We live in a time of receding prayer and aggressive meditation. In our hearts, we know that prayer and meditation are woven together. In some circles, meditation is rather stoic and inactive. In other circles, prayer is often violent – seeking to impose otherworldly aspirations on practical life. The Christianity of my youth – half a century ago – was often hostile to meditation since it was seen as a non-Christian spiritual practice without God at its center. Our inner sense has recoiled from such aggressive prayer and responded with aggressive meditation.
I grew up in an environment informed by this particular tension. The otherworldly anxiety of the religion of my youth was revealed in our community’s move off the farm. My father grew up on the farm but had moved to the city. On the farm, helping one’s neighbor was a way of life; in the city, helping one’s neighbors was evidence of a faith in rewards unseen. On the farm, spiritual life was first of all a life. In the city spiritual life is something to be known, studied, and performed. This separation between the farm and the city is analogous to the giant step we have taken from the model of Jesus of Nazareth.
Like all life, spiritual life dies when uprooted from its proper element. Our abilities to forgive and make promises, the mechanics of Grace, are woven into the fabric of a human being who is perfected and made righteous by the existence of God within us. Therefore, the spiritual life is not entirely uprooted from the human condition and transplanted into the otherworldly realm of angels. We live as spiritual beings when we entirely live in a relationship with God. The Incarnation of Christ is ample proof. As Thomas Merton says, “Jesus lived the ordinary life of the men of his time, in order to sanctify the ordinary lives of men of all time.” Thus, the first imperative of being spiritual is to live our lives. We should not fear and evade the responsibilities of the work appointed for us. For it is reality, and to be immersed in it, rather than viewed as a distraction, should be understood as being immersed in life-giving will and wisdom that surrounds us everywhere.
The skeptic will immediately scoff. ‘Why conclude that ordinary life is the matter of God’s will and wisdom? Why such supernatural inferences?’ The skeptic has drawn too sharp a distinction between our capacities for reception and action. The self passively receives and actively does, according to the skeptic.
I am driving my car home with one headlight – and so are you. We only partially see where we are going. We peer into the darkness in front of us, listening for the sounds of other cars, and we only get home if we keep alert. The spiritual life is thus a matter of keeping awake. We must be sensitive to spiritual inspirations and even the slightest warnings, as though by an inarticulate instinct, in the depth of one who is spiritually alive.
Meditation is one of the ways in which a spiritual person keeps herself awake. It is ironic that aspirants for spiritual perfection often fall asleep while meditating, isn’t it? Meditation, and prayer for that matter, are stern disciplines and cannot be learned by violence. Meditative prayer requires unending courage and perseverance; being unwilling to work at it will finally lead one to compromise and failure.
To meditate is to turn one’s whole being toward reality, and to train both the mind to be quiet and the desires of our hearts to not be dominant. Successful meditation is thus much more than reasoning or thinking, as well as much more than a series of prepared rituals that one goes through. Prayer, too, is not just a formula of words, or a set of affections and attachments. It is the orientation of our whole body, mind, and spirit to God in silence, wonder, and attention. All good meditation and prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.
One must break inner routines to enter into meditation. One must liberate the heart from the cares and preoccupations of one’s daily concerns. The reason why meditation is not practiced seriously is that this breaking of the inner routine is both necessary and requires effort. The most common failure to enter the meditative state is that practitioners throw themselves into violent efforts to get recollected, the most recent example of which is to get an app that is meant to help meditation. However, violent efforts have always been present. In the end, practitioners are frustrated by a series of routines that do no more than help them pass the time or help them pass into a state of semi-coma which they persuade themselves by calling what they do “contemplation.”
The spiritual without being religious people, these new practitioners of meditation, claim a connection to the spiritual life by doing nothing, least of all, praying. But, as I said, meditation without prayer is not actually meditative. Inversely, prayer without meditation is detached from any perception, feeling, or thought. There is no such thing as a prayer in which “nothing is done” or “nothing happens.”
All real prayer, no matter how simple, requires the conversion of our whole self to God. This conversion – this breaking of our inner routine – happens in meditation. Until we can break with our inner routine, we cannot safely assume we are inner contact with God. Otherwise, we will inevitably contemplate ourselves. On the other hand, if we depend too much on our imagination and emotions, we will not turn ourselves to God, but rather, will be forced into a riot of images and forcibly fabricate for ourselves our own religious experience. This too is perilous.
And so it is best to leave with the understanding that any religious hostility between prayer and meditation is carried within the human being as similar to the relationship between rest and productive activity. Neither of which is possible without the other. True meditation will require a response, as actual rest cannot endure indefinitely. Effective prayer requires the real connection that is established by meditation, as productivity becomes violence without rest. Meditation should not be done for effective prayer; neither, too, should rest be done for greater productivity. But they are two sides of the same coin.
