Address 22 April 2007
I used to run a meditation group - every Monday lunchtime. It was one of the first things I set up when beginning my ministry. The plan was to have something other than a traditional service that would attract the passers by in the town centre where we were located.
It was an interesting experience. Attendance's varied - sometimes there would be a period when over twenty people would come in and join the circle and other times there might only be half a dozen.
Some came every week for a while, some came on a much more irregular basis. Some would stop coming and then start again months later. I used to say that it didn’t matter how often people came along. There was no compulsion and no one need feel guilty if they missed a few. This Monday session would always be there and they would always be welcome.
All sorts of different people came - a few used to come from the local tax office. Now and again members of the congregation. Someetimes one of the group would give the Sunday morning service a try - but it was never the object of the meditation group to recruit for the congregation. It was just a parallel activity - as was the cafe that we ran on a Thursday lunchtime.
The Monday meditation was loosely structured and you couldn’t really have any sort of series from a theme because the attendance varied so much.
The session would begin with a period of centering down, followed by a visualisation exercise, a healing time and a little time of discussion - often about a short reading that had been used.
Afterwards some one might go out for sandwiches and we would eat together - sometimes we went to the pub next door to eat when they had special offers on.
I think of meditation as a way of rediscovering the true self that we really are.
The Buddhist have a term for it called “dependent origination’
We make the assumption that what we are now, the person sitting inside our skin, is because we have been through so many life experiences, seen so much, done so much, had so much done to us, been influenced by outside events and so we have become a product of all those experiences.
And add to that the characteristics we were born with - shyness, brashness, artistic talents, family, physique and looks.
The really confident people often seem to be other people not us and if we are not careful, we can form a negative opinion about ourselves and our own skills and talents that is based not on truth but our own comparisons with other people - and we never know how they really feel about themselves.
One of the exercises that I enjoyed was where the group were asked to settle down with eyes shut and actually focus on themselves. To focus on their physical body and see it as unique and not being like any one else's and then in some way say hello to it and make it welcome. Hello curly teeth and crossed over toes, big ears and huge nose. We are part of each other, why should we be ashamed of you.
And having thought about the physical body, then to call out the emotional body and welcome that. You mostly have to sympathise with the emotional body because it is so fragile. It is so easily hurt, so easily offended and so readily condemns itself. Often it throws doubt into every achievement and action. When it becomes seriously over stressed it can begin to make the physical body ill. Just as illness to the physical body can harm the emotional body.
Beside these two is the intellectual body - the mind body that is supposed to process all the data that comes to it. When things are going well, the mind is wonderful. Everything is sensibly reasoned out and the whole machine of self is filled with confidence.
Danger comes when the emotional body starts going its own way and not listening. The intellectual body instead of overruling the emotions starts to agree, sometimes wholeheartedly and the pair of them go off hand in hand into a pit of despair.
And in the background is the fourth body, the spiritual body, sometimes never even noticed and not considered part of the group. In some instances though the strength of the spiritual body can carry the other three along and pull them out of any pits they have fallen into. And sometimes the spiritual body is easily pushed into the background and left as some kind of redundant folly.
The point of the meditation was to bring these bodies - these parts of ourselves, out into an open place and recognise them and let them recognise each other and recognise too how dependent on each other they are - especially the first three - physical, emotional and intellectual.
If they can work as a team, they will get along so much better. Things often go wrong when the three of them don’t interact positively together. Often it is usually left to the most vulnerable body - the emotional body - to step forwards and face a difficult situation and the result is upset and pain.
Practising these exercises can eventually be beneficial. Big ears, big nose, curly teeth and crossed over toes - well that’s who I am. You can judge the experiences that life throws at you and deal with them using all three bodies - or four.
When people try to influence you and try to make you accept their agendas over your own, you are strong enough to deal with it - the reaction is on your terms and not done with regret, resentment or mutterings of discontent in your head.
That is what meditation is supposed to be about - rediscovering the real self that is really you. Maybe you had it once and lost it or maybe you never had the chance to find it in the first place.
Buddhists say it can take a lifetime of practice to achieve a perfect self but you get better as you try - so never starting is not the best option.
I was fascinated by the role of the spiritual self - that fourth part of ourselves. Is it always there, noticed or unnoticed? - does it need to be awakened at some time - germinated like a seed? or does it enter from some outside?
Some see this spiritual self - the soul, they call it, as the very core of a person’s being. It is the immortal part that lives on. Christianity and Islam claim that the spirit goes to heaven or paradise when physical life is over. The Ancient Greeks and the Hindus say that the soul continually recycles into human form and has to strive towards achieving that state of perfection and spiritual purity before it can be finally released to be at one with the Absolute or with God.
It makes sense to me if I think that the spiritual body does have to be awakened - or re-awakened. It might be that it is awake initially and then goes into hibernation until re-- awakened - or maybe it always has to be initially activated by our own consciousness or mind.
I was reading a sermon on the internet by a Canadian pastor called the Rev C Wayne Hilliker. I thought it a very enlightened sermon and as good as any you might hear in a Unitarian pulpit - except he is a pentecostal minister living near Ontario.
His sermon was called ‘believe or not’ and it seemed to me he was saying that there are two phases of spiritual development. The first he calls ‘ embedded theology’. The teachings of our faith that we pick up at the parent’s knee and Sunday school - the religion of our tradition that serves us well in the world until we start to grow up and the world begins to test that the faith we were taught - that was embedded in us.
When that faith is tested, it can either be rejected - which so often happens - or it can be challenged - this he calls deliberative theology. The truths that were told initially are re-examined and contemplated on, deliberated on.
Doubting the truth of what you were taught to believe is a positive process, he says. Doubting what you were taught and re-examining the teachings and the stories of faith lead to a voyage of self discovery about faith and religion - new insights emerge, blind faith gives way to trust.
Trust leads to an understanding that behind the religion that we are taught is an eternal Mystery that we come closer to if we are able to accept it for being a mystery. We need to reinterpret what we were taught.
I enjoyed pondering on Rev Hilliker’s sermon because it made me think about the spiritual self - or soul. That it is an important part of our whole being.
That if we grow up with a religion, it is actually a destructive thing to throw it out when it is challenged - better to deliberate or contemplate and examine deeply what our faith means to us. It might simply come to trusting in the mystery.
Rev Hilliker was not afraid to challenge his faith and yet he remains a Pentecostal minister - and I think a realistic and honest one.
We as Unitarians always have the freedom to deliberate and contemplate on faith. How fortunate we are that we are not put in conflict with any religious authority for being able to do that.
How fortunate we are that we can develop our selves holistically, bodily, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Amen
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