Oliver Twist
Member
I only set aside 15 minuters for prayers each Day. 15 min for meditation each day. 15 min running each day. And 15 mental training each Day. The rest of the day I do paperworks and work.
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Let's talk about prayer!
- Thread starter Eddi
- Start date
GreenpeaceRECo-operative
Darwin and others missed George Fox of the Quakers
Well, it´s all just sharing until you start trying to evaluate yourself in an objective manner. Since you want to shoot for maturity and spiritual brilliance, perhaps you can clarify the relationship between your prayers and Burlington, VT´s achieving 100% renewable energy and Utah´s decision to provide housing for all its homeless. Conversely, socioeconomic inequality and environmentally unsustainable conditions continue to worsen as the US-led profiteering business model continues to enchantingly indoctrinate large numbers of the world´s masses of consumers. Now, the originally Catholic-based Liberation Theology has taken interesting directions in places like Brazil in South America where it has been associated with a land-occupation movement, the MST Brazilian Landless Workers Movement has established itself quite broadly and become successful with co-operative and agroecological practices.
I know of Spain´s Basque priest Jose "Arizmendi" who inspired what has become the huge multinational Mondragon Co-op Corp industrial complex. The US had Dorothy Day of the Catholic Workers, and more recently Daniel Berrigan in Vietnam War protests. I recall working with a nun in social services who was an anti-nuke protester. Perhaps there is some relatedness in kind between these events and what you perceive in response to your prayers. Then we can hope to distinguish issues surrounding the Prosperity Gospel and its issues with the Social Gospel. Maturity and spiritual brilliance aren´t to be underplayed.
Oliver Twist
Member
In my prayers I pray that with the help of the Holy Spirit you will come to understanding. My prayers is with you.
leov
Well-Known Member
NT speaks about two types of prayers supplication and meditation, Jesus speaks about meditation prayer ( with mantra) in Matthew 6.
Oliver Twist
Member
In my prayers I read church's psalmbook. From "Holy, Holy, Holy" to black spirituals' "only Jesus."
Road Less Traveled
Active Member
I don’t pray. There is however, a secret place I can go within myself into solitude to tune out everything and any noise that comes with a natural guiding faculty. If there is anything good in me or with me that is at least minimally knowing of my thoughts, desires, intent.... I’d imagine that prayer it futile.
What is your religion? Hindu
Who do you pray to? Ganesha, Murugan, or Shiva, depending on purpose
How do you pray? silently, in clear English, with accompanying feelings
What do you pray about? clarity of mind, dharma, interpersonal relationships, progress on the spiritual path
What do you pray for? only stuff which is dharmic, as the Hindu Gods I believe in are forbidden to answer adharmic prayers
How do you address The Almighty? Aum ________
Do you feel any closer to God when you pray? Yes
Why do you pray? mostly for clarity, and it's intuitively natural
What do you get out of praying? the things, states of mind I pray for
Have your prayers ever been answered? All the time
Oliver Twist
Member
In my prayers I toil the world market, i toil worlds production a industri, and the worlds financial problems... With the help of the Holy Spirit I finance the world market, the world industry and the world ekonomy.
In my prayers I work.
In my prayers I work.
Road Less Traveled
Active Member
I also think that being thankful is bad selfishness, at least for me.
Should I be thankful for health while another’s health sucks? Thankful for food while others starve? Thankful for shelter while others have none? Thankful for something good happening to me while bad happens to others? Thankful I’m not attracted to something vile while another got the genetics never asked for to be attracted to something vile? Thankful for talents while others have little to no talent? Thankful for any liberation to things while others are enslaved to things? Thankful for being an employee(slave) while others aren’t? Thankful for having a decent lot with more freedom while others have garbage lots and very limited to no choice? Thankful for appearance while others not so?
I can’t, in a sane sense of being... bring myself to be thankful for many things.
Only, thankful for others for their genuine and sincere assistance with anything.
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
Thanks for sharing Matthew 6. I did not know that the Bible was speaking about the importance of "opening your third eye". Nice surprise.
Road Less Traveled
Active Member
Then there will be those who say karma, or that we chose this all, or that we manifest our own realities.
People born in Hawaii, with decent parents with a lot of $ boasting on social media about their amazing life and how we manifest our own realities and thanking god. Whereas if I took them and placed them in a poor environment, the only thing they’d manifest is poop and pee in their pants.
leov
Well-Known Member
"If your eye is clear"...knowledge that comes through clear eye .
paganprince
cerridwen devotee
i'm a celtic reconstructionist!
for me, prayer and meditation are one and the same. i like to sit by my altar (ideally my outdoor one, if it's a nice day), and thank the Gods for the natural beauty around me. i like to light a smudge stick or some incense, and meditate in nature about simply being.
if there's something in particular i'm wanting, i'll often bring an offering.
i love questions like this!
for me, prayer and meditation are one and the same. i like to sit by my altar (ideally my outdoor one, if it's a nice day), and thank the Gods for the natural beauty around me. i like to light a smudge stick or some incense, and meditate in nature about simply being.
if there's something in particular i'm wanting, i'll often bring an offering.
i love questions like this!
If you have this power, why haven't you used it to eliminate disease, hunger, homelessness, war, etc.?
I can identify as Christian if it's relevant, but not limited to traditional notions. God is more than any one religion. I prefer to identify more in that area than within a particular form.
I found your thread intriguing as it brings up past practices and beliefs for me, having been important and asking what are they now to me. What do I do that relates?
Prayer is at its heart a form of meditation. Prayer takes many forms, from petitionary to simply reflections of Beauty. So do I pray? Yes. All the time. If you worship the Beauty of Creation and see the Radiance of God, then that is prayer. I try to do that in everything possible.
