"I want only You, Lord.
Fill me with Thy Presence."
This mantra came to me the other day. It's not original. I've seen or heard it before. It's the type of devotional chant that we're taught in SRF. It helps to awaken devotion, to quicken our desire for spiritual bliss and to put in the meditation time necessary to access it. It stills the endless mental chatter, allowing the ever present, but always hidden, inner quietude to bubble to the surface.
I cringe at the words, at their emotion, at the obvious Christianity, at the pleading. If I heard these words from another I'd recoil; from the sentimentalism, from the naivete of calling on something called God, of being so needy.
Yet, it's exactly such pleading devotion, a mantra repeated as often as memory and will remind me to push back the endless chatter and distractions, that transports me to that equally endless meditative bliss and quietude.
How can I dislike meditation so much when after just a few moments I don't want to move, desiring only to exist in the stillness of the body, the quiet of the mind? But, oh the work it takes to get to the meditation chair. If meditation is so good for me why do I resist? What's behind the mental chatter, behind the darkness of closed eyes that despite my constant pushing away continually pulls me in?
1 comment:
Oh, Brenda! This posting resonates with me so much. Thanks so much for verbalizing what we all must go through as we push toward our deep yearning for Divine connection, while simultaneously pulling back from it by mundane cares of this physical-plane world. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this struggle, which when we yield to it, becomes the space from which we fall into the arms of the Holy One.
Post a Comment