Meditation for Thursday 5th June 2025
Most of us have been on a pilgrimage, not necessarily a religious pilgrimage but maybe a holiday or an attempt to trace ancestral roots. When I think of my own life there have been many of these journeys, some near and others far away. Every day, as meditators and mindfulness practitioners, seekers through contemplatives practices we go on a journey, we are pilgrims.
The image of a journey or pilgrimage is a natural one to employ when we think about meditation. The journey is continuous, but it has its difficulties.
At the beginning, and there are likely to be many beginnings, it seems that the most important thing for us in our meditation practice is to experience things like peace, calm, serenity, and for those of us that are religious an intimacy with a Supreme Being. These are extraordinary gifts for which we must be grateful but following these ‘experiences’ comes something much more profound and that’s ‘meaning’.
Meaning usually arrives after we have been practicing for some time. We begin to realise that this regular routine, this contemplative practice of meditation and mindfulness adds meaning to our lives and its meaning that brings fulfillment.
Like all pilgrimages, the journey can be rocky. The road or track can be full of obstacles and there is a temptation to give up. But usually once we have stepped over the threshold, once we have pushed through and committed and persevered then the meditation journey becomes one of love. It’s at this point in the pilgrimage that the whole purpose of meditation becomes clear….to bring the mind and the experience it works on, into the heart, to become one.
And now let’s meditate in the way we are accustomed remembering that we not only meditate for ourselves, but we meditate for the benefit of others.
Meditation
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