• Is Meditation Practice and Eucharistic Liturgy Compatible?
    By The Contemplative Bard
    October 1, 2024

    There is a tendency among meditators to despise worship services with a community of people as belonging to the religious domain and not within the definition of the 'spiritual'. Being spiritual has often been depicted in the media as being solitary, unstructured, and not being burdened with working with a group of people in an organization setting. On a philosophical level, worship liturgies are regarded as worshipping a transcendent deity "out or up there", while going within is consistent with understanding of an immanent and in-dwelling divinity. While I'm not saying that meditative and contemplative practices can't be a 'stand alone' practice, especially in post-Christian contexts that we are prepapring for, but while there are still Sacramental Churches existing, a 'spiritual but not religious' person can benefit from them in 2 major ways:





    1. Concepts of community and service are within the spiritual framework.

    The Lord Christ or Master J. (whichever we are comfortable in addressing the Avatar of Love) stated clearly the sure-fire formula for Theosis (divine union): 1. Love G-d and 2. Love thy neighbours. It represents the equal limbed cross - the vertical represents the 1st and the horizontal as the 2nd. Focusing solely on the 1st won't cut it. Once spiritual alignment and integration begins to take place, the divinity has to come out to the world in the form of service. Otherwise, we will choke ourselves with too much divine energy and devastate our physical and mental health.

    Even The Lord Buddha talked about compassion and loving kindness; but to whom should we express them if we live as an island alone? The first limb of the Raja yoga system of Sage Patanjali is "Yama" or moral disciplines that describes how we treat people in our community. It is also through the community that we work out our prarabdha karma (ripe karmas) and create our agami karma (future karma). The Master J expressed this concept as "what we sow, is what we reap".

    Well, it can be argued that wider societal community can be our sphere of service. That is true, but not everyone can have access to humanity in a wider scale. The church community is a group of people banded together for a common purpose. For all practical reasons, they are ready for this kind of dynamics. We will not be treated as weird or with suspicion for trying to help out. They are willing to serve too. Avail of this opportunity while churches still exist; it will be too late when we will not act sooner. And the second importance in working out our spirituality within a community is the gradual expression of spiritual charisma or gifts. In the Raja yoga system, they are called "siddhis" or spiritual abilities. They will come out as our meditative or prayer life deepens, whether we like it or not. Living a life in the Spirit will arm us with gifts so that we will bear fruits (discussed in prior paragraphs). If there is no group, the gifts will never come out; and if they do through a forcing process, we end up as a magician of the dark arts, and "suffering, it will lead for sure" (as the Master Yoda of Star Wars would put it!)

    2. The Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist will act as our "living guru" if we aren't capable yet of connecting within.

    As Mont (2024) pointed out, the Holy Eucharist was the greatest gift given to humanity by the Lord Christ, aside from his redemptive act. And it was probably designed for Western people who are individualistic by nature, and would not likely worship or bown down to a "guru" or another human being for blessings (guru-worship). In Eastern spiritual traditions, an enlightened guru or one who has achieved theosis, can provide an energy boost to a disciple via a "shaktipat" (a slight pat on the back between the shoulder blades or laying of hands on the head) or "darshan" (a holy gaze that transfers divine blessings, just like what the Master J gave to Master Mary of Magdalene when they first met). In the Western Church, we don't have a guru institution (except occasionally, when a Bishop acts like one in the Sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders).

    The Holy Eucharist (when done properly and skillfully by an ordained ritualist or clergy) will greatly help boost our spiritual life and stimulate the bridge of divine consciousness (or "antakharana") if we have not created it yet consciously by ourselves. The "antakharana" is our WIFI to the Divine In-dwelling Presence within.

    ------ Reference:

    Mont, E. (2024). "Energetic Experiments on the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist". Publlished online via Facebook, August 23, 2024, Canada.