Meditation is the Very Essence and Soul of Our Prayers
Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2010
by Ramon Ross
By Faith Enterprise
Spiritual meditation is the pathway to Divinity. It is the supernatural ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, from error to Truth, from pain to peace. Every Christian has climbed it; every sinner must sooner or later come to it, and every weary pilgrim that turns their back on self and the world, and sets their face determinedly toward our Father's Home, must plant their feet on its golden rounds. Without its aid we cannot grow into the divine state, the divine likeness, the divine peace, and the fadeless glories and un-polluting joys of Truth will remain hidden from us.
Tell me what it is that you most frequently and intensely think about, you know, in your silent hours, where your soul most naturally turns, and I will tell you where you’re at in your life. What place of pain or peace you are traveling and whether you are growing into the likeness of the Divine or the cold-hearted.
There is an unavoidable tendency to become literally the representation of that quality on which you most constantly think. This is why we must have the object of our meditation be above and not below, so that every time we return to it in thought we will be lifted up. Let our meditation be pure and unmixed with any selfish element; this way our heart will become purified and drawn nearer to Truth, and not defiled and dragged more hopelessly into ruin.
Meditation, in the spiritual sense in which I am now using it, is the secret of all growth in our spiritual life and knowledge. Every prophet and even our Savior became such by the power of meditation. Jesus agonized on the Divine immanence and then He declared, “I am the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by Me” and "I and My Father are One."
Meditation that is centered on Divine realities is the very essence and soul of our prayer. It is the silent reaching of the soul toward the Eternal. Mere petitionary prayer without meditation is a body without a soul, and is powerless to lift the mind and heart above sin and affliction.
If you are daily praying for wisdom, for peace, for higher purity and a fuller realization of Truth, and nothing that you have prayed for seams to be happening, it means that you are praying for one thing while living out in thought and act another.
If you will stop such disobedience, taking your mind off those things the selfish clinging to which prohibits you from the possession of the stainless realities that you pray for: if you will no longer ask God to grant you that which you do not deserve, or to bestow upon you that love and compassion which you refuse to bestow upon others, but will commence to think and act in the spirit of Truth, you will day by day be growing into those realities, so that ultimately you will become one with them.
If we would secure any worldly advantage we must be willing to work vigorously for it, and we would be foolish indeed who, waiting with folded hands, expected it to come to us for the mere asking. Do not then vainly imagine that you can obtain the heavenly possessions without making an effort. Only when you commence to work earnestly in the Kingdom of Truth will you be allowed to partake of the Bread of Life, and when you have, by patient and uncomplaining effort, earned the spiritual wages for which you ask, they will not be withheld from you.
If you really seek Truth, and not merely your own gratification; if you love it above all worldly pleasures and gains; more, even, than happiness itself, you will be willing to make the effort necessary for its achievement.
If you would be freed from sin and sorrow; if you would taste of that spotless purity for which you sigh and pray; if you would realize wisdom and knowledge, and would enter into the possession of profound and abiding peace, come now and enter the path of meditation, and let the supreme object of your meditation be Truth.
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