Sustaining Love: Reflections on my meditation journey by Jane Hole

A conversation with Jane Hole

Jane Hole is an experienced meditator and community member of NZCCM. She is the NZCCM Co-ordinator for the South Island and creator of the resource ‘A Little Time Apart: A one-day retreat at home for meditators’.

Jane, how did you come to meditation originally?

I saw an old man on a street in a busy Chinese town, standing under a tree – still, eyes closed. I scarcely knew then what meditating was but I thought that must be what he was doing.

And in a strange way I envied him; he gave the impression both of preserving his inner peace amidst the noisy chaos around him, and of fully embracing the world around him – after all, he hadn’t hidden himself away to practice his meditation. I didn’t understand what I was seeing, but I never forgot it.

When Fr Laurence Freeman came to Christchurch around 2000 to give a talk about Christian Meditation I must have been ready. I didn’t know I was looking for anything. I didn’t know that there was anything to find. But I had a history of being unable to engage fully with the forms of Christian faith and its expression that I had found. I felt vaguely guilty about that. Other people seemed to be satisfied by these forms, and to live loving lives as a result. Who was I to think I needed something different?

I was astonished -  almost dazed -  deeply relieved,  and happy right through all the layers of me, that as Fr Laurence began to speak I felt simply ‘yes’ – not my characteristic ‘yes but’ but just ‘yes’ – perhaps for the first time. I could hardly believe it; like so many who find Christian Meditation I knew I’d come home at last.

What have been the gifts of having a personal meditation practice in your life?

Firstly, I now see everything differently – a much bigger picture, wider, deeper, richer.

I suppose my old perspective that insisted that:  ‘life is all about me – my beliefs, opinions, plans, preferences, convictions, memories, skills, weakesses, dreams’ has gradually given way to a perspective more like: ‘life is about becoming aware of the divine, of Love, its principle and presence,  unfailingly permeating and sustaining every tiny unit of existence.

All things are connected. Everything is important.

Our ability to perceive the operation of Love in all its magnificence and mercy will always be limited here on earth, but every one of us – in the depths of our blindness and our weakness – is known and infinitely loved.

We cannot fall from the embracing and protective hand of that Love. I feel safe at last. I feel that my proper posture in the face of this overwhelming Love,  is simply humble joy.

How has this practice borne fruit in your life?

I suppose that only those who know me well could answer this. But what do I notice?

When the unexpected happens, I am much quicker to change my viewpoint and my direction.

I used to be very wary of expressing my own feelings – I kept them to myself. But a lot of things deteriorate under wraps. I find now that expressing my  feelings openly – even if I express these in ignorance and bias, with too many words,  with awkwardness or inappropriate vehemence – still this may often  be used by Love for its good purposes, instead of precipitating the emotional disaster for me and others that I feared. 

Overall, I am less bound by fear.

I can more easily distinguish between my responsibilities, which I need to pick up,  and those that should be respected as belonging to others.

Quite simply, I am a much happier woman, and so much less lonely, as I have found a like-minded community whom I trust and to whom I can turn.

How important has community been in supporting your meditation practice?

If I did not meditate within a meditating community I doubt if I would have been able to persevere. Of myself, I probably would not have had the strength, courage or  conviction to keep meditating. We follow a counter-cultural practice that I cannot share with many of my friends and family members.

I need my meditating community to help me keep to my path. Even when I am not face to face with my fellow meditators, they are my unseen - but not unfelt - companions who strengthen me as we share this  glorious adventure of the spirit.