"God does not look at your outer forms, but at the love within your love." --Rumi
Amid the noise and increasing demands of our daily life, it is more and more important for many of us to find a way to reach an inner quiet, a place of rest and refuge. For many people, the recent introduction of meditation techniques has been an invaluable means to find a much needed stillness and tranquility.
However, the tradition of mystical prayer is another way to access the peace that belongs to our soul. It is born from a need to rediscover our heart's relationship with the divine, our own personal and most intimate inner connection. Mystical prayer is a place of deepening love, as well as silence and peace.
My own journey in mystical prayer took place within the Sufi tradition, which describes our relationship to God as that of lover and Beloved. On this path of the heart, I was drawn back to the Beloved through the mystery of love, a love affair that takes place within the heart. Our heart is a place of receptive stillness where we wait for our Beloved, wait for this meeting of love for which we long. During the day, I often found myself longing for a time for prayer, when I could turn away from the outer world and go into my heart where I could be alone in silence with my Beloved.
After practicing for a number of years I was asked to lead a gathering at a Roman Catholic retreat center. So I studied the works of the Christian mystics, and was overjoyed to discover in the writings of St. Teresa of Avila a description of the stages of mystical prayer that was very similar to my own experiences within the Sufi tradition. At that time in the 16th century the Inquisition only allowed the mental repetition of prescribed prayers, but St. Teresa was drawn to the mystical Prayer of Quiet, a state of inner receptivity, a listening stillness very similar to the receptive Prayer of the Heart within the Sufi tradition I had been practicing. And in her writings she articulates very clearly the stages of prayer that draw one deeper and deeper within the heart into states of union and ecstasy.
To know that beneath all the divisions of the outer world there is this single stream of mystical prayer is in itself a refuge and deep reassurance. It is so easy to get caught up in the forms and images of the outer world, and yet, as Rumi writes, "God does not look at your outer forms, but at the love within your love." And here, within the heart of each of us, is a place where we can enter the formlessness of love. And as I have discovered from my own journey into the heart, this is a love that embraces each of us with a tenderness and passion known only to lovers. We are taken by love to love.
We begin this journey of mystical prayer with the simple act of listening within the heart. We bring the mind down into the heart, into the feeling center our self. And here we wait and listen, not to the sounds of the outer world, but to the silence that is within our self. This silence is nourishing, and in itself it draws us deeper and deeper within. It is the silence from which love is born, where we meet our Beloved, where we are taken by love. In the words of one Christian mystic, the Blessed John Ruysbroeck, it becomes "the dark silence in which all lovers lose themselves."
Like the practice of meditation, or Centering Prayer, this Prayer of the Heart can be practiced daily. It allows us to have a deepening relationship with the divine that is always present within us, but so easily overlooked in our daily life. It nourishes us from the depths of our own soul. Our outer, everyday life becomes more and more grounded in the core of our own being. And through this simple mystical prayer we discover a friend, a companion, a lover.
Mystical prayer belongs to our deepest human heritage, and as our outer world appears increasingly fractious and out of balance, with economic and ecological uncertainty, it is infinitely valuable to reclaim this tradition. In the West it was often hidden beneath all the rituals and recitations of the Church -- sometimes its practitioners were persecuted -- and yet it was kept alive by mystics like St. Teresa. As we open our hearts and our-selves to love's silence we affirm what is deepest within us and within the world: our relationship to the divine and the oneness that belongs to all of life.
A recent short video Prayer for the Earth:
For more on mystical prayer, see PrayerOfTheHeart on Facebook.
Omid Safi: The Meaning of Life (and Death)
Eric
TheMysticPost.com
If one is connected to one's soul and recognizes the interconnectedness of all life, one then can feel that the earth itself also has a soul and is alive.
Carl Jung, the famous psychologist wrote "that the loss of emotional participation in Nature has resulted in a sense of cosmic and social isolation. It is not the airy Christian soul that we have lost but more concrete" bush soul" that links us with the ancestral spirit in Nature. Not so long ago, the spirits within Nature were still alive and active, Judeo Christian religion and scientific materialism have contributed to the current negative attitude towards its spiritual dimension. Carl Jung sees the necessity of restoring to Nature its original wholeness and considered matter and spirit as equal mysteries. Matter is the tangible exterior of things and spirit the non visible interior."
