Rethinking Meditation

Surprisingly, one of the most helpful things I took away from The Mindful Way Through Depression was meditation.  Now, before you decide I’m a heretic, close down this page, and stop reading forever, hear me out. 🙂

I’ve always thought of eastern meditation as “emptying one’s mind.” I don’t know if I heard it taught that way or just made the assumption, but that was the impression I had.  At least in this book, that’s not really accurate.  It’s more a matter of focusing the mind.  We all have minds that can tend to wander at times – and often they wander into areas of thinking that we’d be better off avoiding!  This describes helping to “dim” those distractions (my wording) by focusing on a single thing.

Focusing

They use the breath as a focus point.  It’s convenient, because it’s always present, and it’s a neutral thing that everyone carries.  But the idea is to focus on that one thing so that everything else “fades away.” The mind will occasionally wander, and it’s the meditator’s job to simply recognize that and bring the thoughts back to the point of focus.

So How Does That Apply to Us as Believers?

Now, here’s where I’m really going with all of that. 🙂  I have always felt the instructions and/or comments in the Bible about meditating on God’s Word to be rather vague.  What does that mean?  Do we have to memorize it (to be “meditating” on it, I mean)?  Do we repeat it over and over?  What is it to meditate on God’s Word?

Well, what if we apply the same description from my book to meditation on the Word of God?  Then meditating is simply focusing continually on the Word.  And – light bulb moment – suddenly that makes sense.  I can do that!  When the mind wanders away to other things – worries, falsehoods, whatever – we simply bring it back to the Truth.  That sure sounds to me like bringing every thought captive. 🙂

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The concreteness of that was very helpful for me; hopefully it will be for some of you, too.