The 7 Chakras Defined and Balancing Chakras Meditation

Jul 24, 2013

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Image: Bernini’s statue The Ecstasy of St. Teresa.

The Meditation group on Tuesday evening listened to an audio of the talks of John Main, a full transcript is provided below for reading at home. Taken from Twelve Talks for Meditators (Talks Series 2012c) by John Main, followed by a body prayer focusing on ‘the heart’ and a contemplation of the spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila. To skip the transcript of the talk and go straight to the meditations scroll down to Exercises: The Tradition of the Mantra: Meditation Group Week 2 which is half way down the post

1. Introduction

The talks in the recording played on Tuesday evening are intended to help prepare for the silence of meditation. They are designed to help you bring your mind to a state of peacefulness, to concentration. And they are meant to point you in the direction you need to be facing for your meditation, which is centre-wards, to help you to move on and also to set out once more with faith and love and openness on your pilgrimage, with the freshness of a new start. In meditation we are all beginners.

There are twelve talks and my recommendation is that you listen to just one of them at a time (they each last for about five minutes) and then begin your meditation.

These talks are not designed to provide you with something to think about during your meditation, but they are meant as an encouragement for you to persevere and to be faithful. If you can concentrate on each of these talks for five minutes or so, you will be preparing yourself in the art of meditation, which is also essentially concentration. But in your meditation, you will not then be concentrating on ideas or images; you will be concentrating on the mantra and the silence to which it will lead you

2. The Tradition of the Mantra 1

I have often found when talking about meditation that it is the nonChristian, even the person with no religion, who first understands what meditation is about. To many ordinary churchgoers, and many priests, monks and sisters, the mantra seems at first a suspiciously new-fangled technique of prayer or like some exotic trick method or like some kind of therapy that may help you to relax but has no claim to be called Christian. This is a desperately sad state of affairs. So many Christians have lost touch with their own tradition of prayer. We no longer benefit as we should from the wisdom and experienced counsel of the great masters of prayer. All these masters have agreed that in prayer it is not we ourselves who are taking the initiative. We are not talking to God; we are listening to his Word within us. We are not looking for him; it is he who has found us. Walter Hilton expressed it very simply in the 14th century. He wrote: You yourself do nothing. You simply allow him to work inyour soul. (The Scale of Perfection Bk I. ch 24)

The advice of St Teresa was in tune with this. She reminds us that all we can do in prayer is to dispose ourselves. The rest is in the power of the Spirit who leads us. The language in which we express our spiritual experience changes. The reality of the Spirit does not change. So it is not enough to read the masters of prayer. We have to be able to apply the criterion of our own experience, limited though it may be, in order to see the same reality shining through different testimonies. For example, what Hilton and St Theresa are showing us is the same experience of prayer as that which led St Paul to write that“we do not even know how to pray but the Spirit prays within us”(Rom 8:26). What this means in the language of our own day is that beforewe can pray we have first to become still, to concentrate. Only then can we enter into a loving awareness of the spirit of Jesus within out heart. Now, many Christians would still say at this point, ‘very well but this is for saints forspecialists in prayer’, as if stillness and silence were not universal elements of the human spirit. This type of obstinate false humility is based on a plain unawareness of who St Paul was writing to in Rome, and Corinth and Ephesus. He was not writing to specialists, to Carmelites and Carthusians, but to husbands, wives, butchers and bakers. And it shows too an unawareness of the specific teaching on prayer by later masters. St Teresa of Avila for example was of the opinion that if you were serious about prayer you would be led into what she called the prayer of quiet within a relatively short time, six months or a year. Abbot Marmion saw the first year’s novitiate in the monastery as being designed to lead, at the end of it, to what he called contemplative prayer. St John of the Cross said that the principle sign of your readiness for silence in prayer, was that your discursive thinking at the time of prayer was becoming evidently a distraction and counter-productive. There is akind of self-important posing humility that makes us stand aloof from the call of the redemptive love of Jesus. Very often we are reluctant to admit that we are the sick and sinful Jesus came to heal. And very often we prefer our self-protectingisolation to the risk of our face-to-face encounter with the Other in the silence of our own vulnerability.

In meditation, we turn the searchlight of consciousness off ourselves, and that means off a self-centred analysis of our own unworthiness. “If memories of past actions keep coming between you and God,” says the author of The Cloud of Unknowing “you are resolutely to step over them because of your deep love for God.” (The Cloud, Ch 6)

In prayer we come to a deeper awareness of God in Christ. Our way is the way of silence. The way to silence is the way of the mantra

The Tradition of the Mantra II

Jesus summons us to fullness of life, not to a self-centred reluctance to realise the true beauty and wonder of our being. The mantra is an ancient tradition, the purpose of which is to accept the invitation Jesus makes. We find it in the ancient Jewish custom of blessing the Lord at all times. We find the mantra in the early Christian Church. We may find it for example in the Our Father which was a series of short rhythmic phrases in the original Aramaic. We find it too in the Orthodox tradition of the Jesus Prayer, the prayer that Jesus himself commended: “Lord be merciful to me a sinner.” (Luke 18:13)

The prayer of Jesus himself as recorded in the Gospel leads to the same conclusions. “Lord teach us to pray” his disciples asked Him. His teaching was simplicity itself:

When you pray do not be like the hypocrites… but go into a room by yourself, shut the door and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place… Do not go babbling on like the heathen who imagine that the more they say the more likely they are to be heard. Your Father knows what your needs are before you ask them. (Matt 6:5-8)

In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus is described as praying over and over again “in the same words” (Matt 26:44)). And whenever he addresses the Father for the sake of the crowd, the word Abba is always on his lips, the same word which St Paul describes the Spirit of Jesus eternally crying in our hearts. Time and again, the practical advice of masters of prayer is summed up in the simple injunction: “Say your Mantra. Use this little word [The Cloud of Unknowing advises], and pray not in many words but in a little word of one syllable. Fix this word fast to your heart so that it is always there, come what may. With this word, you will suppress all thoughts. (The Cloud of

Unknowing, Ch7, 39)

Abbot Chapman, in his famous letter of Michaelmas 1920 from Downside, describes a simple faithful use of a mantra which he had discovered more from his own courageous perseverance in prayer than from teachers. He had rediscovered a simple enduring tradition of prayer that entered the West through monasticism, and first entered Western monasticism through John Cassian in the late 4th century. Cassian himself received it from the holy men of the Desert who placed its origin back beyond living memory, back to Apostolic times.

