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I am often asked the difference between prayer and meditation. What prayer and meditation have in common is that both involve a “turning within.” When we turn within to meditate, we are interested in space, in growing more conscious by seeing the activity of our thoughts and emotions. We are the witnesses. Our egoic minds operate from a dualistic perspective, so there is fear and suffering.
When we meditate, we are seeing the duality of our thinking, but we are not trying to “fix” this. Instead, we are simply watching and gaining awareness. This is a powerful spiritual practice that more and more people are doing all over the world. Through meditation, we can awaken from the dream of duality and the pain of the egoic mind. With practice and with more conscious awareness, we are able to experience our fear as a sensation, become less reactive, and experience more curiosity and opportunities to make different choices. We can access calm and patience where we may not have before.
When we pray, while we are still “turning within,” it is quite different. Through prayer, we are laying down our fears, doubts, and worries, and delivering our painful perceptions to this greater power within us. In prayer, we are choosing change. We are choosing release from suffering. We are surrendering the dualistic mind to the “one” mind. We are creating and allowing. We are communing. It is very active.
Through prayer we are offering the suffering to a higher power to resolve the painful conflicts within us and in the world.
We open ourselves to the higher power of our own understanding to change us and the situation we associate with our pain or the pain of others. When I think of meditation, I think of the word “awareness.” When I think of prayer, I think of the word “love.” Awareness allows us to make new choices while love fuels those choices and animates them in such a way that we call them miracles. Prayer is a distribution system for sending love to the places within us and to others where this love is to be realized.