from ourselves and all our concerns, fears and hopes. It is a way of breaking through the barrier of self-consciousness into true selfknowledge;
in this way we access the power of silence and stillness.

The discipline is simple:
Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. Silently, interiorly begin to say a single word. We
recommend the prayer phrase, maranatha. Listen to it as you say it, gently but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything spiritual or otherwise. If thoughts and images come, these are distractions at the time of meditation, so keep returning to simply saying the word.

Meditate twenty to thirty minutes each morning and evening. This sounds simple, but it is not easy; yet it is worthwhile. In
fact it is “the first task and the first responsibility of each one of us.”(John Main)

In the following chapters we will learn practical ways of arriving at stillness of body and mind to make it easier to enter
this inner silence of meditation. The main difficulty will be quieting the mind and its chaotic thoughts that seem at first to be
never-ending. But we will learn how to minimize and leave them behind. We will also learn about other possible obstacles that may hinder our meditative practice. We will encounter the wiles of the ego that colour our perception, and we will learn to see through them so that we “cleanse the doors of perceptions and see reality as it is – infinite!” (William Blake)