h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Affirmation and prayer - a common process - A744464
Author: agcBen - ((14*8)-80)+5=37 - U148580

I am not sure if this is contentious or blindingly obvious. It is not intended to offend.

Hi Ben,

I was thinking of doing an entry on mindfulness to complement the one of Lovingkindness and it is wonderful to see your entry.

If you would consider expanding it to include mindfulness, I would be happy to write a bit. If you feel you'd rather not, that's OK.

I've a comment about visualisation. In order to create something, you have to be able to imagine it and really believe in it, otherwise it's just wishful thinking. You create the future by your thoughts now. If your thoughts are wishy-washy, then that's exactly what you tend to get.

I once got a job by my affirmations. I used an affirmation in the car daily and had an absolutely brilliant interview. Six months earlier I had gone for the same job and one of the interviewers could not believe the difference.

Affirmations and prayer are tools for clarifying and focussing and changing your internal reality.

I've heard Tony Robbins (on tape) the quote you've used has always struck home. It's so true!

Oh yes, and I meant to say that although it's not so common, there is a tradition of Christian meditation using mantras. John Main's 'Silence and Stillness in every Season' uses the mantra 'Maranatha'.

It's interesting that the long 'a' sound appears in most of the different words for God in the different religions around the world.

Well guess where I got my Anthony Robbins quote from? The tapes belonged to my ex, so I cannot easily check them. If you have them, then I would love to put in the exact wording.

I am glad you like it.

I think there is room for a separate entry on mindfull-ness and meditation.

There was a debate in PR about the Loving Kindness entry. Some people thought it should be split into two entries one on how to meditate and one on the metta-bhavna. I wrote it on Sept 13th, as the most constructive thing I could do for the world at the time. Its objective was very specifically to evangelise the metta-bhanva in order to contain the backlash from the West so I decided to keep the general instructions in with the specific to make it a stand-alone piece. (And I think that those of us in those days who did the metta-bhanva, or whatever its equivalent in our own traditions, actually made an enormous difference. Thanks be to each individual's god/dess of choice.)

The reason I am reluctant to be the one who writes the entry on meditation is that I am an intermittant and not a very good meditator. (Have you read my poem, The Hall of Statues, btw? A675100. The most obvious side effect of meditation recently seems to be poetry for me, which is nice, but which is not the point).

So I am reluctant to put in more than a sentance about mindfullness beacause I am unaware of its equivalent in the self-improvement movement. Having said that, I guess athletes and performers practice mindfulness without knowing it. Hmmm.

I will add in 'Silence and Stillness in Every Season' when I have read a bit more about it. The only Christian mantra I was aware of was the Jesus Prayer. There is in fact a short story about the Jesus Prayer, which I cannot remember.

I will also make your point about belief. It is actually a super-text to the whole entry, and I should probably rewrite it completely in order to make the point explicit. This is what I like about PR - what one writes gets so much stronger.

In the meantime, please, do go ahead and write an entry on meditation and mindfullness. There is definitely room in the guide.

With metta, but not much mindfullness at the moment!

Ben

Dom John Main OSB? I didn't realise he was that well known. I still have his tapes, and those wonderful newsletters he sent out when he was still with us. I thought his 'Maranatha' more or less died with him.

And a fascinating book by another OSB - would it be Dom Aelred Graham? - called 'Zen Catholicism'.

Ben, I wondered if you should include Dynamic Meditation among the types of meditation. You know, Fire Dancing, and the Dervishes and so on. (I think the discredited Baghwan Shri Rajneesh also advocated DM. I knew one of his devotees many years ago.)

Hi Bel

Now Dynamic Meditation I DO see as having equivalents in the self help movement. Any suggestions on where I find out more?

Ben

Well Google has about 82,000 hits for Dynamic Meditation. That's a start!

Hi Ben!

OK, I'll work on a separate entry on mindfulness. (I'm not a very good meditator either, but I do my best.)

Dom John Main (1926-1982) did taped talks (I haven't any) and loads of books on meditation. He was a Benedictine monk.

Bels,
You probably know much more about Dom John Main than I do. I bought the book at a Quaker weekend and I use 'Maranatha' fairly regularly. I was told what it meant, but I've forgotten.

>There is in fact a short story about the Jesus Prayer, which I cannot remember.