The venerable tradition of the mantra in Christian prayer is above all attributable to its utter simplicity. It answers all the requirements of the Master’s advice on how to pray because it leads us to a harmonious attentive stillness of mind, body, and spirit. It requires no special talent or gift apart from serious intent and the courage to persevere. No one [Cassian said] is kept away from purity of heart by not being able to read; nor is rustic simplicity any obstacle to it. For it lies close at hand for all if only they will, by constant repetition of this phrase, keep the mind and heart attentive to God. (Conference 10.14)

Our mantra is the ancient Aramaic prayer: Maranatha. Maranatha. Come Lord. Come Lord Jesus.

Exercises: The Tradition of the Mantra: Meditation Group Week 2

Preparation: As we sit quietly together as a group it is useful to think of Psalm 46:10- Be still and know that I am God, followed by a short reflective silence

Body Prayer:  We relax the mind and still the spirit in preparation for meditation

As we begin we close our eyes and devote our attention to the gift of our own heartbeat and its life sustaining power. Place a hand over your heart and imagine that it is your hand ‘listening’ to your heart beat, attend to this sensation not with your mind but with your own being. Bring your breathing into rhythm with your heart. As you do this you may become aware of the feeling that the centre of your awareness moves from your mind to your heart, freeing you from normal distracting ego based thoughts for a moment.

Without trying to change anything simply notice your heart beat as you let your hand ‘hear it’ . Notice the rise of our solar plexus as the breath enters, and the feeling of fullness that nourishes our hearts in this moment, followed by the gradual letting go on the out breath. As we breathe this sacred breath, welcome any sensations, notice the uniqueness of our own body as it breathes, accept its rhythm and rest in love and purity as we embrace own original nature.

As we breathe we feel our heart at the centre of our awareness, with each breath we expand this awareness until the sensation of our heart breath fills our entire being, imagine this feeling extending beyond ourselves and expanding out into the room, the people around us, our family and friends at home, those who oppose and oppress us, send this feeling of love out in unity to the entire cosmos, accept any felt sensations, there is no need to analyse any thoughts, these come and go and are part of our ‘beingness’. As part of all creation Our body and mind is a pathway of connection to all that is, to God, to Alaha, (the Aramaic word for sacred unity). Here with each breath we embrace all that we are, and all that is with acceptance and love.

With eyes closed repeat in Aramaic, the word A-la-ha silently, Repeat a few times silently and use the words to continue bring rhythm to the breath.

Following on from the talks by John Main we focus for a short time on Teresa of Avila, the 16th c Carmelite nun, who through what she called her ‘second conversion’, began experiencing visions of Christ piercing her heart. Her most important work on prayer is ‘Interior Castle’ which she wrote following a vision:

Contemplation based on St. Teresa

Keeping eyes closed think of your soul as an interior castle with many rooms, the first room being the outside of your being, as you walk inwards each room leads to another, imagine yourself eventually arriving at a room at the very centre of everything you are. Rest in a palce where your soul can unite with God completely, as you journey accept each room as you walk into it with all its obstructions and joys, understand that nothing inside of our being stops us from being united with God as we are always part of all that was, is and can be.

In the words of John 14:1-4 Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God[]; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Opening Prayer: Heavenly Father, Open our hearts to the silent presence of your son. Maranatha…Come Jesus Lord

With eyes closed gently Chant ‘Maranatha’ ( Ma-ra-na-tha) which means ‘Come Lord’ in Aramaic- the original language of Jesus and early Christians, this can be done for between 10 and 30 minutes

Closing Prayer: May this group be a true spiritual home for the seeker, a friend for the lonely, a guide for the confused.

May those who have prayed here be strengthened by the Holy Spirit. In the silence of this room may all the suffering in the world encounter the power that will console, uplift and renew the human spirit.

May this silence be a power to open our hearts to God, in love, peace, justice and dignity. May the beauty of divine life fill all who pray here with joyful hope.May all who come here weighed down with the problems of humanity, leave giving thanks for the wonder of human life.

We make this prayer through Christ our Lord

End: Take a few moments  to come back to the responsibilities of your day

WCCM Meditation in Romsey

There will be a WCCM Christian Meditation Group starting in Romsey Abbey in July based on the teachings of the World Centre for Christian Meditation

Romsey Abbey: Every Tuesday Evening at 7.30pm in the Abbey (the main door will be locked, entrance through the Choir vestry door) Email Fiona   or telephone 1794 518406

The Wisdom Centre, Romsey: Friday 11-12am, for information telephone 01794 830206 or email

John Main OSB (1926–1982) was a Roman Catholic Benedictine monk and priest who presented a way of Christian meditation which utilized a prayer-phrase or mantra. In 1975 Main began Christian meditation groups at Ealing Abbey, his monastery in London.  This was the origins of the ecumenical network of Christian meditation groups which have become the   (WCCM). Useful videos can be found here: