Thread by @pennynotions

#exvangelical What’s something good that the Christian version of it ruins? I’ll start. Meditation!
@LilithUntamed @RCReed40

I have an active meditation practice. It’s one of the most important things in my life and I credit it as being a key component of getting through the these last very difficult 9 months of my life.

Eastern meditation practices make a distinction between the thinking mind and the observing mind. The point bing of course to quiet the thinking mind and activate the observing mind. /3

So when we do breath focus meditation then we are disciplining the mind to just pay attention to the breath. Almost every iteration of eastern meditation has a focus on the other observing self. /4

So called “Christian meditation” completely misses the point. Xn meditation as I was taught it involved the thinking mind almost exclusively. Take a verse of scripture and commit it to memory. And then “mull” over. Break it down into its component parts. /6

Break down each word. Think about it’s meaning. Think. Think. Think.

I have meditated the last 70+ days straight. I contrast that with the decades I spent “repenting” from the sin of “prayerlessness”. I just couldn’t do it. It eventually got to where I just stopped trying and I would just tell my Xn friends that “I don’t pray”. /7

Looking back on it I think that there was always a part of me that felt that “prayer is a one-sided conversation”. And, uhmm, that right there is an oxymoron. /8

And of course there was also the fact that prayer was the perfect hoax. Either God answered the prayer and hallelujah. Or God didn’t answer your prayer and He knows best. Yadda yadda. God always gets the credit and never the blame.

Meditation is real. It’s a real practice with real benefits. There is solid science behind it. The minds of practices meditators are demonstrably different. It rewires the mind and gives you a real coping mechanism. It recognizes that thoughts and feelings don’t control us.