Prayer… Meditation… same thing?

In some traditions the words prayer and meditation are used interchangeably.  There are Buddhist and Catholic and Hindu and Jewish meditation practices that involve repeating or focusing on or contemplating some religious passage or idea.

For example, some people will repeat the Lord's prayer in the same way that a Transcendental Meditation practitioner would repeat her mantra. Or, in the Kabbalistic tradition there are some who use the Shema — the fundamental prayer in Judaism — as both an object of attention, as well as a way of connecting with the divine.

For some people.  Prayer is asking for a specific goal to come to pass praying for good health for yourself or someone else were praying for good fortune were praying to get over some difficult life situation.

The real opportunity in prayer, I believe, is not to create more separation or reinforce the idea that you are separate from that which you are praying to, or that which you are praying about, but instead to use the prayer as a vehicle for finding greater connection.

Here's a suggestion about how can turn any prayer, whether it's from a formal scripture or just a heartfelt desire, and turn it into a prayer meditation. You can do this when you feel you need it, or as a daily meditation.

Find a place where you can engage in the following practice, undisturbed and ideally unseen by other people, if you can find somewhere outside of nature that's wonderful.  Otherwise, a room in your house in a bathroom or even just a corner will suffice.

Take any prayer and say it out loud as if you are, in fact, speaking to another, to someone who could hear and answer your prayer.

If you like, let your body move is you do this.

You might even sing the prayer. Not to a particular tune, but just to give it a different emotional quality. Make up a tune as you go.

In other words, let your voice and your body express your desire as fully as you can.

After a few moments or minutes of this, especially if you really let yourself get into the prayer, you'll start to feel some emotion much more strongly.  Once this occurs, speak about this emotion. Reveal what's arising for you is if you are speaking to someone who couldn't be more close to you.

For the next few minutes in this prayer meditation keeps reporting your emotional experience as it evolves and changes.  Again letting your body move in your voice take on other tones…  So that every part of you is an expression of what you're experiencing.

At some point, if you really go for it, what started out as you speaking to something outside of yourself will feel more like speaking to something that's inside of yourself. And then you and what you're praying to (and about) will feel more and more conjoined.

Keep saying/singing what you're experiencing.

This prayer meditation process will eventually reach an emotional crescendo a point where it just feels like you're coming over the top of a hill.  And in that moment, give it everything you have express yourself completely let the prayer take you over fully and then almost abruptly… STOP.

Take everything that you were expressing and simply feel it internally.  Pay attention to the quality of spaciousness or openness or expansiveness, even if what you're experiencing feels sad or difficult or distraught.  There might be that sensation like after you had a good cry and you've cleaned something out of yourself. Enjoy that spacious silence of your until there's a natural movement to come back into the rest of your daily life.

I'd love it if you share your experience of doing this practice, or of your own variations of this kind of meditative practice.

Next Post: The meditation mind - A simple daily meditation

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