For the days and weeks and then the entire following year my life became very regular and steady. The six hours of meditation a day stretched frequently to seven. The regularity of the daily schedule assisted the spiritual process that was going on within me during the meditation sittings. It was a time of shedding. As the meditation practice continued to refine, I noticed a trend - the gradual departure of everything from my daily attention that was extraneous to my central focus of devotion to Jesus through silence. One might think that there would be a few things important to keep hold of, just for personal entertainment and keeping "well rounded." But the sort of things I would have valued--the occasional movie or concert, the favorite TV show, the newspaper and NPR, and being behind the wheel of a car--all these left my grasp with not even a whimper of complaint or regret. One could say that my life got very narrow. It was more a matter of becoming clearer about a single focus.
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it." (Matthew 13:44-46)
The meditation process that I was committed to was and continues to be like a treasure that I am willing to sell all I have in order to live in meditation. My relationship with Jesus is a pearl of great value, or great price, worth giving my all to. A journal entry from those months read, "Narrow door--you can't bring other things with you through that door. To squeeze through it, other stuff gets brushed off of you in the passing. There is room for very little else in my life but this practice and what is directly related to it. That seems to be just fine with me." I saw the need in my own life to go deeper and to leave more behind. I noticed that some of what I was attached to was good, but it was also diverting from keeping my eyes upon Jesus alone. So that too I was willing to let go of.
This sort of undertaking, this letting go of life style and habits and the usual activities in this culture is something one rarely has the opportunity to follow, even though many have expressed desire to do just that.
Now I was fortunate to actually be fulfilling this desire. For some time I had wanted to work on the refinement of the ministry I offered in the faith community; I had desired purification of service. If I really wanted to be a faithful priest, then I needed to be willing to let go of a lot of my own "stuff," a lot of ego-invested personal agenda, and accept the Holy Spirit's agenda.
This time was for God's stewardship of me. We as human beings, unlike other portions of creation, have the ability and opportunity to cooperate with God's stewardship of us. We can work in harmony with the way God nourishes, sustains, guides and directs us. We can do this through voluntary submission to discipleship and surrender to the way life is, and when we do we discover that this is the way to cooperate with the offering God has already made to us. God’s stewardship and offering to us is for our cultivation--for being roto-tilled, fertilized, weeded, pruned, and watered. What was crucial was the fruit to be produced.
My response to God’s work of grace in me as God’s stewardship made the most of the opportunity through the meditation practice. So I reflected carefully on the meditation practice and shared that with my teacher in spiritual direction and through a rich email correspondence we carried on. His guidance and advice continually pointed me to certain fundamental themes or areas to pay attention to, most of which were directing me toward a very clean, unadorned practice. He wrote:
“Hold attention gently in the heart. That is the practice--holding attention gently in the heart. Is the heart doing the thinking? A distinct awareness develops that the heart is thinking the name in coordination with the flow of the beads.” Therefore I sat with a small circle of wood beads that he gave me, and recited silently the Name of Jesus while bringing attention to the heart.
A word needs to be said about the form of the Name of Jesus that I have used throughout my own personal meditation practice. Jesus is the form of the Name most commonly used in English-speaking faith communities. This spelling and pronunciation evolved through Greek and Latin and variations within the long, evolving development of the English language. The ancient Hebrew form of the Name for Jesus was Yeshua. This is the form of the Name that I engaged for use in my meditation practice.
Think of the Name “Jesus.” The meaning may be very rich for us through association of experiences. We may have often, or never, prayed with this Name and known miracles to happen, or nothing to happen. We may have had a joyful, fulfilling church experience where this Name is the focus for worship, blessing, and loving guidance for our life. Or in a community proclaiming this Name as the way and truth of salvation we may have suffered judgment, alienation and abuse. And as we read the Bible and engage in theological study about Jesus as the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, we add imaginative and conceptual significance to the Name. All these experiences, either positive or negative, or merely intellectual, serve to compose the meaning of the Name “Jesus.” Then as we think about the person who bears this Name, we may feel comfort, joy, awe, or fear, or we might be affirming the theological ultimacy, or irrelevance, of the Name to our world view and life course. This is “associative” meaning. Its content varies with each unique person. It cannot be legislated or fixed, and it evolves through time.
Understanding associative meaning attached to the Name has great significance for spiritual practice. If we think about practice as devotion, then associative meaning will pre-scribe the person to whom we are devoted. Our attitude in devotion, including our emotions, sense of obligation, and consequences or out-comes, will be strongly conditioned by the meaning we attach to the Name in this way. We may then be very concerned to approach the Name, and thus the person named, by composing the correct attitude, believing that if we do not, we will not be acknowledged and cared for, or we may even give some offense.
Here it should be obvious that our practice has become a matter of self care focused on worthiness and need. This is so even though we have composed, or felt arise in us, a strong loving surrender to the person we know and Name as Jesus. It is then a romance of devotion that can seem so rewarding and spiritually fulfilling by which we define our spiritual practice. To practice on this basis may provide essential inspiration but it does not provide a stable and dependable ground for devotion as a crucial element of life.
The mantric value of the Name gives a different picture of how meaning arises, and what the value of the Name is for practice. Mantric value has to do with a natural vibratory (or sound wave) influence on the mind, body, and the more subtle energy centers of the body as the Name is held in awareness. If we chose mantric, rather than associative, value to understand and support our spiritual practice, then we will be able to look at the character of the immediate, natural effect of the Name without concern for accumulating emotional, imaginative and conceptual meaning around it. In this way we acknowledge the spiritual function of the Name itself, while neglecting any effort on our part to compose ourselves in such a way for practicing the meditational use of the Prayer of the Lamb or the Name, so that we are properly able to honor the meaning our life experience has given to it. Thus, by focusing on mantric value, we give a clearer significance to grace as we entrust ourselves to the person whose Name we take up in practice.
In mantric practice, we hold faith that the One who is present in the Name, and to whom we are devoted, will be revealed to us. We do not begin with the hope, or assumption, that the associations the Name carries for us are sufficient to determine either the attitude of practice or the truth of the be-loved. That is, whatever we do have in terms of associative meaning are necessarily limited, incomplete and insufficient to express the whole truth of the Name. So in this way we free ourselves of the limiting aspect of the psychological and historical values around the Name, and we access the mantric or natural revelation available through the devotion of practice.
There is another important aspect of the mantric value of the Name. In the story of creation, the various forms of life emerge from divine utterance. Elohim (the Hebrew word for God used in Genesis 1) speaks a name, which is a vibration of ruach or spirit, and a form manifests or comes into being and shows itself. Primal languages, such as Sanskrit and Hebrew, are said to be mirrors of the vibratory structure of creation. The spiritual cultures evolved with these languages study creation and specify spiritual processes, which assist the move of attention from the manifest form to the unmanifest source, through the practical analysis of the vibratory influence of letter sounds and their combinations in words and grammatical structures. Spiritual practice that employs names and words from these primal languages of creation, therefore, has a more potent, natural influence to expand awareness, than the derivatives of these same names and words in other languages. Understand that this potency, or its diminishment, is not a matter of conceptual precision or the rich associative meaning that has emerged from the life experiences of individuals and whole cultures that use the primal or derived languages. It is simply a matter of the immediate vibratory effect on mind, body, and the more subtle energy centers of the body through the prescribed forms of spiritual practice.
This teaching favors the Name Yeshua, which means in Hebrew “the one who saves,” rather than Jesus, the English derivative of the Hebrew form. Closer analysis of the Name in terms of the Hebrew letters that compose it reveals that “Y-SH-A” is a vibratory code for the Kingdom of God, or the reality of God’s pervasive presence in all that is, or enlightenment. We could conceptually unfold that code by indicating that the meaning of the three given letter sounds is “God awakening as Spirit in self-awareness.” In this case we can say that enlightenment for the human individual is surrendered, fully wakeful participation in self-awareness of the Absolute. In the biblical and spiritual tradition of Israel, Yeshua fully realized and now lives the truth of enlightenment, and offers that truth unconditionally to be lived by each of us. He could have received only that Name. Yeshua was prescribed by angels for the child born of Mary, and the Name that the apostolic community proclaimed in Israel as the way of healing and salvation. These things may or may not be of interest to us, since they give associative (rather than mantric) validation to the Name. And, obviously, for most people Jesus has much greater and more potent associative meaning than Yeshua, and thus may seem a more natural focus of practice.
However, it is the form of the Name as Yeshua that has the more comprehensive and integrative effect on the whole structure of the human person. For instance, by a specific procedure that reveals the vibratory value of sound or mantric forms, we find that the name Yeshua releases a wave of energy in the whole body from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. As this energy moves from bottom to top, it serves to enliven and integrate the body on the way. This procedure thus demonstrates that the Name Yeshua has a natural, mantric significance for the whole-ness of each person. To awaken and live that wholeness through the grace offered by the Name in spiritual practice may be understood as the restoration of the image of the divine in the human, and thus as an essential resource for realization of enlightenment. Theologically, Yeshua, or incarnate divine self-awareness (Word/Logos), has fully realized and applied to all creation the immense creative potency available in the manifest divine image of the Creator. This is his work of “salvation.”
To conduct our spiritual practice so as to bring this Name into our awareness in the gentleness and innocence of devotion, free of all concern for worthiness, or experiences relevant to associative meaning, or results, is thus the simple way of faith and grace. By offering innocent attention to the Name either in the repetitions of the Name or Prayer of the Lamb with the circle of beads, or the free flow of meditation, we exhibit our faith that the greatest care we could need or want will be provided through the Name and person of Yeshua. In this way of practice, the revelation of Yeshua fulfills the intention of devotion, so we will want to practice with the greatest possible purity of means and meaning. That is, we resist adding associative meaning as a part of the basic meditational process, or making the practice more complex or adding requirements for ourselves to do. Purity of practice assures that our individual limitations with respect to self-value and self-image do not obscure the realization of the pure, eternal presence of the “manifest divine” who is Yeshua.
Holy One, loving God, you have created me the way I am, and then throughout my entire life you have expressed your love to me in subtle but very real ways, supporting the uniqueness you created in me. It is not that I am any more special than anyone or anything else, but that you love what you have created, the whole of creation, and you sustain and nurture each part of it with what befits that unique being. From my side I see this as answered prayers and as "love notes" from you, which I have frequently interpreted as special treatment. But no, rather it is appropriate treatment for me, not special treatment. Let my response always be wonder, awe, thanksgiving, worship and devotion.
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