Prayer as a Connection to Our Being

7/28/2019 Prayer as a Connection to Our Being

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THE PRAYER AS CONNECTION

TO OUR BEING


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for the good of the world


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A person placing his mind within the heart and, without

speaking with his mouth, but only with inner words spoken

in the heart, [says] this brief and single prayer: Lord Jesus

Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

Nicodemos


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..year BC: Hes a lonely man, walking the forests and

the deserts of the ancient times. Around him, an unknownnature, overlooking and terrorizing him. He is a lonely

man: with his fears and doubts, lonely with his unanswe-

red questions. He doesnt know himself, why he is here,

whats happening around him, and he also doesnt know

his destiny. His only aim is to survive, waiting for the

dawn, walking in a fearful night. That man has only a

sky above his head; a sky with a lonely hot sun, lonelyjust like him. A sun that gives Life, burning by itself.

That man, looking upon the sky, feels a sense of relief.

He senses that there, hidden above the sky, lives his never

known Father. He senses that there, in that deep blue sky,

he can nd his real home. That man lifts his arms toward

the sky, kneels down and expresses an invocation.

Its a scream, a silent question and, at the same time, a

request and a declaration. Thus, he expresses the rst

objective sound in his life: his rst prayer.


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Forgiveness

It has been said that we are born alone and that

well die alone. Its a simple truth: thats the

only certainty we can believe in, just as it is

equally certain that this solitude accompaniesus throughout our life.

Not much has changed since man took his rst

steps on this Planet. To overcome atavistic fe-

ars, he built safe and organized societies, and

created myriad philosophies to answer many

questions. But many fears and many questions

remain unanswered.

Today, the man is still lonely, wondering about

the meaning of his existence and what willhappen the day hell die. Existence threatens

him, thus he seeks a refuge, a protection from

that sense of precariousness of life.

Thus, the word prayer in the history of

mankind is connected to the anguish of fa-cing death, the insecurity and the understan-

ding that he cant administer his destiny.


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Mans life is full of solitude and lack of un-

derstanding, and like the men of thousands ofyears ago, he cries, looks up to heaven, and

feels the need to be forgiven, to deposit, for

a moment, the burden of all the insecurities,

fears, suffering and injustices endured.

This is the rst meaning of Prayer: the needfor a short pause, a relief from a burden which

disturbs his existence.

Birth, suffering, disease, injustice, death

anything that inhibits his existence is placed

in an invocation at the foot of the highest au-

thority, able to justify the meaning of all and

alleviate the burden.

He asks forgiveness to the divine to release the

weight of his sufferings, anxieties, and fears.

For the rst time, he nally feels comfortableand can quietly close his eyes, relaxed and in

complete abandonment into the arms of the

eternal Father.


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Contact

Its amazing how the meaning of prayer has

remained completely unchanged despite cen-

turies and millennia of progress: even today,

man feels the need to communicate in orderto establish a contact with its original source,

with his origin, with a thousand-named tran-

scendent Entity, ultimately identied with the

concept of God.

Even when he says that God doesnt exist,

man testies to His existence, at least as a term

of opposition. Why lose time in asserting the

absolute non-existence of God? A truth is con-

rmed when its opposite can be afrmed: isnt

it?

It is really incredible how much energy is still

spent trying to prove a concept that is belie-

ved not to exist! Ordinarily, no one spends his

time denying the existence of what he sees as

non-existent. It seems that, even when a mantalks to God in the negative way, he is simply

expressing a desperate attempt to communi-


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cate with what he feels a reference, perceived

as father, mother, child, a will that governs allthings, or even, as a principle which summari-

zes all these forms.


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Do not worry about what will come

next, you will discover it when it co-

mes.

St. Symeon


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A way to pray

A man feels the need to pray, a practice in-

stinctively done for thousands of years to alle-

viate the burden of his life, relying on the only

one who knows the meaning of all things.

Through the history of mankind, great beings

became servants of a long-sought truth. Each

of them, in their own way, experienced, lear-

ned and understood. Each of them had left his

own experience providing a way of interpreta-

tion according to the time and the place they

lived.

Zoroaster, Rama, Toth, Krishna, Elijah, Her-

mes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Lao-Tse,

Plato, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius,and many other teachers and seekers of truth,

have left a way a path to explain the Only

Truth. And what they taught was a way of

praying.

