Meditation
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A discussion of neurological rewiring in the context of meditative practice. [1]
Notes
St. Teresa of Avila suggests prayer and meditation as the door through which one enters the Interior Castle. "The door by which it first enters the castle is prayer and meditation. Once inside,“it must be allowed to roam through these mansions” and “not be compelled to remain for a long time in one single room.” But it must also cultivate self-knowledge and “begin by entering the room where humility is acquired rather than by flying off to the other rooms. For that is the way to progress.”[2]
"Meditation is the gate of gnosis--though the servant were to serve God with outward acts of devotion for a thousand years and a thousand years again and then were not acquainted with the practice of meditation, all his service would but increase his distance from God and increase the hardness of his heart and diminish his faith. Meditation is the chief possession of the gnostic, that whereby the sincere and the God-fearing make progress on the journey to God; it brings comfort to the sorrowing and rest to those who have renounced all for His sake. It is a strength o the godly and a means of exaltation to the devout." Harith B. Asad Al-Muhasibi [3]
Footnotes
- ↑ Newberg, Andrew. “The Neurobiology of Spiritual Transformation.” In Spiritual Transformation and Healing: Anthropological, Theological, Neuroscientific, and Clinical Perspectives, edited by P Hefner and J Koss-Chioino. Rowman & Littlefield, 200
- ↑ St. Teresa of Avila. Interior Castle. Kindle. New York: Dover Publications, 2007. p. 4 https://amzn.to/2GpC7NG.
- ↑ Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam (Westport, CT: PIR Publications, 1994), https://amzn.to/2MdrfqB
