Déja vú of spiritual awakening

I know my topic doesn't sound very Christian but it tells about my spiritual experience in the past few weeks and in the last couple of months. As my blog is named The Diary Of Spiritual Growing and as I've experienced lately much spiritual growing in my life I think that I should share my experience. As you may know I've practised Christian meditation since 2011 and I presented the concept of it in one of my previous posts. Today I'm going to take you deeper by telling exactly how I've experienced meditation and what it means to me. What especially inspires me to write on meditation today is what my topic states as déja vú of spiritual awakening. I mean by this that my experience of meditation has come up as extremely similar to my experience of my intense prayer sessions that healed me from depression back in 2007 and that became a conversion experience that turned me from an atheist into a Christian. I actually think that at that very moment that I discovered faith, hope and love luck and abundance entered into my life.

Two schools of meditation: Which one to prefer?

If you're following me (@writer_anne) on Twitter you may know that I subscribed last month to Deepak Chopra's 21-Day Meditation Challenge Creating Abundance. Yes, but before that I was already subscribed to Rhonda Jones's Christian meditation which is quite different. Both concepts practise similar techniques of basically sitting comfortably and inhaling and exhaling in control. I felt that my Christian meditation and Chopra's meditation had different motives and that's why I felt myself at first really uncomfortable with the 21-Day Meditation Challenge. Having to hold my fingers in yoga mudra and using Sanskrit mantras made me feel separated from Jesus Christ. For some reason giving up on yoga mudra and holding my palms open on my lap during the sessions helped me to feel that I did no wrong, that I didn't worship other gods. Remembering the motives of my blog I want to highlight though that my wrong might be somebody else's right: If you're a Hindu or Buddhist so be it, it's your heart's choice and your path.
I feel that Deepak Chopra's meditation was highly based on Hinduism though he highlighted on OWN's Super Soul Sunday (probably my favourite TV programme) that during meditation we're in alignment with One God. I think he meant that all religions believe in the same God so it doesn't matter whether you're a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, secular etc. - you can meditate. Actually, when I was going through Chopra's meditation classes I had an a-ha moment: Those teachings were so similar to what I've learned from The Bible! The Law of Karma actually equals to the teaching of Jesus, The Golden Rule of "doing to others what you want to be done to yourself." My second a-ha moment was that Chopra taught the same lesson of Giving that I've already learned from the Bible. But as I mentioned above I also experienced similar spiritual awakening and healing as I did through the Bible and prayer through both schools of meditation. I'm not all sure if I'd do 21-Day Meditation Challenge again but I'll definitely continue with Christian meditation which I prefer. But I'd definitely recommend Deepak Chopra's meditation for secular readers because it has little do with religion unlike Rhonda Jones's Christian meditation which is Scripture based.

My in-depth meditation experience  

Both 21-Day Meditation Challenge Creating Abundance and Christian meditation have had similar influence on my character. I actually feel that after doing the Meditation Challenge it has deepened my experience of Christian meditation and supported it (I already gave reasons above why it is so). I also forgot to mention that both meditation schools are about preventing your negative thoughts and negativity in your life. So meditation has improved my self-esteem pretty much though I still feel that I'm a work in progress. The most of my following outtakes (by Italics) are from my personal 21-Day Meditation Challenge Journal that I and other participants updated during the challenge:  

Abundance means to me spiritual and earthy treasures. It means a content, bliss, purposeful life. It means that I'm in God's caring embrace and He takes care of all my needs. Abundance means to me the principle of UNIVERSAL LOVE: first loving God, then yourself and finally the whole wide world including people of all nationalities, nature and animals. Abundance means reaching peace within yourself and the whole universe. Abundance means living your life to the fullest. I personally see The Holy Trinity as my source of abundance.  
I also realized that in order to myself to be able to reach full abundance in life I should pursue balance between helping myself and helping others. My closest family and friends know that I usually prefer putting their needs and desires ahead of my own. This means that I can be so loyal, reliable and generous to everyone else but not to myself and the ugly truth is that I live in self-deceit until being courageous enough to fix the situation. It's a vicious circle because I consider helping others my highest, most noble goal in life and so it gives me pleasure. When I was an atheist young girl the situation was opposite: I had so much vain stuff and toys in my room but I didn't like sharing them; Christianity changed me in 2007 and ever since I've felt guilt if I don't give the best that I've got.

