Into
the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation,
by Father Martin Laird, explores the basics of meditation, concentrating on the
silent repetition of a single word. For Martin, it is the Jesus Prayer, but
this kind of silent practice, this stilling of the mind with the aid of a
repetitive word, can be found in nearly every faith tradition.
Laird stressed the stillness, the quietness of the
mind as the way to enter the silent land, the place where God dwells. The simplicity of his practice points in all
sorts of interesting directions (directions shared by many other contemplative
traditions) that God and the divine are very near, even within us; that there
really is no work to do to find this God-ness within and around us.
We are really simply remembering, or
re-remembering, our never severed connection with God when we practice silence.
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