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- CHRISTIAN MEDITATION AND JOHN MAIN´S TEACHINGS TOUCHING HEARTS IN A SOUTHERN
CITY OF CHILE.
Eight years ago, my father left his physical form at age 85, in absolute peace and
consciousness. This didn’t surprise me: he had always been a very special human being,
talking about the love of his master, Jesus. He used to meditate, his own way, everyday. So,
after he left, I started looking for ….I didn’t know, yet, but I knew there was something
really important that I had to look for. I started to practice meditation with tibetan
teachers, and although I repeated mantras in sanskrit, my attention kept going back to
Jesus. I attended many teachings, with wonderful teachers, exceptional human beings with
highly developed wisdom and compassion and a deep knowledge of the mind and how to
train it. I was very impressed, but most of all I was very, very happy. Then I had the
extraordinary opportunity, a gift, of attending a retreat with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and
while listening his teachings, he recommended that occidentals should maintain their
roots, and that we could learn about Buddhism without being Buddhist.
I started to search for my Christian roots. I knew deep in my heart that what I experienced
during my meditations, had to be somewhere in the Christian tradition. But no one here,
where I live, knew what I was talking about. I started reading Teresa de Avila, San Juan de la
Cruz and others, asking nuns and priests about it. Nobody knew anything…
One night I sat in front of the computer and I wrote down, Christian Meditation; simple as
that… I couldn’t believe what I was looking at: The World Community for Christian Meditation
web page. I read everything in minutes. I cried. I had found it and I felt that I wasn’t alone.
That sentence at the beginning of the weekly readings: “Even though you may be physically
distant from other meditators, you are united with them in the Spirit”; that was it! Then I saw
pictures of Bede Griffiths, John Main, Father Laurence, read their books, read the cloud, saw
the Goodheart video, etc. I felt I was in the correct direction, but I couldn’t share it, because I
didn’t know anybody else that was looking for this.
I started practicing Christian meditation, it felt wonderful. I was at home.
Then I started translating extracts of the web page, giving them to friends, family but
specially to very ill people with cancer. I taught them to meditate. I also started translating
some things for the web page to spanish.
After a couple of months, everything started to fit, knowing the right people, from
everywhere. Magdalena from Argentina: a wonderful friendship, like family. I went to meet
Father Laurence, John’s Main disciple, ( I thought I was dreaming) and also meditators from
Argentina. Something very strong happened to me: Father Laurence gave me the support I
needed, and I knew that now I was ready for my next stage, starting meditation groups.
After I met Father Laurence, I received an e-mail from someone looking for information. He
had found my e-mail in the web page. Arturo wanted desperately to meditate with others,
and we were living in the same city. We started at the end of November on a Thursday at 8
pm. We were six: Arturo, who was the first person that contact me without knowing me, and
we lived 5 minutes apart; Erwin, who happens to direct a fraternity for very low income
students that live in rural areas, and this fraternity pays for their education, technical or
universitarian, and the name is Universitarian Fraternity of Saint Benedict!
Now we are 12-14 in the group and it is such a special group. You can feel an extraordinary
connection, like we have always been together, for a very long, long time. The group is
formed by men and women, all ages, different activities, but we become one every Thursday
from 8 to 9 pm.
I left something very special for the end, because what happened to me in this experience
was an extraordinary gift also related to Christian Meditation. A year before I started the
meditation groups, a very young friend called me. His name was Pablo and he was getting
married in a week, but the doctors had just discovered that he had lung cancer. He was
almost 33 years old and had never smoked. He asked me to teach him everything I knew,
because he was very scared. We got together, the day he was getting married, at noon, I
taught him everything I could in a couple of hours, then they went home and at 8 pm we went
to church to attend Angelica and Pablo’s wedding. He was so happy. I had never seen
anyone so happy before: his eyes were so bright and they smiled all the time. The next day
he went to a clinic in Santiago to start his chemotherapy treatment. Doctors said to his
parents that he was at the end of his illness: it was terminal. Maybe a couple of weeks at the
most.
I wrote every friend I have and many monasteries world wide to help us pray for Pablo; we
received letters from all over the world. He felt that love deeply and it made him feel strong
once more.
I traveled to Santiago and we started with the meditation. Right from the beginning he was
so responsible and he developed the correct attention very fast. He gained confidence very
soon. He wanted to learn everything, he was amazed, he wanted everyone to learn this: “this
should be taught from childhood” he would say. He was absolutely happy of this new way of
walking through life.
After a couple of months, Pablo and his wife Angelica (he used to call her, little Angel) knew
that she was pregnant. It was a boy, this was a miracle.
He had many really bad moments during his illness, but he never stopped his meditation,
many times a day, everyday, never complaining and he would come out of the crisis in hours
or sometimes even in minutes.
Once he was really in a very bad shape: he couldn’t breath, very complicated. The doctors
wanted to put him on mechanical respiratory assistance. He was in intensive care. I was
right beside him and I said to him “you know that if you loose the correct attention, you get
scared, and then your breathing gets worst”. He agreed with his head, but he couldn’t
meditate by himself, so I said “ok, let’s change for a moment the mantra. I will sing to you,
very softly in your ear, Teresa de Avila’s poem”, like a mantra.
- Let nothing troubled you
Let nothing scared you
All is fleeting
God alone is unchanging
Patience everything obtains
Who possesses God
Nothing wants
God alone suffices
- I did it over and over again, singing, like the maranatha mantra, Then again and again. I
stayed until 5:30 in the morning, when he opened his eyes, he smiled and said with a strong
voice “ok, I’m well now and you must go to sleep”. He was himself again, happy and strong.
Then he was taken to a room.
Pablo was able to receive his baby, while sitting on a wheel chair, and with the baby in his
arms came out the delivery room where all his family and friends were waiting. Then he
went to his room to meditate. Three days later the new family went home. He started
meditating -his daily meditations (many in a day)- with his baby in his arms during 30 min.
The baby would fall asleep.
After a couple of weeks, on a Saturday morning (a year after they got married) Clemente
was baptized; this was so important for Pablo. Hours later, very early in the morning, while
his wife was feeding Clemente, right beside him, he flew to the light, no doubt about it, left
this world while sleeping, in absolute peace.
I know deep in my heart that he had so much strength because of his inner connection, and
also because he received the love, wisdom and compassion, of so many people, Christians,
Tibetans like Dr. Tenzin Namgyal and lama Tenzin who went to visit him once, he did a
Tibetan practice with him, with Tibetan mantras, meditate , Pablo was in absolute peace.
I had the honor of giving him all the information I had, and share my Christian Meditation
experience with him, meditated with him, shared all this wonderful teachings, John Main’s
teachings, Thomas Merton´s, Bede Griffiths, Father Laurence, His Holliness The Dalai Lama,
and our mantra.
Pablo was for me an extraordinary teacher, a gift from Heaven; he was deeply rooted with
all his love, in complete attention to the real master, Jesus, the teacher within.
So, even though we may be physically distant from other meditators, we are indeed united
with them in the Spirit, absolutely, and we can still share in the silence with our dear and
loving Pablo, and all our love ones that are now one with The Father, here and now, for
eternity.
Love and blessings to you all,
Maria Rosa and all the Chilean Community for Christian Meditation
Concepción
January, 2006
| CHILE |