Are prayer and meditation the same?

. I just re-read a beautiful piece by Adrianne Murchison examining whether there is a difference between prayer and meditation. She questions whether there is a difference because she learned to meditate through prayer. Saying the rosary transformed into silent meditation and the experience of Oneness for her. Here is how she describes her experience:

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"I’m Catholic and first learned to meditate years ago by saying the Rosary –a recitation of the “Hail Mary" prayer. I start by whispering the words. After a few minutes I am no longer whispering but, instead, mouthing the words in silence. Soon the words and my thoughts become laboring, because I am with God and they are not necessary. I let my words and thoughts go and simply experience Oneness."

What I've been exploring is at which point did the prayer become meditation? Is prayer the part where she is saying the words, since prayer is usually associated with speech and communication? Does it become meditation at the point when she lets go of the words and thoughts?  Is meditation arriving at the point where she feels "with God" and no longer needs words? But then, isn't that how some people would define meditation, as a means of getting close to God or becoming one with God? Is it the transition from words to Oneness that defines it as meditation? Perhaps it becomes meditation because the experience of Oneness happens and there is no possibility of prayer in Oneness. If prayer is communication between self and "other", how could there be prayer when self and other have merged into one?

What struck me about her experience is that, although it occurred in the context of prayer and her religious and spiritual practice, it contains elements common to many meditative practices whose goal is to transcend thought and reach a deeper level of the mind where all is one. Many practices provide an object of attention as a means of allowing the mind to relax its focus, expand and move beyond duality to the experience of Oneness. It can happen with the repetition of a mantra, staring at a candle flame or even watching the breath. Letting go of thought is an essential element of this experience, as meaning keeps the mind engaged in distinctions like self and other, past and future, and in Oneness these distinctions dissolve.

The experience of Oneness can also happen spontaneously without prayer or meditation or any other practice. We love to do things that help that to happen -- like sitting and watching the fire in the fireplace, looking at the ocean waves come in and go out, and listening to music that takes us out of our heads and into our hearts.

I'd love to know what you think. Perhaps you meditate but don't pray. Or you might pray but not meditate. Maybe you do both, and maybe you do neither. But chances are you've had the feeling of being at one with everything at some point in your life. Have you experienced Oneness and, if so, do you know how it came about? What is prayer? What is meditation? What, if anything, makes them different?

Related posts:

Do you have to be spiritual to meditate? Is prayer meditation? Where prayer and meditation meet

Blackberry picking and lessons on creativity

Blackberries can be sooooo delicious when they're soft and sweet, and sooooo disappointing when they're not. I've been picking them on a nearby road where they grow on a fence by a field. It's a great summer for blackberries. There are tons of them, enough to lure me back into berry picking after having given up on it last summer when I seemed to always come home with a bag of tart berries. But this year I discovered bring sweet, juicy berries home. What's more, honing my fruit picking skills has given me insights on creativity and life. It all began with our plum tree in June. The plums are outrageously delicious -- incredibly sweet, juicy and perfumed with their own unique fragrance, but only when they're really ripe. We learned last year that when they fall off the tree, they are just perfect. Only problem is they often split open when they land, and a bagful of split plums soon degenerates into a mess. The trick then is to get the plum when it's just getting ready to fall, and you can do that by grasping them ever so carefully and giving just the slightest tug. Not a tug even, a faint whisper of a tug... If the plum falls into your hand, it's ripe. If it resists your tug, it's not ready. It may still be good, but not incredible, and why settle for good?

Having mastered plum picking, I was ready for the more delicate task of picking blackberries. One has to be ever so careful, not just dodging thorns, but tugging on the berries just right, being careful not to mush the ones that are truly ripe. It's a delicate operation. It takes patience, sensitivity to the bush's readiness to let go of its fruit. After all, the bush thrives by having bird's eat the berries when they are ripe, when the seeds are ready to be dispersed. There's a reason the fruit gets sweet when it does.

It takes patience to cooperate with the timing of the bush. It takes respect for its natural rhythms to enjoy the treasures it holds. You learn to listen, to cooperate with the life cycle of the bush, and when you do you are rewarded with a berry that drops effortlessly into your hand and tastes incredibly delicious.

Picking berries this way has allowed space for reflection as I pick. Since I am still in the midst of creating a new set of meditations, the parallels in the process of berry picking and giving birth to a new project became obvious. The ideas have to gestate and grow, and when they are ripe, they come easily. Like the berry bush that I return to day after day to cull the berries that are ripe that day, I have to leave the project to mature and ripen at its own pace. I spend time with it and then leave it. It percolates inside me and then when I work on it again, the latest "fruits" are ready for the picking. Inspirations come in their time, and I can't force them.

