The Practice of Meditation

Practice:  To do repeatedly in order to learn or become proficient; exercise oneself in: as, he practices medicine.


The featured text in today's meeting focused on prayer and meditation; specifically, how to do it.  Members shared all of the different techniques and practices that made up their individual meditations.  The over-all theme was all-over the place.  Man, do we try a lot of stuff.  And, man, do we struggle with the practice, especially the meditation, which I think is one of the hardest things that we try to do.  My own personal mind is very, very active.  It's not easy to tell it to calm down for even a few minutes.  It doesn't want to and I don't often have the skill to make it.


What I learned from the discussion is that successful meditators find something that works and they stick to it.  The important thing is the repeated practice of the practice.  I want to be good at something by Papal Decree or Presidential Order.  I don't want to do the work.  I want to run a marathon but I don't want to train.


"How did you DO that?" I ask the guy crossing the finishing line.  I think that he just gets up one morning and runs 26.2 miles.  "Oh, you trained for 3 months?"


I never would have thought of that.