Meditation: The Art of Awakening

For many people, some healing of mind and body must take place as we start to sit quietly and meditate. To begin our healing, we must develop a basic level of calm and attention. We must find a way to hone our attention systematically and give ourselves to it quite fully. Otherwise, we will drift like a boat without a rudder. To learn to focus clearly, we must choose a prayer or a meditation practice and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises. This is not so easy for most people. They would like their spiritual life to show immediate and cosmic results. But what great art is ever learned quickly? Any deep training opens in direct proportion to how much we give ourselves to it.

Consider the other arts. Music, for example. How long would it take to learn to play the piano well? Suppose we take months or years of lessons once a week, practicing diligently every day. Initially, almost every one struggles to learn which fingers go to which notes and how to read basic lines of music. After some weeks or months, we could play a chosen type of music. However, to master the art so that we could play music well, alone or in a group, or join a band or an orchestra, we would have to give ourselves over to the discipline for a long time. It is the same in learning computer programming, oil painting, tennis, architecture, any of a thousand arts; we have to give ourselves to it fully and wholeheartedly over a period of time—there has to be a training, apprenticeship, cultivation. Nothing less is required in the spiritual arts. Perhaps even more is asked. Yet through this mastery, we master ourselves and our lives. We learn the most human of arts, how to connect with our true self.