My another problem has been that I tend to let others define myself. I just graduated from high school's adult degree with support of my family because I needed their help to overcome my Maths learning difficulty and so pass. I anyway got pretty good papers because I'm doing well in the most of the subjects. I have been down since summer 2010 because I can't forget how the career psychology doomed my ability to get employed and study what I dream about. The friends who've known me way before that appointment know that before that I had so much faith and ambition in my dreams despite the learning difficulty but the conversation totally crushed me. During the past year it has crushed me even for more to hear my boyfriend define me "sick" and some other definitions that are too strong to be written in this blog. I felt like I lost myself in summer 2010 because ever since I've let others define me and so little by little I ended up in the situation that I lost my voice. The thing is that I was insecure already before that appointment but before this occurred I at least had enough self-respect to not to give up on my dreams and I've been working for them since 2001. My heart says that I belong to university to study social sciences or languages or Literature. My dream jobs include a magazine editor and a freelancer author. My heart says different things than the others who have made me feel inferior: Deep inside I'm still the same positive, ambitious and pretty outgoing person who sees beauty everywhere in life and is sensitive enough to listen to her heart. Actually, the reason why I started meditating in the first place was that I wanted to find again connection to myself. I wanted to find again that positive persona that was crushed by others.  

The most important lesson that I learned during the 21-Day Meditation Challenge was to recognize the difference between My True Self and My Everyday Self. This lesson made me feel so enlightened and excited because I realized that it was the most crucial one in finding my original, positive self that I was until summer 2010. I guess that all those 21 days were actually about finding out what truly makes me happy and what I truly want in life. I was surprised to learn that ego actually means My Everyday Self which is insecure, doubtful and afraid and likes to depend on others too much thinking that it gives me security. According to Deepak Chopra I've been awfully wrong: true strength lies within myself and giving too much power for others has rarely brought me joy instead of suffering.

Doubtful and fearful decisions haven't brought anything stable and secure into my life. If I listen to my ego it only brings more negativity into my life. I should listen to my positive True Self in order to fix my life so that I could be strong and confident. Insecurity doesn't help me at all. I can become more aware of my choices by thinking about my motivations behind them. If fear and doubt (= My Everyday Self) are driving me into these choices they're wrong ones. If My True Self is driving me into these choices they're most likely right ones. My True Self wants to achieve and experience wonderful, amazing things but My Everyday Self is holding me back. 

I'm going to compare my meditation experience to rebirth of a phoenix. For 2 years I've been "dead" in the ashes. I've literally felt myself dead spiritually (not physically!) because I haven't been connected to My True Self. I even was ready to die for a while ago because someone made me feel so worthless. The shocking confession is that I've never been as low, not even when I was depressed in 2007 and wanted to self-destruct. In 2007 I was saved because I chose God. This year I was saved because the one who made me feel so worthless brought me back to my consciousness. Yes, I was that low but because I'm still writing here about my passions in life I haven't given up. The 21-Day Meditation Challenge helped me to find My True Self again and so I feel myself reborn in the same way as I did during my conversion in 2007. In 2007 I felt myself beautiful inside and out, I adopted new Christian worldview and principles in life and I realized my full potential once again and I took on great opportunities (travelling to Italy with the Red Cross). Now my dreams have wings once again and so I'm like a reborn phoenix because I'm no longer spiritually sleeping or dead.
I just can't imagine myself living in any another way than writing and pursuing to make a social difference. I actually would like to register my non-profit because I could but there is no non-profit without contacts and that's the biggest obstacle on the way of realizing this dream right now.  I figured that such dreams as publishing books and studying in university may sound selfish but they after all aren't because my whole family could benefit of my success financially. Also, when it comes to my newest dream of founding a non-profit it actually would benefit more others than myself if I could make it really work. I also had an a-ha moment with 21-Day Meditation on coincidences: Until summer 2010 I had a huge sense of purposefulness, that I truly knew where I was going. It means that I believed in destiny, that there are no coincidences. Everything is related to everything. Deepak Chopra returned my faith in destiny as well.

Meditation will help me to reach my full potential by widening my mind's horizon and by little by little changing my perspective and outlook on life. It will help me to realize that my mind is my biggest enemy though it could be my best friend. I'm only as good as my thoughts. If my thoughts are negative I'll call more negative things into my life. If I think positively I'll call more positive things into my life. I learned this philosophy already from Rhonda Byrne's book and movie "The Secret" but today's sermon on 'I am' statements by pastor Joel Osteen empowered my concept on this. Meditation helps me to realize the power of my thoughts and how they influence my life. Learning to understand the power of my thoughts will lead me to reach my full potential.

