14. The more I grow to reflect, to notice my deeper thoughts and feelings, to be less focused on my external life, the more I will experience the abundance of the Kingdom.
(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.)
Does the idea of meditation seem difficult to you, like it’s only for “super-Christians”? Or, perhaps, does it even seem wrong?
It has been said that worry is simply meditating on something we fear. If that statement is true, consider how much of this kind of “meditating” you do in a typical day, week or month.
The question isn’t “Can I meditate?” but rather “What do I meditate about?” With that in mind, how would you answer this question: What do you spend time thinking about?
Our culture often teaches us to only value information, beliefs, or rational thoughts. But our feelings often tell us much about our deeper self—how we feel, what we desire, and what we experience. Invite Jesus to speak to you through your feelings.
Our soul—the whole person that we are—includes our body, our mind, and what we know as our heart, will, or spirit. The world that we live in includes material things that we can touch, feel, and possess, but our world also has spiritual elements. As we journey on earth, we can focus on the material things of life, or we can pay attention to the spiritual things.
There is a rich spiritual world that we can learn to notice, if we choose. This spiritual world includes our own emotions, desires, and thoughts. It also includes the emotions, thoughts, and desires of others, and the connection or relationship that we have with others.
Our spiritual world also includes the larger collective emotions, personalities, and hearts of different cultures and nations—their pain, suffering, oppression, opportunity, prosperity, conflict, cooperation, and so on. Finally, our world has spiritual forces that we can learn to notice—evil forces of Satan and the good force of God’s Spirit. All of these are spiritual things that we can learn to notice and pay attention to.
The Kingdom of God is part of this spiritual world and for us to participate in the Kingdom and receive the benefits of Kingdom life, we need to develop spiritual awareness. Since our mind is situated between our body and our heart or spirit, we can choose to use our mind to service our body, or we can use our mind to nurture our spirit. The mind is then the part of our soul that must be trained.
Training our mind to notice the spiritual means learning to focus our attention on the spiritual things noted above. Our ability and capacity to notice the spiritual can be grown and developed. This is our reflective capacity: our ability to reflect and notice the spiritual things in and around us. As this capacity grows, we are more able to notice and participate in God’s Kingdom.