Think of nothing.

I sat in my livingroom the other day watching my 2 week old daughter, Olivia, sit in her Boppy pillow. She was not sleeping, as is usually the case, she had her eyes wide open staring at the front door. She would occasionally hold one of her hands up, and look at it quizzically, twisting it slowly at the wrist. Mostly, however, she just sat there blinking the sleep out of her eyes and exuding innocence and contentedness. She seemed to be thinking about nothing and doing it with some skill. In fact this is probably not true. Given her limited motor skills and her raw undeveloped sense of reason, this whole scene in her Boppy pillow could have required a great deal of effort on her part. I would like to think she was just relaxing though. I would like to think that she was taking a moment to think about nothing at all.

Quite a few years ago my Pastor taught a world religions class to a group of us in High School. The book that we used in that class was called The World's Religions and was written by a man named Huston Smith. It is an excellent resource on many things religious and I continue to refer to it to this day. In this book Mr. Smith describes one of the "yogas" of Hinduism know as Raja yoga. In Raja yoga the purpose is to find your way to god through psychophysical exercises. In fact it actually includes the exercises that most of us associate with the term yoga. The thing is to use all different means to accomplish a state of relaxation and meditation. I am over simplifying here but, the Hindu believes that you can focus your brain beyond the physical self and commune with god on a purely spiritual level. While I am not a Hindu, and I think they take it too far, I do wonder if we couldn't do with a little relaxation and meditation. Even one of the Biblical fathers, Isaac, is recorded as having used some similar practice. In Genesis 24:63a we read "And Isaac went out to meditate in the fields toward evening."

I will bet that watching me throw Isaac into the same new age colored, bag as the Hindu makes you a little uncomfortable. It probably should. The world doesn't need another wishy-washy, "many paths to the same god", speech. That is all we seem to hear anymore. What I am saying is quite different. I just think that the misled Hindu can give us great insight into what the human mind is truly capable of. I find their experiments in psychophysical exercises intriguing, and sad. They seek truth in the method of looking deeper into themselves to see god. In fact, on a grand scale they would even have us believe that we are god. This is where we must part ways. I will never follow the Hindu into the blasphemy that we need no more god than is already in ourselves. I am convinced, however, that meditation can, and even should, have a place in the Christian life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it in a beautiful matter of fact way in his book Life Together, "The period of personal meditation is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose. There is no occasion here for spiritual experiments". I couldn't agree more. I do not think that we should try to dig deeper into our spiritual selves in some kind of experiment. I think that we need to do as Paul suggested in 2 Corinthians 10:5b "take every thought captive to obey Christ". This scripture is speaking to the idea that we should try to take control of our thoughts and our minds and hold them captive to Christ.

Sometimes there is no better thing to do than to clear our minds and listen to God. Try to follow Olivia's blissful example and think of nothing.



- Posted from my iPhone