Of course John!
Don’t be shy.
I was raised Mormon (I am most certainly not now)...so we were taught contemplative prayer as opposed to say, the books and books of prayers Catholics memorize.
Anyhow...haven’t been to any church since I was 16 (not counting funeral services and marriages).
But I have come to see that both are very powerful tools even when you remove religion from the picture and look at them as speaking to your subconscious self that some think once had a voice like the left brain ego - this was the voice of “God”...until it was overridden by the ego self, and thus was the fall of man from the garden of eden/ignorance=bliss/primitive more instinctual/reactionary, primarily by coming into the power of speech...which the theory goes could have sounded and been perceived by those just evolving such brain functions as being separate from the perceived “self”, and egoless or very basic ego not yet in control brain. *big breath*
lol
Anyhow...or as some postulate, when the ego began to take over, we had no inner dialogue with oneself...this new voice began to appear in the minds of people with our evolution and development of language...and again...there is the idea that the fall of man was the development and “taking over” by the ego...which in it’s younger phase, may have
been much more cruel - an idea that is reflected in the progression of “God" in the Bible...until the ego develops empathy, represented by Christ, to once again, free us by trying to realize the power of love and forgiveness and evolve past the eye for an eye mentality of older, more primitive instincts.
Anyhow...it’s a thought.
Even the prayers that are memorized by some have specific pacing to them that is basically breath work combined with chanting.
Both of which are used liberally to achieve a meditative state worldwide.
But contemplative prayer is no different than contemplative meditation from a meditative perspective.
Of course with prayer there can be a further, deeper, more meaningful element for those who believe or have faith in whatever it is they have every right to believe.
But...honestly, when I think about it...both really seem geared to strip one of the ego, in the most basic sense.
Or to invoke a trance-like meditative state where both the religious and non religious meditators have found the primary mystical experience...eden...heaven....nirvana - peace through selflessness.
Thanks again for your insightful thoughts Skarekrow. I'll just brain-dump my own in response and see where they go .....
I think perhaps the main difference between what I experience and what most others seem to, is that for me it's all alive both outside and inside. If I dive deep into myself I find there is a life there that isn't my own, and when I go outside into the outer world, the same life is there in everything and everyone - and it's scale and beauty is beyond imagining. This isn't a belief - I suppose one way of expressing it is that it's a kind of seeing. I can't use any form of meditation without immediately being engulfed in this awareness, and it often breaks in on me by surprise at any time and stops me in my tracks with a shock of delight.
The Mormon's aren't big in the UK but they come round evangelising every so often - I've always been impressed by their spiritual integrity and their missionary courage, the ones I've met this way. It's never particularly appealed to me, but the people have impressed me. Their obsession with ancestors was a great help when I was researching my family ancestry a few years ago - I went along to their local church and picked up some great stuff off their microfilmed parish register records going back to 1670.
I often wonder if the idea of The Fall is a metaphor for when we developed self-awareness tens of thousands of years ago - the ego self as you express it. There's loads of rubbish talked about the Bible creation myths, but there's something quite profound in the metaphor of the Fall arising from the eating of an apple of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Very consistent with so much focus in meditation on setting aside the ego, and looking for a resolution to or transcendence from inner conflict. I'm very much on board with Jung's idea that only a small part of our psyche is accessible to our conscious mind, which is deceived into thinking it is all of us - this causes many of our inner problems and we project them unconsciously outside ourselves and so make them seem to be external.
I'm no intrepid spiritual explorer, but I'm out in the spiritual unknown quite a bit and things often go wrong, both there, and in everyday life. Building on your own thoughts, I'd say that I find the structure and routines of the public and private prayer of the Church a great help at times like that. They carry me, both in their form, but also through the support of other people. It's easy to knock these things and they can seem over formalised, out of date and irrelevant, but when you approach them with a positive attitude they don't half complement and support an inner spiritual development, particularly in recurring spells of spiritual dryness, or in the middle of one of life's many crises. I think the best way to think of the major religions is like a city - if you go to live in one, you will find a place in it where you live and spend most of your time. You will have your routine in the shops you use, where you work and the places and people you go to for leisure. There will be places there that you really like, and others that you don't like or aren't close to, so you don't go there - but others do like them and live in them and that's just fine, everyone to their own. There are other cities that you could have lived in, and you'd have the same sort of experience with those if you moved to one, once you got to know it.
Yes - once you get past the boundaries and out into the open under the stars, all the paths start to converge. There are apparent differences because one person may be seeking inner healing or a release from pain, another a greater awareness of the oneness of everything, another wanting to find meaning in their life, and another may be searching for God, etc. It seems to me that these are all just staging posts on the tracks, and beyond them it all ends up in the same place.
I do wish language didn't make thinking in text sound so definite and closed ended - these are thoughts not hard statements .......
