5 of 101 things to do as a churchless Xn - Meditation

Today Richard Rohr's Daily Reflections posted this...

"Silence Is Golden"
As a people, we are afraid of silence. That’s our major barrier to prayer. I believe silence and words are related. Words that don’t come out of silence probably don’t say much. They probably are more an unloading than a communicating. Yet words feed silence, and that’s why we have the word of God- the read word, the proclaimed word, the written word. But that written and proclaimed word, doesn’t bear a great deal of fruit- it doesn’t really break open the heart of the Spirit- unless it’s tasted and chewed, unless it’s felt and suffered and enjoyed at a level beyond words. Blaise Pascal said all human evil comes into the world because people can’t sit still in a chair for thirty minutes! I hope that’s an exaggeration. Maybe he’s saying that running from silence is undoubtedly running from our souls, ourselves, and therefore, from God. If I had to advise one thing for spiritual growth, it would be silence.
from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

And that got me thinking about meditating, my fifth thing you can do as a churchless Xn.

Name: Meditating

Category: Connect

Size: Solo

Description: Meditating is one of those mysterious things that is pretty hard to pick up from reading an article or a post like this and most of them tend to just talk about the bvalue of it. Fortunately it's much easier to learn how to do it from a podcast, and the World Community for Xn Meditation do just that. I found there podcasts on meditation really helpful and talks one two and three from Series A were all I needed to get me going. The key to meditating or praying silently is to use a Mantra, a word that is said silently over and over. This empties your head of any replaying things in the past or worry about things in the future so you can just focus on the present.