Is prayer a form of meditation and meditation a form of prayer? I believe so. They share a common purpose; to still your mind and bring you back to the present moment.
When you manage to still your mind whether through prayer or meditation, you take back control over your thoughts. Because you’re no longer controlled by those thoughts, you can choose them better.
Whenever I’m worried, whenever I’m facing challenges, my prayer is always the same:
- “I give you (Spirit) my thoughts, help me see this differently“.
Every time I start worrying about a situation, I repeat this prayer to still my mind and be present. I do it over and over again. 100% of the time, the situation, or at least the way I look at it, is completely transformed.
The goal here is to give up your thinking and be present. Either through meditation or through prayer, stillness is the BEST gift you can give your mind.
A Prescription to Stay Free of Worry and Preoccupation
Emmet Fox, a spiritual leader from the early 1900’s, wrote a “Prescription” to get out of any bad situation. However, for this prescription to work it has to be followed with absolute discipline.
“…Prayer will enable you, sooner or later, to get yourself out of any difficulty on the face of earth. It is the Golden Key to harmony and happiness.
All that you have to do is this: stop thinking about the situation, whatever it is, and think about God \ Love \ Spirit instead. This is the complete rule, and if only you do this, the trouble, whatever it is, will presently disappear. …Stop thinking about the problem and think of Spirit instead—that is all you have to do. It’s simple, yet it never fails to work, when given a fair trial.
To be continually glancing over your shoulder in order to see how matters are progressing is fatal, because it is thinking of the problem. Your goal is to drive the thought of the difficulty out of your consciousness.
If you can become so absorbed in this consideration of the spiritual world that you forget for a while about the difficulty, you will find that you are safely and comfortably out of your difficulty…”
In other words, any moment you catch yourself thinking and worrying about a problem, all you have to do is stop thinking about the problem (be still in your mind) and TRUST life instead.
This is the “prescription” for changing the course of any problem.
“…It’s simple, yet it never fails to work, when given a fair trial.”