The Practice of Process Meditation

...William V. Dych IN this latest volume Dr...

...Through the Journal Method all the realities which make up one's past and present are brought into the meditation process where this actuality can become a new possibility for the future...

...In this sense meaning is being created and added to our lives and to the universe, and this is part of the qualitative evolution beyond the physical that is taking place in the universe...

...It can be a single word, a group of words, a sound, a musical note, a chant, or a painting or piece of sculpture...

...It is a presence, however, which both insist can be missed, ignored, or stifled, and hence the need to create the atmosphere by something like process meditation...

...The mantra is also called a' 'crystal" because it should be a very small but representative piece of a larger experience, something to remind us of the earlier experience and place us in its atmosphere...

...The past of which we are the "sum," as Teilhard de Chardin says, is not just our own personal, individual past...

...The journal is a key component in the meditative process because it guarantees "objectivity": the real events, real persons, and real situations which make up the journal record are the seedbed for the emergence of something new...

...The author's experience indicates that the mantra-crystal should be seven syllables, such as the Greek phrase, "Kyrie Eleison," or the English, "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy...

...Here the author would situate his Socratic sentiment thoroughly within the modern world and its sense of the nature of reality...

...But when does meditation become "process meditation...

...Progoff stresses and this process he would facilitate through the practice of process meditation...

...It thus can become a prism tc refract the rays of consciousness, to relate us to what has gone before and to be a vehicle of light in a new form...

...To express this analogy between the molecular level of physical reality and the inner life of human beings, Progoff speaks of "molecules of thought and imagery...

...Should this historical and social dimension of human existence be forgotten, the individual can be lost in an individualism with no roots except in his or her own story...

...The quest itself, rather, and the meaning we seek builds and grows as our capacity to experience grows...

...It is a process which unifies and integrates otherwise disparate elements in the world and in ourselves...

...Hence the purpose of meditation is not to analyze and judge the past and present and thereby define the individual, but to see them as moments within an open and ongoing process...

...By applying this evolutionary principle to the interior life, process meditation would see each individual element as a moment within a larger process containing life's comprehensive reality and meaning...

...In our everyday experience a piece of wood is a single, opaque unit, but this apparent solidity is only its outer aspect...

...It would be difficult to imagine a more positive affirmation of what Catholic theologian Karl Rahner calls the universal presence of grace and the Spirit than Progoff's conviction that there is in every human being an inner source of new light and life that expresses itself whenever the circumstances are right...

...Secondly, how is this memory to be kept alive except through a community, its stories and its celebrations...

...For the quest for meaning which is at the heart of the meditative life is not a quest for a fixed object, not seeking a truth that objectively exists and is waiting there for us to find it...

...When the phrase is truly organic to the individual's own experience, and when it is repeated in conjunction with rhythmic breathing, it becomes a "prayer that prays itself," freeing the person from the conscious ego and putting one in touch with his or her own inner stream that is the source of new energy and life...

...Process,can lead to something genuinely new, to an "emergent" not contained in the factors which brought it forth, or in the cause-and-effect factors themselves...

...images and subliminal thoughts...

...Meditation, then, is taking place to some degree whenever "human beings stop the mindless movement of their individual life experience in order to reflect on its significance...

...Based on this principle, process meditation would create the atmosphere and the conditions of emergence in which the individual person can both discover and become a further and fuller self...

...It is approached via an entrance meditation whose purpose is to establish a prayerful atmosphere, an interior space where a person can become quiet and centered, and the twilight range itself is an area of consciousness between sleep and deliberate, conscious activity...

...Keeping a journal, then, indeed an "intensive" and reflective journal, rather than a diary of external events, is crucial in the process of letting things come together, of seeing connections and allowing new possibilities to emerge...

...First, both Jews and Christians believe in a God of history and that certain events of the past are filled with enduring significance...

...But unlike the use of such mantras in Eastern religion, Dr, Progoff insists that it not be given to a person, but chosen by the individual and organic to his or her own experience...

...The author defines meditation in a broad sense as a "spiritual activity by which human beings seek in many forms throughout history to discover and experience directly the meaningfulness and validity of their lives...

...This follows from the central principle of the Intensive Journal Method, to honor the unique life history of every individual person...

...New possibilities can be discovered by entering into what Progoff calls the "twilight range" of human consciousness...

...There is a correspondence with human existence on both points: human existence too has a duality of outer appearance and inner reality, and the depths of human existence are also characterized by motion, the movement of...

...The isolated individual must establish contact with this stream, with the depths within where life is seen in a larger than personal, individual context...

...The former term, derived from oriental religion, refers to anything that serves as an aid to meditation by quieting the self...

...Even with the Bibles intact, however, the only way to know their content in any real and experiential way is to be in touch with their source, the depth beyond the doctrines, the wisdom beyond particular beliefs...

...We know from the science of chemistry that underneath this outward appearance there is an inner reality that is the movement of molecules...

...To clarify these various levels of consciousness, Dr...

...In this broad sense meditation is, or should be, part of every human life, and in stressing this Progoff is echoing the Socratic sentiment that "the un-examined life is not worth living...

...For the author, however, process plays not only a unifying and integrating role, but also a creative role...

...We would have to return to the same great source from which it came, says the author, for fires can destroy books, but not the depths and the spirit from which they came...

...of process meditation...

...Thoughts and images move as molecules move, they can come together to form new combinations, and their regrouping into new patterns within is reflected by new qualities of outer behavior and action...

...The process, moreover, is never finished, but involves a lifelong meditation which reaches toward what is qualitative in human existence...

...Hence in this twilight range there is a suspension of the activity of the conscious ego, of the mind and will, so that the person will be carried by the energy that moves at these deeper levels...

...Progoff would familiarize the reader with one of the key components of his Intensive Journal Method, the practice of process meditation...

...Recalling an ancient Tibetan teaching that a drop of water left to itself will quickly evaporate, but if united with an ocean it will last forever, the author proposes the metaphor of a well that lies within each of us, and at the bottom a stream...

...Writing these lines as I am in a Trap- pist monastery, and during the time when Christians are celebrating their Holy Week and Jews their Passover, prompts two observations intended more as a compliment than a criticism of Dr...

...The basic technique for entering into the twilight range is the use of what the author calls "mantra-crystals...

...Progoff employs an analogy from the physical universe...

...Process meditation is a method for putting a person in touch with those depths...

...Yet it remains true that the knowledge of these past events in all their objectivity must be personalized in and through one's own life and history, and it is this truth- that Dr...

...The purpose of such meditation is best expressed in the author's own hypothesis, inspired by the massive burning of books during the Hitler era: supposing that all the Bibles in the world were burned, how would we recover the spiritual wisdom of the ages...

...The twilight range gives us access to this "inner wisdom," a knowledge we have which is more than we understand...

...Prog-off s method...

...Process meditation does not offer an escape from the outside world into a purely interior, subjective haven, but a method for doing something creative with the realities of one's own world...

...Process is "the principle of continuity in the universe," and Progoff sees this notion as one of the most important concepts for understanding the world in which we live, and more specifically for the purpose of this book, for understanding ourselves...

...These they remember and celebrate in their feasts, and hence memory of these concrete events can never be replaced by meditation on one's own life history or contemplation of eternal truths...

...It includes "all the disciplines and methods that can be used to deepen inner awareness," and all the means people use to "reach toward meaning in their lives...