DEBATING THE MERITS OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION (First published in 'NZ Catholic, Feb 23)

Two friends of mine at Christian Meditation, one Anglican, one Presbyterian, have asked could we meet to talk through my concerns with CM. As our conversation’s been delayed by holidays, please bear with me as I rehearse the evidence supporting my standpoint.

‘We must beware of error here, for the more closely we approximate to truth, the more we must be on guard against error.’ The Cloud of Unknowing, a seminal work often quoted by  CM’s John Main and Laurence Freeman, paradoxically contradicts their teaching, as do John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, Doctors of the Church. And although they mightn’t cut ice with my Protestant friends any more than with CM’s protagonists, when CM disagrees with the Magisterium I side with the latter.

‘The mantra’, says Ernest J Larkin, CM practitioner and Carmelite, ’silences the mind, emptying it of its contents.’ But Teresa says by trying to think of nothing ‘we shall end by driving ourselves silly’. John of the Cross advises that ‘contemplation is active while the soul is in idleness and unconcern.’ Benedictine Abbot John Chapman explains that chasing distractions detaches the will from God. Marist Thomas Dubay says, ‘The Buddhist has methods’ (identical to CM’s) ‘for voiding the mind, but we are not Buddhists. We are not producing a neutral state of awareness; we are receiving light and love from God, and there is a vast difference’.

’No one comes to contemplation,’ declares Bonaventure, another Doctor of the Church, ‘save through penetrating meditation, holy conversation and devout prayer.’ As Chapman attests, this is the way trodden by all the saints. It’s not a question of getting love, but of giving love, to God: ‘If anyone love me … we will come to him’ (Jn 14,23).

Contemplation isn’t to be had for the asking. Rare exceptions (Ss Paul, Augustine) prove the rule that it’s given by God only – according to Chapman – after ‘ good works, mortification … long hours of prayer (and) asceticism’. And in another argument which mightn’t weigh heavily with Protestants, the Cloud says contemplation’s not granted to ‘the apprentice … before they have cleansed their conscience of all their past sins, according to the ordinary rules of Holy Church’, and is only ‘for everyone who has truly and deliberately forsaken the world.’

All of which helps explain the phenomenon of CM. It looks like a short cut but the danger of short cuts is, they can lead travellers astray. Psychologists, including the Christian Carl Jung, warn of ambush: if energy ejected by the mantra disappears from the conscious mind it surfaces in the unconscious, with unfortunate results for the emotionally unstable.

Well then, how do we pray?  

As Chapman says, ‘The best kind of prayer is when we throw ourselves on God and stay contentedly before Him; worried, anxious, tired, listless but above all humbled and abandoned to his will, content with our discontent. If we can get ourselves accustomed to this attitude of soul, we have learned how to pray’.