I find it interesting too that string theory describes everything that is as tiny varying vibrations, the voice of God.
If more Christians would practice meditative prayer how would the combativeness we now experience continue. Jesus' New Commandment is how we're supposed to be recognized. The encounter with love during the exalted stage of meditative prayer goes a long way toward sanctification. Again, nice post, even if it is from a different belief system.
The whole point of the article although drawing an example from the Sufi and Christian mystics is that mystical prayer belongs to our deepest human heritage and "affirms what is deepest within us and within the world: our relationship to the divine and the oneness that belongs to all of life." It is not about belief, but about a deep experience within the heart.
Now, I hear you, Spiritually, and I agree with most everything you speak of from 'within'. We need to improve our understanding and acceptance of 'what is or was' in the beginning - for as of now, we do not actually know.
"To the Great or Small yet Mysterious Source or Sources of all Existence" - Paine Parker. That is our best shot at our 'roots' thus far. That is as far as we KNOW! Our best shot, I agree, is to emit LOVE, with good peripheral vision.
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein.
I think the fact that one thinks that the earth has no soul is one of the main problems in our culture today. We are divorced from the sacred. Everything has a spirit. How else can we live? You have quoted Albert Einstein who also says: "Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."
And he also says: "The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men."
The quote from Einstein was fine, but has nothing to do with thinking a planet has a soul.
This quote attributed to Einstein is one of several of his quotes which just go to prove no one is perfect. He was way off on this one. Science without religion is science, and that's a good thing. It's a shame he failed to recognize that. Hard to believe he failed so badly, but, as I said, just goes to show, no one's perfect.
Nothing nearly as trite as you are assuming.
It is arrogant to say that Albert Einstein "failed so badly". Jealous? or what?
To quote a dear friend, " One heart beating"
Your take on mystical prayer is much like some forms of meditation where simply resting and waiting in the stillness for the sole purpose of union with " the Beloved" is the one " goal." Not asking, not expecting, not wanting... just being with Being.
Many Blessings....
If one reads so many of the titles on the Religion page one can gets a little discouraged. A butler stealing from the Pope, police surveillance of Muslims, pastor says lesbian and gays should be killed or put in a concentration camp...who we hates or favor and so on and so forth.
Have we forgotten what the word religion really mean?
In Latin it means" respect for what is sacred" or "reverence for the gods." Popular etymology connects it with religare "to bind fast" or "bond between humans and gods".
This article is a bright light in the midst this page here as it touches upon the true sense of what the word Religion really means in its essence. It is a reminder that mystical prayer belongs to our deepest human heritage. It is about union, love, real relationship, longing, intimacy. Again, a reminder about what does it mean to be human.
Thank you!
several hours in meditation. Most of the prophets moved into deserts
or solitary places and spent months in meditation. That is the reason
that they could not be traced by kings whenever they needed their
advice. Jesus fasted and meditated for forty days before He started
the ministry. During the course of His ministry, Jesus quite often
went to mountains and other solitary places for meditation.Medieval
Monks chose to renounce all worldly life and goods and spend their
lives working under the strict routine and discipline of life in a
Medieval Monastery. The daily life of Medieval monks was dedicated to
meditation,worship, reading, and manual labor. In addition to their
attendance at church, the monks spent several hours in reading from
the Bible, private prayer, and meditation. Anthony, a medieval monk,
headed out into the alkaline Nitrian Desert region and he remained
in meditation for some 13 years.Anthony is notable for being one of
the first ascetics to attempt living in the desert proper, completely
cut off from civilization. His anchoretic lifestyle was remarkably
harsh and he was the inspiration for the coming of hundreds of men and
women into the depths of the desert, who were then loosely organized
into small communities, spending most of the time in
meditation.Probably Hindu swamis would have learnt about meditation
from Christian monks of the medieval period.