I'll continue to use during my Christian meditation practice what I learned.

  God bless you! Merry little Christmas! Namasté.           

Christian meditation - Is there one?

My mum revealed some details of my birth that I hadn't known until this day. For a while it had seemed that my heart was beating less but for some reason God wanted to save me. Ten years later God saved me also from the eye of storm that could have killed me and the rest of our small family. He saved me once again for some reason. Also there was to be the third incident that might have endangered my ability to breath... I have realized that I might have some difficulty with it as I breath heavily. I chose a couple of pictures of rainforest for this post as they're the lungs of Earth and in my today's subject, Christian meditation, breathing is the central point.

But to continue about my breathing it's like I haven't lived fully until this day and as if my struggle of existence would be a metaphor of that. Now that I've explored some Christian meditation from books and Internet and started practicing it daily, it has opened my eyes to see my existence from a renewed ankle. It's a lot more than about breathing. It's true that my life is now happier, fuller and more balanced than ever before, because I've found love and I'm convinced that it fills me - but still there's something missing. My dreams are just about to be realized, but despite all this mercy and love I've forgotten to love myself. I've given up some things, because others have told me that I couldn't or shouldn't do them. They have told me that I shouldn't dream of translator's job, because I couldn't cope with my Maths learning difficulty in university. They have told me that I wouldn't be a true Christian if I practiced yoga - I gave it up 1,5 years ago though it helped me and I read that during positions I could meditate on my personal manifestation of God which is Jesus. I'm now 20-years-old and I'm convinced that this is the best time of my life to use all my potential. So why wouldn't I use it? Despite others' narrow-minded beliefs I'm working so hard to graduate, because even if I failed I could be at least proud of myself because I didn't give up without trying. During these past years I've learned that I'm blessed in my struggle, because it draws me closer to God. Wonders of Jesus told in New Testament show how God can turn impossible into possible: those before blind see and the crippled walk etc. Isn't it time to follow our calling forgetting all doubts set on us and just lean on God? Will you join me with this new possibility of being closer to God and starting to live fully with all of your breathing capacity?

Meditation in the Bible

It is believed that Jesus and John the Baptist practiced meditation and here are some Bible references that let us know meditation is accepted for Christians:

Psalms chapter 46:10 tells "us to be still and know that I am God".

Psalms 63:6 ask us to spend hours in grateful meditation if we're sleepless at night.

I'll ponder all the things God has accomplished, and give a long, loving look at His acts. -Psalms 77:12

Joshua chapter 1 verse 8, admonishes us to meditate on God's word day and night.

Psalms chapter 4:4 persuades us "When you are in your beds serach your hearts and be silent"

David desired in Psalms 104:34, that his meditations be pleasing to the Lord.

Isaiah declared in Chapter 50:4, "He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught."

Moses spent 40 days on the mountain abiding and learning from God (Exodus 34-35)

Paul received revelation and saw visions from heaven (2 Corinthians 12). John wrote visions that are recorded in the book of Revelations.

The Bible says even Jesus spent hours alone with God (Luke 5:16; Mark 1:35)

How to do Christian meditation?

Meditating with a mantra or a Bible phrase

This can be accomplished each day by carving out time each day to sit quietly before the God where you are free from distractions. The ocean or secluded areas of nature are great places to meditate, but a quiet area at your home works just as well. Initially, meditating on Lord by abiding may be difficult because our mind tends to be restless and wander but with consistency you'll gain more and more control over your thoughts. Many meditators choose a biblical passage or word to focus on and anchor their attention, often called a mantra. Your mantra or biblical phrase could be "the Lord is my Shepherd", "I walk by faith", "the joy of the Lord is my strength", "I cast my cares upon the Lord" or "peace be still". You can also say "Come Lord Jesus" which is suggested because of its relevance in scriptures and its lack of an emotional or mental references, which inhibits our minds from creating a mental attachment to the word.

Meditating with a Sacred word or Scripture passage

You can also select a sacred word like "Jesus" or "Jehovah" to meditate on. Meditate in silence or recorded music playing in the background. It's best to time the music or use a timer so that you're not worried about being late for work or missing an appointment. As you meditate, become fully present by paying attention to your breathing and your sacred. As you breath in and out, think about the breathe of life entering your lungs and penetrating every cell of your body. In Genesis, it says that God breathed the breath of life into Adam. Visualize God's breathe entering your lungs and filling you with heath, energy and life. You can silently repeat your sacred word in alignment with your breathing or anytime your mind begins to wander off. You can also create a mental picture in your mind to focus on like sitting at the foot of Jesus or touching his garment. AS you practice being still and calming your thoughts you'll sense a greater feeling of God's presence and a greater sensitivity to hearing his voice.

