Meditation & Prayer
Question: What is meditation, and is there some "best" method for its practice?
Answer: Real meditation is our willingness and work to be aware of what we are in relationship with within ourselves twenty-four hours a day. To answer what is the best method of meditation, we must first understand the purpose of meditation. True meditation allows us to enter into relationship and "to be" with those parts of ourselves that await us within and above ourselves. With this in mind, the best meditation is the one that not only helps pave the way for this communion, but permits it to flourish and to establish our hearts in ever-successive heights.
Excerpted from Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom
Question: What is prayer and what's the most effective way to pray? Should I be really be asking God for specific things?
Answer: Take time, at least twice a day - though preferably as often as you possibly can - to simply, deliberately become aware of what you are connected to, and then drop it in favor of your wish to have God's Life. Prayer is not about asking for things from God, but first to be with Him, then in Him. This is the essence of prayer. It has nothing to do with gifts. It has to do with awakening to that Being that isn't in time. This is the Gift of all gifts.
(Chatroom Classroom Transcript 1999)
Question: How can I practice ceaseless prayer?
Answer: Consciously placing a short prayer within your own thoughts, and working to keep it there, helps to keep you from seeing only the content of your usual thoughts. This short, repeated supplication works like a message within a message -- only when you see it there, within your own thoughts, its presence reawakens you to remember that you want to remember something Higher. Begin today, this moment, to use your whole life - every moment of it - to be for something that is in reality for you. So that when you're eating, walking, talking, doing whatever you're doing, you have your small unceasing prayer before you. Even if life starts to run away with you, keep your prayer running through you. Keep it right there on the mirror of your mind so that in the middle of any conversation or event you can look up and let it remind you of your wish to be for something Higher.
Excerpted from The Lost Secrets of Prayer
Question: When I sit down to meditate, thoughts crowd in, and I can't seem to find a truly quiet moment. How am I ever going to change if I can't even do this simple exercise?
Answer: When you're meditating, here's a way to invite those true inner changes your heart longs for: Repeatedly bring yourself back to yourself and then, from within this present self-awareness, realize that instead of being connected to the "you" who is always struggling to get something hoping to become someone, trying to resolve things - surrender yourself to the understanding that the whole issue of who you are is already resolved. Let go and know that Life is complete, timeless, and so are you. Do not go into imagination. The self you imagine will be a secret extension of the self you wish to escape. Everything you need to pray, to wake up, to be new is right there with you.
Excerpted from The Lost Secrets of Prayer
