How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [23]
Although there are approximately twenty references to meditation in the Bible,6 most people are unaware of Christianity's rich history of contemplative practice. In Genesis, “Isaac went out to meditate in the field,” and in Joshua, followers are commanded by law to “meditate day and night.” Such intense meditation may have been the catalyst for many of the spiritual epiphanies described by biblical prophets and saints.
Formal Christian meditation was developed by early monastic orders. In the twelfth century, Guigo II, a Carthusian monk, categorized four levels of practice: lectio (slowly reading biblical passages), meditatio (pondering the deeper meaning of the text), oratio (spontaneous prayer), and contemplatio (wordlessly focusing on God's love).
In the sixteenth century, St. Ignatius developed a series of spiritual exercises, including one that asked the individual to visualize scenes from the life of Jesus. His writings influenced other saints, including Teresa of Avila, who emphasized the importance of maintaining an unwavering concentration on one's spiritual goals.
In the mid-twentieth century, many Christian theologians, like Thomas Merton, were influenced by Eastern philosophies, and their books encouraged others to embrace a contemporary contemplative path. Others directly incorporated Eastern practices into the Christian tradition. For example, Friar John Main emphasized the repetition of a phrase from the Bible until the presence of God filled one's heart.7 The ultimate goal was to be “transformed” by one's meditation, a condition synonymous with the Hindu and Buddhist notions of enlightenment.
Some theologians “rediscovered” the mystical practices of early Christianity and brought them back to life. For example, in the 1970s, Friar Thomas Keating, along with two other Trappist monks, modified a contemplative tradition first described in the fourteenth century text, The Cloud of Unknowing.8 According to Keating:
It brings us into the presence of God and thus fosters the contemplative attitudes of listening and receptivity. It is not contemplation in the strict sense, which in Catholic tradition has always been regarded as a pure gift of the Spirit, but rather it is a preparation for contemplation by reducing the obstacles caused by the hyperactivity of our minds and of our lives.9
Keating called his simple meditation the Centering Prayer, and it has been introduced to thousands of American Catholics and Christians.10 You choose a word that has a sacred meaning and focus on it for twenty minutes or longer as you sit comfortably with eyes closed. When distracting thoughts or feelings intervene, you gently return to your sacred word, a practice that closely mirrors Benson's relaxation technique. (In Chapter 9 we'll discuss a “generic” version of the Centering Prayer that you can incorporate into your spiritual or secular life.)
COMPARING THE CENTERING PRAYER
TO BUDDHIST MEDITATION
In the summer of 1999, I had the opportunity to study a group of nuns who had been practicing the Centering Prayer for a minimum of fifteen years. This was the first brain-scan study of Christian contemplative practitioners, and we discovered that the neurological changes were significant and very different from how the human brain normally functions.11 Even more surprising, the neurological changes were nearly the same as those we recorded from a group of Buddhist practitioners, who obviously nurtured very different beliefs.12 This evidence confirmed our hypothesis that the benefits gleaned from prayer and meditation may have less to do with a specific theology than with the ritual techniques of breathing, staying relaxed, and focusing one's attention upon a concept that evokes comfort, compassion, or a spiritual sense of peace. Of course, the more you believe in what you are meditating or praying about, the