Meditation at Amazon
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Praying involves a form of deep concentration of the almighty and therefore may be described as a form of meditation. One may be verbal in prayer and devotion and or use the mind to have a speech with God. While prayer and worship in a gathering is almost always with regards to praising the Lord through fervid prayers and hymns, personal prayer is a moment of self reflectiveness and is regarding having a deep rather dialog with God. Catholic meditation involves doing just this. While in other forms of meditation the mind is freed of all thoughts and ideas, in catholic meditation the precise opposite happens. The mind is channeled towards concentrating on God in all his majesty, thence making it a very proactive kind of meditation. Catholic meditation is a two share session. The initial involves creating the perfective ambience using the body and mind through posture and concentration and the second which involves the actual routine of meditation. Posture and concentration: The catholic way of prayer is either through kneeling or sitting. Once may choose a posture which is the most conducive to one’s praying mind. What is necessary to recognise is that in both postures the body is angled so as to show respect and submission. Once the body is in position the mind needs to be prepared to initiate a deep meditation. The best way to achieve this is by concentrating on an event or verse from the Bible, or on a reading from the liturgy, or by just thinking with regards to God. Steps in Catholic meditation: Place yourself in God’s presence. God is present everyplace and not just in places on worship. Catholic meditation is in regards to invoking the Lord’s presence within oneself by imagining his physical presence near or looking at over. This is the introductory step towards meditation and is essential to as this helps in clearing the mind of all other thoughts. Ask for God’s help. He is the almighty and the creator of all and we need his blessings and help in all that we do. Seeking God’s help in all areas of our lives is but natural and comprehends that he never tires of helping us. Actual meditation: The actual meditation is with regards to making the point or scene of meditation as realistic as possible including the sighs and sounds. Then imagining oneself as an interactional part of that scene and meditating on it. Give thanks. We always end all prayer and worship by thanking God and the last step in Catholic meditation is no different. Thank God for all his support before and for the duration of meditation. Catholic meditation is dissimilar from other forms of meditation as it is with regards to recognizing and accepting that God is omnipotent and it involves meditating on that aspect of Christianity. Most helpful customer reviews 38 of 38 people found the following review helpful. The book is raw – it seems that these were never going to be published, so it had a bluntness to it and an honesty rare for a military leader, let alone one of the best Roman Emperors in history. He was a spiritual man, and tried to rationalize his duties. It lacks rhetorical flourish but it’s honest. I don’t know if the book stands alone as a philosophical work, but it is an interesting work about self improvement, duty and service. Despite his reputation as a “philosopher king,” the book remains a valuable book in leadership and history. The Kindle version itself is pretty well laid out with ample enough notes and historical background on Aurelius himself to help you better understand the man himself. His notes range in length from a few sentences to multiple pages, so there’s no real orderly format to the book (to me, this makes it more appealing.) Since the Kindle version is free, give it a try. You’ll find yourself better for it. 37 of 39 people found the following review helpful. His values are quite universal. For example, he values self-mastery, and doesn’t like complainers. As an engineer, I enjoyed hearing about how he thought things worked. Many are out of date, but several are what we would consider accurate. I got a better feel for Stoicism from his discussions and it helped me understand how the Romans thought prior to adopting Christianity. He did make a disparaging comment about the Christians; he thought they were fanatics that didn’t work well with others. I noticed from history that he was involved in their persecution in Gaul. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in philosophy. It got me thinking and sparked more interest in Marcus Aurelius. 24 of 24 people found the following review helpful. Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, may be the closest mankind has ever come to producing the philosopher king that Plato envisioned in The Republic. A reluctant ruler and a reluctant warrior, much of his reign was spent in battle, defending the frontiers of the empire from the “barbarian” hordes. Fortunately for us, he carried a notebook along on his military campaigns, and thus we have the Meditations. Marcus’s writings reveal him to be the last and greatest of the classical Stoics. Stoicism is a school of thought that asserts we have no control over our lives, only control over our perceptions. It advocates that the best life is the life that is lived in accordance with nature (not “nature” as in grass and trees, but “nature” as in the order of the universe). By concentrating one’s thoughts and choices on what is good and virtuous, and disregarding the unimportant distractions of everyday life (even life and death are said to be neither good nor bad, but “indifferent”), we can avoid negative emotions like fear, anger, grief, and frustration, and live a life of happiness and tranquility. That’s an oversimplification, of course. If you really want to know what Stoicism is and how it works read Epictetus or Seneca. What Marcus provides us with are the reflections of a man who studied and lived the Stoic life, and was its ultimate exemplar. Even if you don’t buy into Stoicism, or have no interest in Philosophy with a capital P, you can still find inspiration and solace in the Meditations, as Marcus instructs us in dealing justly with others, overcoming emotional hardship, living life to the fullest by overcoming the fear of death, and resigning oneself to the insignificance of man in the universe. The Meditations are divided into twelve books. Each book contains anywhere from 16 to 75 numbered paragraphs, ranging in length from a sentence to a page. The paragraphs are arranged without regard to sequence or subject matter. This haphazard method of compilation is really the book’s only flaw. What the Meditations has always needed is a good index, but I’ve never found a volume that has one. The Kindle edition that’s offered for free on Amazon, which is the same as the one downloadable from Project Gutenberg, contains one major flaw. There is an interactive table of contents which allows you to click on the twelve books; that’s fine. Following that, however, there is another clickable table of contents that lists the first line of every paragraph in the Meditations. That’s a wonderful idea, in theory, but in practice it’s a major pain. This extended table of contents is written as one long page of links, so it takes forever to load. You spend minutes staring at a blank screen waiting for the type to show up, then minutes more until you can actually move your cursor. Sometimes the screen saver kicks in before you even get to that point. I wish someone would go into the file and break that table up into twelve separate pages so it might actually be useful. In this edition there are no notes to the text, other than a few translator’s notes. Unless you know a heck of a lot about ancient Rome and Stoicism, notes are pretty necessary for a book like this. There’s a small glossary of proper names, and an appendix of correspondence between Marcus and his teacher Fronto. I like having a portable copy of the Meditations on my Kindle, but this is one case where the e-book is no substitute for a paper edition. |
Memoirs of an Amazing Leader
I found his meditations fascinating
Great book, bad Kindle file