Ben, I wonder if you mean that little Russian book called 'The Way of a Pilgrim' or something like. It's a first-person account of an individual travelling through Russia and enduring cold, hunger and so on but always keeping going by praying the Jesus prayer. Personally I wasn't able to take it at face value, but there you go.

Re 'self-improvement' I don't know if my Structures entry has any resonance for you, but it's at A721162

But do you remember what 'Maranatha' means, Bels?

Zarq, I cannot do better than quote from Fr John himself:

Choosing your word or 'mantra' is of some importance. Ideally, again, you should choose your mantra in consultation with your teacher; but there are various mantras which are possible for a beginner. If you have no teacher to help you, then you should choose a word that has been hallowed over the centuries by our Christian tradition. Some of these words were first taken over as mantras for Christian meditation by the Church in its earliest days. One of these is the word 'Maranatha', and this is the mantra I recommend to most beginners - the Aramaic word 'Maranatha', which means 'Come, Lord... Come, Lord Jesus'. It's the word that St Paul uses to end his first letter to the Corinthians, and the word with which St John ends the book of Revelation... I prefer the Aramaic form because it has no associations for most of us, and it helps us into a meditation that will be quite free of all images. The name 'Jesus' would be another possibility as a mantra, and so would the word that Jesus himself used in His prayer - 'Abba', again an Aramaic word, which means 'Father'.

Thanks!

My favourite Christian mantra is the Greek Kyrie;
V. Kyrie Eleison
R. Kyrie Eleison
V. Kyrie Eleison
R. Christi Eleison
V. Christi Eleison
R. Christi Eleison

V. Kyrie Eleison
R. Kyrie Eleison
V. Kyrie Eleison

Alji

Hi Ben,

I'll look up that Tony Robbins quote either today or tomorrow.

I've made a start on Mindfulness at A746336, if you want a peep 9or want to contribute).

I'll take a look over the weekend Zarquon, and I will re-write this one then too. In the meantime I need to focus on my work. I love what I do; I love what I do; I love what I do;

B

Hi Ben,

When I looked at my tape set, there were only two tapes in it. Some may be in the car, or my off-spring may have squirreled it away somewhere. I will look some more, but for the moment, I can't give you the exact Tony Robbins quote.

Updated to include the suggestions y'all have made, and the point is now made a little more explicitly.

Thanks all.

Additional comments (or even flames, if that is the way the spirit moves you) are welcome.

Ben

The spirit moves me in mysterious ways...

Ben, when you write
>It seems that what you believe is less important than the process of belief.

I have an odd feeling that what might come across here is maybe not want you are wanting to say. It sounds a bit like it doesn't matter what you believe. But surely what you believe at the deepest level is important to you? And process should be the means to the end, not an end in itself? I mean, I think some people do get stuck in the process: then it can become meaningless ritual, religious babble. Just a thought.

Another thought. Is it really downhill all the way? Meditating people can become beset by doubt and uncertainty, aridity, problems and difficulties. It can be a rocky uphill path to tread.

Joe was weeding his front garden when the vicar happened to pass by.

'Hello, Joe,' said the vicar, 'I see that the Lord and you are making a marvellous job of that.'

'Yes, vicar, but you should have seen it when the Lord had it to Himself.'

FWIW

Bels

"It sounds a bit like it doesn't matter what you believe."

Absolutely. That is the point I am making.

The power of belief to effect changes in the believer and in the world is based on just that - the power of belief - the process stuff - not in what is believed in.

"But surely what you believe at the deepest level is important to you?" Oh yes. It wouldn't be a belief if it wasn't. My beliefs are fundamental to who I am. To a large extent they control my behaviour, and they structure how I relate to people and provide a context for how I interpret events. But they are only beliefs, content stuff, they are not reality.

It is challenging, and at first sight it seems paradoxical, but there is no actual contradiction there. It is perfectly possible to hold both views at the same time.

"And process should be the means to the end, not an end in itself? I mean, I think some people do get stuck in the process: then it can become meaningless ritual, religious babble." - That is very true.

But the whole point about belief is that you have to believe in something for it to be a belief. Process IS the means to the end, I am just taking a clear look at it in a way that most of us don't normally think of doing.

I should probably say that the fact that I think that efficacy comes from belief not from whatever is believed in has not undermined my particular beliefs. In fact, to a large extent, it has confirmed some of them.

Thanks for the comments.

Ben