WHAT IS THE LAMPLIGHTER MOVEMENT? by Tricia Claridge

It spread quietly around the world – the lighting of ever-burning lamps in homes, churches and sanctuaries, as a sign that here is a house that prayer and meditation are rising. It started in the heart of England in 1964 as a sequel to the Big Ben Silent Minute. When the striking of Big Ben at 9 p. m. was abandoned by the B.B.C., an indication was received from a high spiritual source by Wellesley Tudor Pole, the originator of the earlier movement, that Light should replace Sound in the lighting of permanently burning lamps. This was to be seen as an outward symbol of inner intent. It is a gesture towards the reality of the spiritual world in a time of great human need.

It was requested that amber lights should be lit, either oil or a small electric bulb, and there should be a simple service dedication.

The idea has spread and now lights are burning in many countries and Lamplighters may feel themselves linked in a network of dedicated intent. Many have felt that the ever-burning light brings an atmosphere of peace and healing into the house, as if it truly draws down beneficial spiritual forces.

This is no “movement” in the sense of obligation of membership or any form of dogma, yet many have felt that there is a real and living link between lamplighters as if we are truly “members one of another”. The lighting of the lamps is no isolated gesture. The “movement” is an aspect of the great awakening to the Light and it is a symbol of faith in the future and the certainty that light can, in freedom, enter the hearts and minds, lifting them towards true world unity.

THE Lamplighter Movement TODAY!

We hold no formal meetings, although many lamplighters meet in their own homes. The aim of the Lamplighter Movement is the same as it was in 1964, to spread light, healing and to help bring peace and world unity by prayer and meditation. My own personal aim is to get a dedicated lamp in to every home in the world. Farfetched? Not with your help! Light a lamp of your own and tell your family and friends.

Write to me, or for more information about the lamps and the mailing list for the Newsletter, and let’s help our beautiful planet and all it’s inhabitants to find peace in their hearts.

Tricia Claridge. Lamplighter Movement. 20 Newgate Close, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, AL4 9JE. Telephone. 01727 847149.

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SILENCE IS GOLDEN by Ann Procter

“Silence is Golden” said my paternal grandmother, a terrifying 6 foot high matriarch, looking at me over her spectacles. She meant that children should be seen and not heard. Nevertheless gold is precious, and so is silence. Finding silence in the outer world is really very difficult these days. Most people drown it with conversation, machinery noise, and so-called “music”, television and radio. Even where we try to maintain at least some silence, it is so often broken by passing traffic, or someone’s lawnmower, or the phone ringing. Many do not even notice this intrusion, unconsciously spending energy blanking it out so that they can think their own thoughts, or make their own contribution to the bedlam.

Inner silence is something else, and can be found anywhere. We need to tune into it to access our intuition, where insights and information right for us can be realised, and to enter into our own spiritual space for vital nourishment. If we don’t have enough of this we become dispirited, and far less able to cope with the vicissitudes of everyday life. It’s rather like your immune system being compromised if you do not have enough vitamin C in your diet!

Tibetan lamas have been quoted as saying that you are an in adequate meditator unless you can do it on a London bus in the rush hour (presumably without a bomb scare). In that case I expect most of us fail miserably. So finding a place which is outwardly quieter, and a time when the business of life is not quite so pressing, will make the access of that inner silence just a little easier to achieve. Go well !

MEDITATION TO QUIETEN THE MIND by John Preston

Meditation is a journey . An exploration into surely the biggest, most fascinating, mystery of all – namely one’s own mind. Meditation is like putting your mind under a microscope to enable us to see and understand our own inner workings.

Sitting in meditation watching our mind it very soon becomes apparent that our mental life consists of a series of thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories. Each arising and rapidly passing away.

Meditation, as a self-help system, involves recognising the fact that these inner personal events do not arise indiscriminately (“out of the blue”) but as the result of previous, similar, mental activity. The Buddha said “What you make much of, what you think about a lot biases the mind in that direction”. In this way football fans will tend to think increasingly about football. The worrier is conditioning his or her mind to respond to events ever more anxiously.

Meditation is coming to see, from within one’s own experience, how we create our own personal universe. Each of us is author of our own biography; each captain of our own ship.

Our life might be positive or negative; pleasant or unpleasant. On the level of everyday experience we’ve created it. Meditation enables us to see that in the last analysis it’s not really other people or external situations that are the primary cause of distress . Rather it’s our own response, our reaction, to what life presents that is the problem.

Meditation practice is coming to see, to realise experientially, that distress and frustration are largely self-inflicted. Put bluntly – in the main - we do it to ourselves. To some this can sound rather severe but in accepting that distress is a reaction, a response, opens up the possibility of meeting life more positively. Thus significantly reducing our tendency to be hurt, troubled, stressed

A Buddhist teacher once remarked that perhaps meditation should carry some sort of health warning - “For once you start you forfeit forever the right to say ‘ Now look what you’ve made me do!’”

