Since I was small I had this longing. I felt there was so much more to praying than the prayers I was being taught to observe strictly, most Sundays and any other times which were seen as crucial in the Catholic, strict, old-fashioned society I was a small child in. Prayers were a given, indeed a very serious matter to be uttered on particular occasions, using mostly a huge amount of words, all defined by others.
There was so often fear and guilt involved and vibrating voices when the grown ups prayed. It looked like duties and penance and very long….well, formal utterings with grave faces. It didn´t make sense to me to pray this way.Yet it spoke to the core of my being to pray, so eventually I decided to inwardly just use my own words when I talked to God inside.
Praying so made sense to me and gave me some solice, it helped. I had still ever this sense, this instinct deep inside, that something was missing. Whatever it was, it felt crucial. And I couldnt find it, whatever it was any where when I was a child. My father once told me about the Mayan culture and he had a huge clock on the wall in his library ,which was a copy of what he told me was an ancient Mayan calender. Having him tell this stroke something with intensity inside me, as well as once he some other time told me about a Dalai Lama, somewhere in Asia. I was still quite small, I knew Asia was huge and very far away. My father didnt say much about the Dalai Lama but certainly hearing his name stroke my longing again…about whatever it was I was looking for.
When I was 24 my healer told me to read The Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda.That changed everything….I got to find meditation, the piece I had looked for so long. Meditation is the most important key to life I have been given. Meditating has transformed everything.
I´ve experienced prayer as talking to the divine and meditation as listening to the divine or being with divinity. Lately this is melted together to being the same.
Its dawning on me that we are immersed in divinity, our own and the whole field. Sometimes glimpses emerge of being held in this togetherness where inner communication with all divine is being immersed in a deep flow that is overflowing.
All of this I´m sure is going on in many all around the world. So we may be able to be here, living our lives integrating still more loving energy into our presence. Meditation is a life key to growing into our fullness here in the body and become able to live from ever more of our deep essence, bringing forth a loving presence where ever we are.