You'll begin to sense the yearning of the Holy Spirit as he drops words or impressions on your heart. As you practice this form of meditation you'll find old weights and worries seem to disappear. No evil thing can stand in God's presence.

Using Guided Christian Meditations

Guided meditations are another method hat can help you to meditate on Christ. Guided meditations are usually on CD, MP3 or cassette. Guided Christian Meditations are great for beginning meditators and are a good transition to learning to meditating by abiding or with a mantra. Some people need the added stability and structure of being guided through their meditation experience. Most guided meditation CDs begin with relaxation exercises followed by a scriptural narrative. Some are filled with biblical stories; others are more visual or interactive like taking you on a walk through nature or nailing your cares to the cross. Guided Christian meditations can also cover a wide variety of topics that help you trust God for healing, to control negative thoughts, or to release painful memories of the past.

Meditate on God's Word

Another popular and more historical way of meditating is what the Christian's monks called contemplative prayer. This form of meditating involved selecting a short scripture or biblical passage and then reflecting on it for the entire day. During their reflections, the monks would think about how these particular scriptures were relevant to their lives. They took ownership of the scriptures by making them their own. They measured their behavior by them and contemplated what changes they needed to make so that their life personally reflected the passages. You can add this form of meditating to your daily devotion, by selecting and writing down a particular passage and then ask God to make this passage real to you. Interestingly, the passage will seem to take on a life of its own. Scripture says that God's word is like a two edge sword, it is alive and it quickens us (Hebrews 4:12). We are changed by the word; but the word has to get into our heart and our spirit and not just our minds. Meditating on the word by taking small bites and then chewy them slowly is transformative and much more effective than just reading whole chapters of scriptures.

Join a Christian Meditation Group

Lastly, consider joining a Christian Meditation Group. Through the World Community for Christian Meditation WEbsite (WCCM) (http://www.wccm.org/) or Contemplative Outreach (http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/) you may be able to locate a group in your area. If no groups are available, consider starting your own. The organization provides resources on how to start and maintain a Christian Meditation Group. By joining a group you can receive instruction on meditating as well as benefit from the knowledge of some veteran meditators. Just like corporate church worship can be uplifting, energizing, and unifying, meditating on God collectively also ushers in the sweet spirit and presence of God. Groups usually meet once or twice a week and are free of charge. During the meeting, a short teaching relating to meditation or spiritual growth is shared by the facilitator. THis is followed by a time of meditation which last for about 20 minutes. Afterwards, there may be a shared a discussion or believers may be asked to leave quietly as to not to disturb those still waiting on the Lord.  

Try Christian meditation right now!


Some phrases you can try to meditate on that have especially helped me: 1. God has blessed the works of my hands 2. With my faith and patience, I receive all God has promised 3. Nothing is Impossible to him who believes 4. I receive whatever I believe. I also have a Christian Morning Meditation in my mp3 player (of course recorded by Rhonda Jones) and I find it a true blessing to be able to begin my day like this :). According to my experience Christian meditation purifies your mind for a moment from stress and worries and it blesses your life with new ankles to it.


You can meditate on any phrase or passage by using this simple form:


1. Read the phrase or passage 3 times aloud. Each time you read it, place emphasize on a different word.


2. Take a deep breath in... exhale. Repeat.


3. Close your eyes and silently repeat the meditation 3 times in alignment with your breathing.


4. Take in another cleansing breath and and exhale.


5. Spend a few more moments enjoying the silence.


6. Open your eyes.


7. Ask God to make these words alive in you today.


8. Ponder the meditation throughout the day.


9. Thank God for His divine love, guidance and protection.


All the credits and rights of this information I shared about Christian meditation in this post belong to Rhonda Jones (picture above) and they're based on my FREE daily Christian meditations and lessons on the subject that I receive from her through e-mail. Got interested? Please visit Rhonda Jones's website http://www.thechristianmeditator.com/ for more information and Guided Christian Meditations on CD and MP3 to be purchased. Also the instructions that I presented in this post for doing Christian meditation were provided by Rhonda Jones's e-mails that anybody can receive for FREE by subscribing in her website. Find "The Christian Meditator" also in Youtube.