Running a Molten Meditation Session
      
If you would like Molten Meditation to visit your church or event to host a meditation session then please get in touch - we would love the opportunity to bless people with what we're doing and to share a meditative experience with you.

If you would like to run your own event using Molten Meditation then please do so. We'd recommend using the guidelines laid out here but please feel free to use the meditations as you see fit. We would ask that you provide information about us at the event and encourage people to visit the website and purchase their own CD to help them pursue personal meditation and fund future releases. Thank you.
 
Bringing Molten Meditation to Greenbelt this year created the opportunity for us to fashion the meditations into more than just putting on a CD. Simply listening to the music and scripture is perfect for personal meditation but when entering into meditation as a group we felt that more was needed. More in terms of explanation, more in terms of structure and more in terms of community.

These are the things we considered important in a group meditation:
1. Environment - comfortable, low light, relaxing.
2. Focus - Visual points of reference in keeping with the meditation.
3. Building in a corporate and familiar act of worship.
4. Explanation with biblical references.
5. Guided relaxation - don't assume people know how to relax.
6. An act of community, sharing something, coming together.
7. Opportunity for feedback and discussion.
8. Not too long.
  
 
Environment
With meditation it helps to be relaxed so having the option to lay on floors and using comfortable chairs is really helpful. At Greenbelt where chairs were not an option open to us we spread out large tie-dyed table cloths and throws to encourage people to lay on the ground. If you are using a church hall or community space then simple decoration with material can really add to the experience and help participants escape from normal life. Think about lighting - candles or lava lamps can be very effective.
  
Make your environment comfortable.
  
 
Focus
Lava lamps of course fit rather well with the idea of "Molten" and provide fabulous lighting for meditation and can also be a great focus for people unable or unhappy to close their eyes while meditating. Computer generated visualisations or video clips can also be useful as a focus or in enhancing the environment. Should be careful not to create a distraction from the meditation - always keep this in mind, the important thing is spending time on God's word. I found using the AVS visualisations that come with the Winamp media player very effective. I picked a handful that I felt really gave something to the event and then these changed and evolved in time to the music (see below for more on using technology).
  
Lava lamps and visualisations provide a useful focus.		  
 
Corporate Worship
We felt that we wanted to bring in something familiar and also break up the meditations and have something else between them. Using a simply led worship song seems to fit perfectly. Find a song that you feel echos or reflects a meditative atmosphere - "To be in Your presence" works really well. You may also notice that singing together after a meditation is a very different sort of worship to what you would normally expect. With everyone relaxed and chilled it's sung naturally very softly, without raising hands and without performance - simple, prayerful worship.
  
 
Explanation
We may feel that meditation is a completely natural and normal way of drawing close to God and spending time on His word, however, some of your brothers and sisters may be under the impression that it's all a bit mystical, dodgy, new-agey or perhaps Anglo-Catholic - so it's important to sprinkle in some bible references to allay those sorts of fears or doubts and provide a solid foundation for what they are about to do. In Joshua 1:8, God commands his people to meditate on his word day and night to instil obedience. The psalmist says that "his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night" (Psalm 1:2). Chapter 4 of 1 Timothy finishes with the instruction to meditate, to absorb and take pains to reflect on these things. The Bible mentions meditate or meditation twenty times although modern translations may use other words. The Hebrew word "hagah" is often translated as "ponder, imagine, meditate, mourn, speak, study, talk, utter, etc." Further meaning is given in the Hebrew word "aiyach" when it is used to mean "to ponder, to converse with oneself, to utter or commune, complain, declare, meditate, muse, pray, speak, talk with."

Then you'll want to throw in a quote from that great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon who has whole sermons about it - here's one example: http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2690.HTM
  
 
Guided Relaxation
I felt very self conscious about this initially and in the first couple of sessions I led I simply introduced the scripture and put on the track. It appeared that it would take most of the first track just to get people to a point of relaxation. Preparation is very important, it's difficult to jump into meditation straight from normal life and taking a little bit of time to relax people allows everyone to get the most out of the meditations. You don't have to guide people into imagining a tree and then a road leading off to another land by a river, with clouds and how you are floating away etc. although you can if you wish, but I have found that telling people to breath deliberately, to screw up their toes and hands, hold and relax, and to listen to their heart beats is probably enough. Tell people to close their eyes and to sense their environment - noises, temperature, light and come back to their breathing - in through nose, out through mouth, all works really well. Take a little time, speak slowly and softly - let any giggles pass and they'll be ready to begin.
  