Letting the new project grow requires the same respect and trust that I'm learning in berry picking. I can't make the berries ripen faster. It's always tempting to try to pull off a berry that isn't really ready. It just doesn't work. It's not fun, actually. It feels as if the bush is resisting. If I do manage to get one off, it doesn't taste good. Creativity can't be forced. It comes in its time fueled by the same vital force that ripens the fruit. Sure, you can make sure a fruit tree is planted in the sun and gets enough water and fertilizer, but then you just have to wait. You can nourish yourself with adequate rest, exercise, meditation -- but you still have to wait.

My fruit picking is teaching me that patience, respect, and trust. The blackberry bush is teaching me its lesson as I learn to listen. The new project will be finished on its schedule, in its time. I can try to push it, but it will only result in frustration and will get me nowhere. Or I can surrender to the process. I don't have any more ability to hasten the creation of my new meditations than I have the ability to make the fruit ripen. This realization is humbling, and it's also a relief. If I don't seem to be making progress on a project, I can just let it go, knowing it will come in its time.

Related posts:

Meditation and Creativity

Enhancing Creativity Guided Meditation

Anxiety -- "What you resist persists"

I'm working on a special series of meditations, "exercises" really, for anxiety. I'm editing one right now using deep breathing. In it, the first thing I suggest is bringing attention to the anxiety. This is quite the opposite of the usual tendency to want to run away from it. Anxiety builds in a kind of vicious cycle. Anxiety is an expression of fear, and part of what creates it is the fear of the anxiety itself. We resist the anxiety, try to run away from it, and that resistance does indeed cause it to persist. Anxiety, like any other feeling state, comes and goes. Feelings come and go like the weather, but when we get involved in them either through resisting them or ruminating about them, they tend to be prolonged. Let go of the resistance, and the feelings can "pass through".

This is only one small piece of the approach I am using for anxiety, but it is an important one. I'll write more when I've finished my Anxiety Solutions project.

June 2010 Update -- It's almost exactly a year since I wrote this post and we've just finished our anxiety program. What was going to be a series of meditations evolved into a program with meditations, suggested daily exercises and journaling. You can read about it here.

Don't Believe Anything You Think (in Meditation)

When I first read the book title "Don't Believe Everything You Think", I found myself laughing. It created a delightful, meditative moment. I was driving and saw it on a bumper sticker. Probably I was caught up in some story about this or that going on in my mind, and seeing the bumper sticker brought a sudden, refreshing perspective. Given the shift those words created, I wondered how they applied to meditation. With a change in just one word, I realized they apply perfectly to meditation, at least the style of meditation you'll hear on our podcast. When it comes what we think in meditation, don't believe anything! The way I've always put it is "let thoughts be a meaningless activity in the mind". "Don't believe anything you think" works just as well!

Meditation gives the mind the opportunity to disengage, like shifting gears into neutral. Meaning keeps the mind engaged. Believing what we are thinking and that it is important keeps us involved in thoughts. Of course that's going to happen in meditation. It's the habit of the mind. But in meditation we have the opportunity to let that go. Learning to let go of thoughts -- to not resist them and to not purposefully follow them -- is the art of meditation.

Years ago I did the Course in Miracles (the year of daily exercises in the Workbook). Although it doesn't say it's a course in meditation, doing the workbook exercises is a way to learn to meditate. What's interesting is that the very first lesson has to do with letting go of meaning. "Nothing I see means anything" is the title of Lesson One. At the time I did the lesson, it made absolutely no sense to me. I couldn't imagine what the exercise would achieve. Only recently did it occur to me that it related to the ability to allow the mind to disengage from its usual habits and surface appearances. And only now as I am writing this do I see how it was the first step in what amounted to a course in meditation.

So if you find yourself struggling with thoughts in meditation, just remember -- don't believe anything you think!

Trust Guided Meditation Podcast

Our latest podcast episode is about trust in life and trust in oneself.  It's about a very fundamental kind of trust.  It doesn't have to do with trusting people or things, but with a basic sense that everything is all right just as it is in each moment.  Most importantly, it has to do with the sense that we are alright, just as we are.  This trust allows us to relax into the flow of life and living, rather than resisting what is happening. We can learn this kind of trust in meditation as we learn to relax into whatever comes up in our experience.  You may notice that at times you resist what is happening.  You may feel your mind shouldn't be filled with thoughts, and a resistance comes up.  Or you might try to push out a particular emotion.  You may also find there are times when you try to be a certain way.  Often people feel that since they are meditating, they should feel peaceful.  There can be an attempt to try to feel peaceful.  A kind of struggle comes up, a struggle with ourselves and with life.  This struggle comes from a lack of trust.

Everything that we experience is an expression of the natural flow of life.  The energy of life flows as thoughts, emotions, sensations in the body, sounds around us.  As we meditate, we can learn to let that flow happen without interference.  We can develop a basic sense of trust in life as we learn to trust what happens within ourselves.