Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of December 1, 2008

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Total Prayer

Spiritual practice has many facets and levels. Presence, consciousness, and stillness, though necessary aspects of our path and of major, ongoing importance for us, do not tell the whole story. We seek also to go beyond these, beyond ourselves, to serve and even to enter contact with the beneficent and loving Sacred Source of all. For that we engage in and practice the essential action underlying prayer, the action of directly addressing our relationship with the Divine in this very moment.

Prayer has innumerable forms across the many religions, sects, and cultures, and across the range from simple petitionary prayer to the heights of contemplative prayer. But all the forms share this common factor of relating to the Divine. And we can work at deepening this essence of prayer directly.

Some hold the ultimate relationship to be perfect attunement and obedience to the Divine Will, while others speak of union. At their core, in practice, both views share the same basic approach: to open our own will and our whole being to the Divine.

Block off time and a quiet space for contemplation. Begin with relaxation, letting go tensions of body, heart, and mind. Letting go of tensions prepares us for the key challenge of total prayer, letting go of our self. Set aside everything: all your desires and fears, hopes and dreams, worries and concerns, wounds and angers, and especially your limiting assumptions about what is possible for you now. To set all that aside, just consider it all to be temporarily of no importance whatsoever, and let peace envelop you. When thoughts and concerns intrude on the silence and recapture your attention, simply abandon them to return to this essence of prayer. If the thoughts do not hold your attention, then they do not interfere.

Turn your self totally and utterly toward God, toward that unknown mystery for Which you yearn and you search, even now. Direct the whole of your being toward God, beyond your mind and heart, beyond your consciousness, beyond all you can know and touch, beyond space and time. In abject humility, heartfelt love, and bittersweet longing, open the deepest kernel of yourself to God. Open you, the you who decides and chooses, the you who experiences and lives your life. Don’t bother thinking about how to do this. Don’t doubt. Just inwardly beggar yourself while reaching up and beyond your self, beyond all, to that Most Sacred One. Give this your utmost inner effort and love. Offer your total and complete focus to this one endeavor now, utterly giving yourself over to the Sacred.

Occasionally step back and inwardly intone your favored name for God. Let that name draw you in and up, and serve as a springboard for your next foray toward the Divine. Then begin again.

At the end of the session, give up all effort and striving. Just sit quietly for a time, doing nothing, letting your work settle into your being. With no resistance or preoccupation blocking your way, God may touch you even now.

For this week, engage in total prayer.

See also Stages of Prayer.


     

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