 
Act of Community
Meditation can be a very personal and inward looking activity - it's as if everyone else needn't be there. If you are meditating alone then that's what you want but in a group meditation it's important to reach out to one another, to connect and share something together. I first thought about using "The Peace" that way of greeting one another in the name of the Lord that's very popular in liturgical church services, particularly around communion. I've always thought it was a great idea but hated it in practice - and it's funny, the more people I mention this to the more people I find who also consider it an awkward and unhappy event. So what I wanted was something that expressed community in a similar fashion but without the false hugs, smiles and kisses that people associate with sharing "The Peace".

A number of years ago I was in Laos, north of Thailand, and was privileged to be invited to a village wedding. During the ceremony people would come over to you and tie a white string around your wrist, smiling the biggest smiles and saying a few words - no one spoke English so I didn't understand - but the communication present in that simple action, the way it connected you, crossed boundaries, cultural and linguistic, was very moving and beautiful. It has it's roots in blessings and luck and keeping or warding spirits and is a part of Laos and Thai culture around special events such as weddings, New Year and births. It's a great act of community. In my research I found that many Thai churches had adopted the ceremony into their own services replacing "luck" with the love and blessing of Jesus and have retained the beauty of the action while focusing it on Christ - perfect.

Instead of white cotton string we use coloured wool - found some great Japanese wool called "Noro" in John Lewis' which hand dyed and multicoloured. I tried it out in a meditation session with our churches youth group and found it to be beautiful and intimate without invading peoples space with hugs or even touching - there was no embarrassment or awkwardness, just people telling each other that Jesus loved them and reinforcing that by the physical act of tying the wool around the wrist. There's no power in string, no blessing in the wool and the love of Jesus is not dependant upon its existence - it's a simple act of connection, of community and reminder of the event in the days to come. Having witnessed a few of these events now I would say that the string tying is probably the most moving part of the whole experience. One or two people do opt out and that's ok - it is a culturally strange action and could be misinterpreted so it's important to stress the reality of what you are doing, how it's a spiritual action (of greeting and blessing) reinforced with a physical act (tying).
  
 
Opportunity for Feedback and Discussion
Unfortunately there wasn't any time for this at the Greenbelt sessions but I would recommend it as a good way to finish. It allows people to share any particular pictures or words they encountered, how it made them feel or how they used the meditations for their own worship. Some people may be concerned over some aspect or unsure about whether they were "doing it right" and discussion can really help to reassure. Also find out if they'd like to do it again sometime and what they would change add/remove. You could also encourage the idea of personal meditation.
  
 
Not too long
The ideal time for a Molten Meditation event seems to be just under an hour. In that time you can fit a meditation sandwich of three tracks from the CD broken up with a worship song and the string tying. Doing two meditations doesn't seem to be enough and trying to do four gets people fidgeting and sighing loudly. It also means that there'll be a couple of tracks on the CD that they haven't heard yet.
  
 
That's the main considerations that went into creating the Molten Meditation event. Please use them as guidelines if you hoping to run your own meditation evening.

Below is some comments on the technology we used.
For the transcript from the Greenbelt sessions - click here
  
 

Using Technology
The simplest way to play the meditations is to use a CD player and master the use of the "play", "skip" and "pause" buttons. If you have use of a projector then a computer may bring additional advantages in that you could display the words to the worship song you are going to use, or display introductory information, or use visualisations as mentioned previously. If you are going to use a laptop then I would recommend "ripping" the Molten Meditation to the hard drive for more reliable and instant playback than using the CD drive. However, rip to "wav", not "mp3". If you compress tracks to mp3 they will not sound as good as played directly off the CD or as wave files. So, if you ripping software has the option then "rip to wav". Wave files will be much bigger than mp3 - be aware of that.

  
My Rain Recording Livebook.		  
 
The output of a laptop is not always the greatest in terms of sound quality - the inbuilt sound cards might not sound as good as playing from a CD player. If you are going to use a laptop then consider getting a high quality soundcard for it:
check http://www.pc-music.com for more info.
Also consider what you are going to play through - P.A. sound system, speakers? Maybe a CD player is the easiest solution.

At the Greenbelt sessions I used a video loop created from the CD artwork as an introduction - something to play as people arrived. It lasted about 2 minutes and then looped and was quite effective. I can send you a copy or have it available for download if you would like to use it in your own sessions.

I am very happy to offer advice on computer hardware, software and soundcards - it's sort of my day job!

For more information on the laptop I was using please visit http://www.rainrecording.com
  
   
             
 
Molten Meditation © Robin Vincent 2006 - 2007
robin@moltenmeditation.com