The Waking

  ‘Monastery Window.’ A photograph by Thomas Merton from an exhibition devoted to his work at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, in 2014 What is it? Philosophers, theologians, mystics, spiritual teachers and others have explored the ‘ground of all being’ or ‘divine ground,’ while describing an ultimate, foundational reality that underlies all existence, sometimes experientially and sometimes conceptually. These ideas can go under other names too, like ‘the One,’ ‘Being-itself,’ or ‘Godhead.’ Why go there? Why would a normal, sane person want to experience the ground of all being? Well, assuming that I am a normal, sane person, this is what got me into it: 1. To uncover deep peace and stillness. You know that endless inner chatter that your mind is so good at? That isn’t in the ground. You’ll experience inner stillness as you never have before! 2. It is deeply real. For most people, day-to-day life feels real enough, but it’s possible to go deeper without the aid of ps...

    Yesterday morning as I got up from meditating and headed for the kitchen to get started on the laundry, I realised that it has been a long time, years in fact, since I found meditation boring. In my early years with meditation, although I’d had a couple of profound experiences, my usual experience while meditating was profound boredom. I couldn’t wait for the timer (usually set to 10 or 15 minutes) to go off so that I could get up and do something, anything, that was less dull. At that time, having no-one to compare notes with, I assumed it was just me; that I must be doing something wrong. Eventually though, I discovered that boredom is quite a common experience for those starting a meditation or a contemplative prayer practice, so I dug into the research a bit to find out more and hopefully to help anyone who is still in that position. I looked around to see what other people were reporting and discovered that, even when someone commits to a daily practice, there was qui...