In February 1968 the Beatles collectively decided that material success was not enough to fill the void in their lives, so they decided to explore \u201cspirituality.\u201d They traveled to India to meet with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the man who developed Transcendental Meditation\u2122. Originally, the Maharishi was a simple Hindu monk, but he soon became somewhat of a celebrity in the West. Musicians, movie stars, and millionaires began going to him for advice. He trained hundreds of thousands of people in the ways of TM, and in the process became very wealthy.<\/p>\n
Today, the Maharishi\u2019s organization is still hard at work, though they have left the counterculture behind and are now considered mainstream. They have the ambitious goal of creating heaven-on-earth through TM, and have made the claim that meditation (among other things) reverses the aging process, reduces the crime rate, and lowers blood pressure. They lead high-priced corporate seminars with the promise of improved job performance and increased job satisfaction.<\/p>\n
To this day, due mainly to the amount of press the Maharishi received in the sixties, many people associate the term \u201cmeditation\u201d with the Maharishi and TM. In fact, if you stop the average person on the street and ask them about meditation, chances are they will talk about sitting cross-legged in a trancelike state, reciting a mantra, and attempting to enter a state of \u201cnothingness.\u201d In other words, most people on the street know very little about meditation.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the same can be said for many Christians. Many devout followers of Jesus Christ are convinced that meditation is suspect. They identify meditation with new age, occult, or eastern religious practices. Jeanie Miley, in her book Creative Silence, talks about her rude awakening to the ignorance and suspicion of many Christians about this subject. \u201cAs a fourth generation Baptist, a minister\u2019s wife, and a Bible teacher, I was appalled at being asked if I was \u2018new age.\u2019 It never occurred to me that a concept that permeates scripture … would be held suspect, or that \u2018meditation\u2019 would become such a hot word.\u201d<\/p>\n
The words \u201cmeditate\u201d and \u201cmeditation\u201d appear about two dozen times in the Bible. In the Psalms, we are encouraged \u2013 and even commanded \u2013 to meditate. The apostle Paul encourages us to meditate. As we look at the lives of Bible heroes, we see them making meditation a regular habit.<\/p>\n
What is Christian meditation? It is concentrated reflection. Eastern meditation focuses on emptying the mind; Christian meditation focuses on filling it. Christian meditation always has an object. We don\u2019t simply meditate, we meditate on something \u2013 a Bible verse, a scriptural concept, or an attribute of God. It is this concentrated reflection that allows us to internalize the truth we\u2019re holding up in our minds.<\/p>\n
The practice of meditation is essential for Christians today. It\u2019s not a practice reserved solely for monks and people who lived generations ago. We need it more than ever today. We live in a world of information overload, where we train ourselves to skim through our reading and surf TV channels and web pages. Just to survive the onslaught, we unconsciously sift through the information that comes our way. We pay little attention to most everything we read and hear — only allowing in the things we find instantly relevant, extremely interesting, or outrageously shocking.<\/p>\n
The spiritual truth we so desperately need doesn\u2019t often meet those criteria at first glance. We often need some personal study or outside help to understand its meaning, and sustained reflection to appreciate its relevance to our personal needs. As Christians, we believe that God \u201cspeaks\u201d to us through the Bible \u2013 which is why we call it \u201cGod\u2019s Word.\u201d But the question is \u2013 how can we listen? In the \u201cscan and surf\u201d culture we live in, it\u2019s getting harder to really listen \u2013 and this is why we need meditation so badly today.<\/p>\n
The next time you hear something about meditation, try to discern what kind of meditation is being talked about. Think of ways to practice Christian meditation in your own life. It\u2019s not something only for old age monks and new age yogis. It\u2019s for present day Christians \u2013 and we need it now more than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In February 1968 the Beatles collectively decided that material success was not enough to fill the void in their lives, so they decided to explore \u201cspirituality.\u201d They traveled to India to meet with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the man who developed Transcendental Meditation\u2122. Originally, the Maharishi was a simple Hindu monk, but he soon became somewhat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[896,2330,2331],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}