Meditation, in our tradition, is fairly well described in the book, Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Living by Abbot Christopher, of Worth. But I would sum it up like this:

First, learn to be quiet, both externally and internally. 

This takes a long time, but should be practiced every day. Start with at least 15 minutes of silence and inner quiet. It takes practice to come to be quiet interiorly for 15 minutes! 

It is not a matter of willpower but a matter of learning how to sit and not let thoughts take us elsewhere. For some people, just listening to their breathing is enough to hold their attention and slow their thoughts. For others, repeating the name of God or a short phrase, such as "God is love," is enough. 

Everyone will have times when it seems impossible. Those who persevere will eventually be able to do 15 minutes of this quiet, attentive presence and then can lengthen it to a half-hour or even an hour. 

In our Benedictine life, it is ideal if we can spend at least two half-hours each day in this type of meditation. At the heart of this type of meditation should be a simple awareness of God's presence, perhaps with a simple gratitude for his love or the awareness that we live our lives for God.

The other type of meditation particular to monks practicing in the Catholic tradition is called lectio divina, or "holy reading." This is not just any type of reading, but a slow reading through which we seek to know God. The text should be Holy Scripture (the Bible). Occasionally it can be a book about Scripture. 

This kind of reading is guided by three principles: belief that the text is God's gift to us, belief that reading it slowly over and over will profit us, and belief that God will speak to us through the text. We monks try to practice lectio divina for at least an hour each day. 

Once again, it is the faithful practice of this discipline that calms the mind and allows the monk to enter into a whole different dimension of living.

There is another kind of meditation that asks us to use our imagination and think about what we are reading from many different points of view. In this type of meditation, we take a text from the Scriptures and we can imagine ourselves present in the text in many different ways. This type of imagination-meditation helps us understand a text — not so much intellectually, but from striving to experience it.

For us as Christian monks, the point of all meditation is to move us to prayer and contemplation, We have an old Latin summary of this whole process:

Lectio, meditatio, oratio et contemplatio

Lectio ( holy reading) leads to meditatio. Meditatio (in one of the above forms) leads to oratio (prayer, lifting our hearts and our minds to God), which leads to contemplatio (contemplation, being still in God's presence and allowing him to possess us).

*Abbot Philip resides in the Benedictine monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico. The monks of Christ in the Desert, their spiritual beliefs, teachings and rituals can be experienced on TLC's The Monastery, airing Sunday, October 22nd at 10 PM/EST.