Accidental Meditation and other gray connections

Today when listening to a recorded talk about meditation by a meditation teacher, I received an answer to a long time question: This was not only an answer, it was the bridge across a wide gap in my heart.

Meditation: I had heard and read others teach about focusing upon one’s breath, quieting the mind, sitting in silence. But today, hearing this new teacher say -- that to meditate, one can focus upon the divine, deity, God, or whatever symbol for God that one chooses. He elaborated: In fact, doing so, focusing upon God, would help one to meditate because God represents our present fourth earth, and our present concepts of God give us a glimpse of the future seventh earth.

A door flew open. A veil ripped. I remembered. This truth…this confirmation…this validation of what I had felt and wanted to believe, but lacked a frame of reference: What I called worship of God on the piano, in church, within the realms of the charismatic worship that we did for years, which ushered us into a divine ecstasy time after time, a magical splendor -- was validated to me as a path of meditation. For years, I thought this leap was radical; it broke the rules I had internalized, so I left it alone as a secret safe thought in the attic of a haunted but beautiful mansion.

To explain, I will share my background. I walked away from a former church life and “worship” some 14 or so years ago because I couldn’t reconcile my new revolutionized belief system with what I used to call “worship.” And yet, maybe 10 years ago, I had this “aha” moment -- when I pieced together those charismatic church years with my limited knowledge of meditation. (I was reading a lot about meditation circa 1998 to 1999. My thoughts at the time were that, oh I meditate, but only in my own fashion at the piano.) I saw a clear correlation between worshipping God in the charismatic fashion and meditation, and I concluded that the ecstasy I felt for years, thousands of times, was indeed a form of meditation bliss. I knew those myriad of experiences were real and not some self-contrived delusions. I had seen, felt, witnessed some unexplained things, too, which I knew were real. (Another topic for writing.) I could not ignore the reality of what I felt in those charismatic years: Times of the powerful presence of God, with pure love, joy, clarity, light, acceptance, peace; and powerful feelings of awareness, knowing, intensity and humility, something more intense than anything else in my human experience.

So when reading and learning about meditation, I realized that I had entered into the space that meditation teachers described, both when I was alone, and in a unified group of worshippers. In fact, I always thought the blissfulness and peace were stronger and “easier” to arrive upon when with a group of like-minded focused people.

The similarities of charismatic style worship and meditation were many. Naming a few: Chanting and “singing in the spirit” as we used to say; singing or speaking simple words, scatting, glossolalia, mantras, word repetition; and the singing the musical content of simple intervals and monotones; the simple chords – usually only one chord, two at the most; the focus upon God, love, mercy, forgiveness. The lifting up of earnest hearts asking to see more clearly and hear from God correlates with the spiritual teacher’s suggestion to meditate with “intention.” The quiet times of listening for God correlate with meditating in silence; the prophecies that people would give forth seem to correlate with hearing one’s voice in meditation and receiving the clarity from that inner God voice or from spiritual guides. Both meditation and worshipping God bring the peace, love, unity, contented joy -- the beautiful experiences one is graced with when entering the divine. The desire to help others, grow, flourish results from being inspired from perfect love. All of these, to me, are the correlations I see in meditation and charismatic worship styles, only wrapped with different language and colloquialisms.

Hearing today from a gifted spiritual teacher that seeking God is a recommended way to meditate amazed me: I had compartmentalized the world between the Christians and the “New Age” believers. (My apologies for the term: For a lack of language, I resort to a label.) The charismatic Christians considered anything remotely New Age to be a sort of heresy, distortion of truth, a turning away from God for the “doctrines of man.” The fundamentalist Christians drew the line in the sand. There was no crossing over without abandoning Christ and leaving their solid doctrine behind. (Quite curiously, I’ve never heard or read a New Age speaker say the equivalent--that one must abandon Christianity in order to embrace God or God-like principles in one’s growth and pursuit of truth, regardless of the preferred sacred writings or beliefs that were being supported.)

I had left my former seeking, embracing, and worshipping God in that visible fashion because I couldn’t reconcile the two concepts due to my newly expanded concept of God and truth: I had grown beyond former dogma of Charismatic fundamentalism, so I made an assumption that everything related, even worship in a musical form, had to be set aside, too. (Granted, I still considered living a sacred life as worship, thanks to the writing of Thomas Moore, Spong, and others.)

Circa 1994-95, when I began changing and abandoning restrictive fundamentalist concepts, and opening up to the possibilities that had been nagging me, I found many answers through books, pursuing thoughts, and a handful of friends. But one thing that haunted me was the loss of the beautiful “entering of God’s presence” that I had relished for many years. Later, because I believed my former years were a sort of counter-culture, I became hypersensitive to charismatic buzz words, ideas, language, clichés, and rituals. (Why did we think we were not ritualistic?)

My former lifestyle had gone out the window.

Over these past 14 years, I realized the connection between worship and meditation, but somehow I created a rule in my head that one cannot meditate this way. I had drawn the dichotomous line. I considered our past charismatic experiences as a sort of accidental meditation. With the exception of a few times, one I recall vividly, I did not revisit my former love of improvising in a chant-like way with my piano and God. But one memorable time I went back to that 'secret place' as we we to call it, I was overwhelmed.

That day, sometime in the last five or six years, it had snowed a glistening, light snow and the evergreens behind my home were softly blanketed. I sat at my piano and poured out my heart in song and music to God, like old times. I was enraptured once again by God’s blissful deep love and merciful peace. I melted into a timeless place. The world stopped. The sparkles of the snow made sense. The trees were speaking. The beauty hurt. I felt the snow glistening and knew the trees. Oneness. Another dimension opened. Words and thoughts were lost. There was clarity without language and articulation.

Despite this glorious event a few years ago, I did not pursue my love affair of worshipful meditation. Having left music eight or nine years prior, I waited another three years before trying to pick up music again. How I lived with that emptiness, I am not sure; perhaps it was the busyness that covered over my void.

A friend’s words ringing in my ears likely helped to slowly bring me back to playing music. Our discussion was prompted by his question, one I had received a few times over the years, “Why did I stop music? Why don’t I do music again?” To these questions, I’d typically explain my dilemma, sometimes candidly, sometimes briefly because of the pain. My response: I did not know how to reconcile music without God; my music was intertwined with God: All my music was about God, for God, with God, because of God. I stopped outwardly practicing God of the charismatic world, so I stopped playing music. (I still prayed, loved God, believed in God, but felt my views were radical and forever changing. I did not fit…anywhere. I kept God to myself. I dared not describe my thoughts. I would laughingly say -- my views would be distorted, seen through a glass darkly, and would likely be shifting and changing, so why bother. Being so flexible felt right after too many years of “knowing” all the answers, knowing what I believed, and embracing it so very tightly. Being gray felt so right and good for one who had been black and white so long.)

So, this friend said simply and zen-like: “Maybe music is God; maybe God is music.”

A light went on.

Sometime later, I started playing music again…slowly, with some hope that I could find a space that feels right. Some artists have drawn me like Loreena McKennit and George Winston.

So today, 14 years later, I am hopeful and curious…and filled with thoughts, notions, dreams. And more connections are forming of what is possible...notions of the merging of music, meditation, healing, and collective gatherings… a modern mash-up of sorts; something I've not seen before, or maybe just something remembered.

For the near future, I’m hopeful that when some internal rules are released, perhaps these hopeful notions and intuitions will come to fruition.

This afternoon, I finished listening to the recording from the teacher. And as the day progressed, more connections came, and more soft chills upon my skin, that I will write about another time.