The question is: How is prayer and or meditation meaningful to Christians and to non-Christians? More specifically: How is meditation and reflection meaningful to me?
There are some aspects of meditation and reflection from my former Christian upbringing, which I still consciously and also instinctively practice today. These elements have not lost their significance for me. Just a bit of background here. Prayer was, to me, the most important part of my Christianity. Prayer allowed me to talk to a 24/7 God, always there for me, who I could express anything to. My best part of the day was in the morning when I would do my daily devotionals; reading the Bible and praying to God. Better yet, was taking a walking in nature and thanking God for what was around me and enjoying the solitude of being in the wilderness, using it as a time for reflection, and feeling close to God in those moments. So let's not kid ourselves here, I hardly do any of that today like I did when I was a Christian and so there's a lot we can learn from Christians here. Not about learning how to pray, but why/how prayer is meaningful to the Christian as something they do on a daily basis. And I'm confident there's something we both can learn from each other.
There is a basic, traditional form of meditation I want to emphasize today:
And meditation does not take significant effort or time to accomplish, simply:
-find a quiet environment,
-close your eyes, and
-relax your breathing..
To focus your mind:
-concentrate inward instead of concentrating on what's outside of you and or
-repeat a mantra of sound or a phrase over and over again or
-focus on and listen to the sound of each breath you take.. you choose.
Yes, you could say this is only meant to clear the mind of thoughts and reduce stress, but this was not the original intention of meditation. It's not just about emptying your mind. To quote Mary Garden:
"What is often overlooked is that these Eastern meditation techniques were never meant to be methods to reduce stress and bring about relaxation. They are essentially spiritual tools, designed to apparently "cleanse" the mind of impurities and disturbances so as to attain so-called enlightenment--a concept as nebulous as God."
So the original techniques were intended for spiritual reasons, natural spiritual reasons, to be specific, i.e. to enhance a positive outlook on life, a peace of mind, an openness to and acceptance of reality, to connect you to reality. Nevertheless, the additional effects of such meditation ARE the reduction of stress, relaxation, a more reflective mind and one possibly open to insights.
After such meditation I feel relaxed, more focused, and significantly more aware of what is around me, even little things like colors that stand out from a painting, the sound of rain outside as it paters on the street, morning light filtering in and hitting the walls.. This is a focused reflection. One of my favorite forms of meditation, you could say, is playing the piano. I like to play on my electric piano when it is dead quiet so that the notes stand out and I can get lost while playing, time slowing down and being lost in the moment, and what is left is simply the music rising from the keys. And then when I'm done suddenly realizing that I had forgotten about myself, any issues I had, the fast pace of life. Whatever I was doing up to that moment doesn't matter, because for the moment, I'm free of that. It's when I can't tell the difference between myself and what is outside of me and I feel one and the same with those things that I consider it a spiritual experience, and to emphasize again, a natural spiritual experience, but one which I think is just as satisfying as what I believed were the "supernatural" spiritual experiences of my former Christianity..
People say live life in the moment. Well, since I believe I only have one life to live, the moments of life are even more precious to me now. So if the moments of life are precious to you, what are you doing with those moments. That's a reason for this presentation, to inform you on the value of forms of meditation and reflection and so to give you more control over the moments of your daily life and hopefully greater satisfaction. It has for me. We tend to fill those handful of moments each day with tv, video games, venting about this and that, gossip, and mostly idle talk on the cell phone that we rationalize as important.
It seems like the happiest people are the ones who appreciate and maximize those moments here and there that present themselves to the person.
That's why I am often disappointed by people, when I am on a max line train or the bus, who can't just sit there for more than two minutes without needing to whip out their cell phone. And they'll rationalize why they need to call someone, to check or send messages, to always be connected. On a side note: that's why I rationalize why I don't need a cell phone. I got my laptop and phone waiting for me at home. But that's my point: Whatever happened to simply stopping when a moment of solitude presents itself, to take a deep breath and to just exist in the moment, and reconnect with what is around you?
So I think forms of meditation and reflection can be very meaningful and beneficial to those who no longer practice faith and no longer pray to the Christian God. And one should make these practices important, because as Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
You can't do that very well without a focused mind...
It's time we let go of the issue surrounding the word spirituality and realize that both camps of belief and non-belief have this deep experience in common and that is what is important.
There's little disagreement there in terms of the experience...