A living prayer is way to describe that with in Christian language. I would relate that directly as Buddhist Mindfulness practice. Being fully engage and present in the moment, opens you to Beauty, or God, or Truth beyond what our mind's imagine. The quieting of the mind, is prayer.
I used to do this many years ago. This changed into a sitting meditation practice on a cushion for quite a few years. That has changed into physical movement such as Tai Chi and qigong meditation. I also do a great deal of other physical activities, and it seems now my whole body becomes a prayer, a form of worship of God without and God within.
Yes, that's prayer too.
You know, this is not a bad practice as it teaches one the basics of self-reflection. "Who am I to others? Who am I to myself? Who am I to God?" I think for myself today this is just a simple automatic "letting go" of my separate self, that is my clinging to being soley inside of my ego and not seeing Reality beyond it.
At a certain point it just becomes automatic as you surrender to God, which is immediate and Present in every moment of life. It's like a veil you pull back, instantly knowing you have to leave that "ego" set of clothes at the door and enter naked, full faced, and unashamed.
These questions lead to self-reflection, tapping into compassion, and all those things that move us beyond being trapped within our egos living in self-defense of them, and into God, or Truth, the true Self as other religions call this.
Yes, prayer is good. But understand it's not limited to specific forms. It doesn't need to remain that forever.
Amen to this! This is meditation. Not a lot of people do this in their prayers. This moves into the deeper forms of prayer. The more you do this, the more you allow yourself to enter this, the more you will begin so see the Truth in ways you never realized. In here, you can meet God "Face to Face" and "Know even as I am known". (1 Cor. 13:12)
This is prayer too.
Yes, you are letting go of the day in a ritual form, handing it off to God, and taking that thought of God with you to bed. Good practice. That would result in being more rested than carrying it all with you into bed.
I think this is the first time I've really looked at where I am today quite in this light as a continuous, or evolution of form over my lifetime. It's important I think for others to hear that it doesn't have been done "this way" forever. I think of these forms as training exercises now, to a much more living form of meditation or prayer.I hope others will share details of their prayer life, and not just me, that would be embarrassing
Yeah, I'll be interested in hearing you comparing your thoughts to these things I've shared here.
Thanks for the thread. I hadn't thought it would evoke this from within me like this. I'll be pondering this all day now. This is fascinating to me.
LiveBetterLife
Active Member
LiveBetterLife
Active Member
Because they've got nothing to do with me and I don't care about those things.
I've been homeless a couple of times but I never prayed over it. It was kinda fun.
Fair enough. Unethical and devoid of compassion, but logically consistent.
GreenpeaceRECo-operative
Darwin and others missed George Fox of the Quakers
If you get a chance, see my reply to the same. I think it´s above.
GreenpeaceRECo-operative
Darwin and others missed George Fox of the Quakers
I´m reminded of when I began to visit Christian Science. They have a system I like of Reading Rooms that make a nice chance to look over their material. I started my interfaith spiritual path back in High School, interested in Taoism and Unitarian Universalism´s interfaith spiritual support. My spirituality thus didn´t really involve prayer, just meditative reflection for a while there. By the time I got to Christian Science, I was working with Louise Hay type spiritually psychosomatic affirmations and Recovery Movement therapeutic introspection and Higher Power prayer. The CSers work with a powerful understanding of God´s Presence, Divine Love, and its beneficial power once viewed as true and superseding material appearances.
They didn´t pay much attention to sustainability issues either, but have plenty of testimonies of personal healings and benefits to livelihood conditions. Their magazines have contained testimonies that do touch on aspects of social or environmental sustainability, but rarely and thus, are very sparing.
My own unwavering attention to those crucial issues of social and environmental sustainability are based on my own orientation towards intellectual understanding, as my original comment would indicate. It is thus that I have lived in relation to my developing relationship to God through Christ in a fully modernizing sense, with the purpose of connecting the dots that have been splintered by the rich diversity of the Christian cultural community.
So, while you might not care, or think that you can say you don´t care about the issues related to sustainability, it´s interesting to observe that an enterprise like Equal Exchange started by three friends from a Food Co-operative store grocery, became a success importing organic and Fair Trade foods. They formed an Interfaith Partner Network with congregations from a wide variety of denominations, including some Catholic ones. While action alone doesn´t seem to be the only important form of prayer, I think that my meditation linked to affirmation linked to sustainability issues is well-defined by the role of such Christians as Al Gore, Bill McKibben, and Karen Armstrong (a former Catholic nun) in addition to Equal Exchange and the like.
One might also think of the medical doctor Matt Sleeth, who left doing ER medicine to become an evangelical environmental activist kind of preacher, with his book Serve God, Save the Planet. He moved with his family from his big house to a smaller one in the process. The Evangelical Environmental Network also has shown a Fundamentalist kind of perspective in pursuing what can best be seen as a high integrity Christianity in relation to modern lifestyles.
Spiritual maturity and brilliance do in fact fall into a comparative picture. And the caring shown by Equal Exchange and their Interfaith Partners, and the likes of Al Gore, Bill McKibben, and K Armstrong make statements of indifference to and borderline alienation from such key issues in sustainability a refutation of any high level claims to maturity an brilliance. Still, spiritual maturity and brilliance are admirable goals, and the road to achieving them certainly can take many forms. Indifference to human well-being isn´t actually one of them. Compassion for life-threatening concerns, even if disconnected by complex social networks, life circumstances, and levels of understanding, is. That´s how to stay on track to spiritual maturity and brilliance, learning about the range of meanings of prayer and meditation both all the while, you can be sure.
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