Meditation might involve practices like visualisation; or repeating a mantra; or perhaps concentrating on a bodily process like breathing or walking. Practice might focus on the observation of the transient nature of experience or perhaps the aim is the cultivation of more positive emotional states. Concentrating on a single neutral object allows the mind to clarify, to quieten. Looking inwards we glimpse the fact (and for many it’s a life-changing revelation) that our mind, left to itself, is perfectly okay.

Our essential problem is NOT mind rather it’s our tendency to constantly interfere. Our stubborn refusal to simply “Go with the flow”. Teachers of meditation down through the centuries have often likened mind (in its natural unstressed state) to a clear mountain lake.

Standing on the edge of such a lake and peering down into the water we would clearly see the sand and rocks at the bottom, the water plants and the fish swimming about. Everything is clear, visible, perfect just as it is.

However if we were to plunge into that lake in a vain attempt to improve or change things. All we would achieve is the kicking-up or mud and sediment.. So what was previously crystal clear is now temporally muddied, spoilt, obscured.

On one occasion a teacher asked his students a question. He asked what would they do if they came across a muddy lake (such bodies of water would have been their only water source). The students looked uncertain but eventually one said that there was nothing that could be done. One would just have to patiently sit on the bank and wait for sediment to settle. The teacher suggested that this sounded like an excellent description of meditation .

From a meditative perspective many of us expend much time and effort kicking-up the emotional mud. We call it stress!

Meditation quietens the mind. The calm, relaxed state, experienced in the meditation is always available to us. However stressed, frustrated or unhappy we may feel at a deeper level there is always clarity and calmness to be found. A helpful picture is to liken mind to a cross-section down through the ocean. The waves, tides, turmoil, all the frothing and foaming. are all at the surface. Dive down and one discovers levels of calm, clarity, stillness, silence.

So if we are strictly accurate meditation does not artificially create calmness rather it’s a means of accessing levels of calmness that are constantly present.

Meditation gives us the means to gradually identify less with the superficial froth and to open more to the beauty of our essential nature – the ever-present silence within .

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John Preston worked for many years as a senior social services manager, counsellor and lecturer. For five years he trained as a monk at a Buddhist meditation monastery. Returning to lay-life he now teaches as a practice promoting personal growth. For details of Meditation and Buddhist Studies courses please email: beaufortmeditation@hotmail.com

CONTEMPLATION & MEDITATION - Francis Ballinger

“Contemplation is a higher level of prayer than meditation because it entails greater intimacy and union with God. Contemplation is a kind of prayer that is ore affective and intuitive than rational, closer to silence and feeling, to identification than to speculation, to feeling than to reason.”

It made me think of some questions: how do I define contemplation and meditation; are there such things as higher and lower levels of prayer; do I turn off my rational, speculative, reason when I contemplate/ meditate?

In the last century, one theologian, Tillich, talked about God as “the ground of being”: God existing at the core of life, at the centre of life and existence itself. Others wrote about “The river within” and God being the source and shape of that river. Whenever we talk about God, and prayer, we have difficulty in finding words that express what we mean. That does not mean that we don’t try, or that we switch off parts of ourselves when we pray, but that we come up against the inadequacy placed on us by our language. But then we often come up against inadequacy whenever we try to express our deepest thoughts and feelings.

For me, contemplation and meditation are almost completely interchangeable words, that describe an attempt to find some sort of stillness, some sort of detachment from intrusive busyness, some contact with the core of myself, held in the presence of God. It is about creating the space for me not just to listen to myself and the voices that have resonated with me, but to hold myself and others in God’s presence.

Traditionally, teaching on prayer has talked about verbal and mental prayer, intercession and adoration, petition, penitence and thanksgiving as if they are different occupations, some of which are “higher up the ladder” than others, just as it has separated body, mind and spirit, into lower and higher spheres. Such distinctions do not seem helpful to me. Because one session starts with a Bible passage to reflect upon, or some other writing, or music, does that make it meditation, while contemplation starts with an apparently blank mind? Is contemplation necessarily done on your own, or with just you and God? Does contemplation always have to be about deep subjects such as the meaning of life, or can just standing in awe looking at a sunrise be called contemplation?

Prayer seems to me to be something about creating situations in which we can experience God, where we can switch off from our endless busyness and be still enough to be aware of that experience of God around and within us: when our whole being, however we describe it, is aware that we are not alone, but in the presence of one who loves us.

Julian wrote: “Prayer is the proper understanding of the fullness of joy that is to be; an understanding which comes from deep desire and sure trust.”

For more details on The Julian Meetings see contact information in the Directory.