What is the Aiglon Meditation

I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the Eglon Meditation, what it is, why it's important for our school and what's important about what lies around meditation and perhaps first of all a little bit of history because the Eglon Meditation was brought in by the founder John Corlett right in the early years of the school and his purpose was to create an opportunity for students to reflect. They all led very busy lives and we still lead very busy school lives but he wanted to build in a habit of reflection, time where you stopped to think about things. So one of the things he also asserted was that whilst the idea of a meditation should be to drop a very simple message like a stone into a pond and to send out ripples, he also felt it was just as important that there was a silence before and afterwards so that people were in the right frame of mind to reflect and so he often would put even more importance on the silence itself than to the message that was being given and so one of the things that he also said is true silence isn't just the absence of talking. If you think of the way different languages approach the idea of silence I was very struck by the fact that in German you have three words really to translate silence. The first is Schweigen. Schweigen is just the absence of talking. That means everybody falls silent. The second is Stille and Stille is more than just not talking. It means maybe you're not moving and your body is still and the third word is Ruhe which perhaps we can best translate as quietness and tranquility and it's perhaps helpful as we sit in a period of silence before and after the meditation to think about those three different kinds of silence. The silence where we're simply not talking but also the silence where we don't move, where our body is still and perhaps where our mind can begin to become still. We've all had that experience where we've got a thousand thoughts racing through our minds and we believe it's healthy for all of us to take time just to slow down those things that rush through our head and crowd out some of the other big questions that really deserve our attention from time to time in life. So really that's my key message not just for today but really for all the meditations that you experience at a school. We're at a time where after quite a challenging period for bringing groups of people together there are many students who've not actually sat through an meditation together with a period of silence at the beginning and the end and I'd really like to encourage you to take this opportunity to become part of this very very significant and valued Eglon tradition. The meditation, the silence before it, the silence after it and the way we carry that ability to be still and reflective in life through our day, through our week and through our lives.