Thus, over time, the act of praying has acqui-red a nuance that had evolved, acquiring the

color and passion of so many hearts that, over


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The prayer as a request

Even if over the centuries, the act of praying

has evolved and gradually became more sophi-

sticated, more technical, it is still something

strange and inexplicable.

When he prays, man, of course, asks to be re-

lieved from the burdens of life, but at the same

time, he adds other claims to the divine source,

simple or complicated questions, recommen-

dations for themselves or their loved ones, and

requests for help and comfort.

However, in thousands of years of praying

softly or mentally, or even yelling alone in a

desert, the man could only hear the echo of hisown demands: today, as thousands of years

ago, God has never answered. Nevertheless,

the man continues to pray. It is obvious that

he doesnt pray because this pleases God, but

rather because the act of praying improves

himself.

Indeed, God doesnt need human prayers: that


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Innite and Perfect being cannot be conned

in a nite part of himself (the man) who invo-kes It. On the contrary, its the man who needs

to hear God through his own prayers. The

same invocation denes and gives form to one

who has not a form and allows him a connec-

tion with an essence knowable and nite that

otherwise, remains innite and unknowable.


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A small space in the heart

Hearing God through Prayer, gets us in touch

with our own source, with the essence of exi-

stence, so that we can touch it at least with

our heart, instead of through an intellectualspeculation thats the meaning of prayer.

The heart is at least the real place of the act of

praying. The mystics taught us that the rea-

son and the heart should be kept separate

for a long time before the heart may subject

reason.

The mystic is prayers last explorer. He is the

scholar, the sage, the Borderlands walker that

has to be an example when a deep need forcontact with the divine emerges.

Often, we are surprised when we see this need

for praying emerging above our being. It is

a kind of internal call, which opens the way

for new spaces, which leads us quickly into astate of meditation.


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Then, we suspend any action, sit apart in silen-

ce, turn to listen in, give free ow to our innerspace and, magically, we enter into another

time, or rather, access to a space that resides

in us.


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Prayer as listening to oneself

Prayer is the focal point in the interaction

between matter and spirit: it is the request to

the divine, who is the bearer of human suffe-

ring, since suffering is the same product of the

separation from the Truth as saying that thedistance from God, separation from it beco-

mes so unbearable as to be transformed into

demand for closeness , or in prayer.

Left to itself, to its source, a man feels entitled

to ask for anything, even the most trivial, sin-

ce in the timeless value of this communication

there is no reason, or no logic, but only fee-

ling.

It is the requirement to externally shape ourinner space because we talk to ourselves.

In doing so, we hear a voice within us, that

slowly makes its way inside, above the noise

and educates us to an understanding.

Prayer is to ourselves, because it makes usgrow. It is a school of the interior bearing to-

wards the exterior. Its a need that brings us


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to talk, to express the truth about ourselves

and, at the same time, educates us, even to li-sten.

Prayer, in fact, opens an inner space of inqui-

ry where you can admire the expression and

listening, as co-existing terms of a single ac-

tion, coming from the man to himself.

We are made of the same substance of dre-

ams, said Shakespeare, and indeed, the man

really lives the fear of a type of deception, as if

waking up every morning, he had to be sure he

was still the same as the day before.

The man lives above the need to conrm his

existence, but once it is perceived and noted,

then he is also able to listen. Once the ame is

ignited, there arises the power of listening, theindividual begins to change what is outside.

At this point, the heart as the mystics teach

us-overcome the mind and brings the human

experience to a spiritual.

Because the transcendent is the bridge, it isthe real point of contact between the human

emotion and spirit. Is is an I that evolves,


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as self-expression, which knows how to recei-

ve inwardly and outwardly, the harmony of theuniverse.


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Beyond the experience of feeling

A harmonized and self-expressive I is a gre-

at blessing, and is a valuable experience for

others, for all those who come into contact

with this kind of man. But for him, the expe-rience is good up to a certain extent, it beco-

mes too sterile, as if it is not enough. And

yet again, he needs to press on as if to take

another step, another point of contact, even

more tenuous that its predecessor, even more

in the eld which lies beyond senses.

Now, the individual feels he exists. He no lon-

ger has doubts, understands clearly his in-

consistency. Its not being compared to the

unknown, compared to God, exactly. Thus,in him, there is the profound need of a disci-

pline that educates the transcendent and that

might lead to understanding the Truth, from

the inside-out. In this moment, in this blessed

moment, right through the pain given by the

perception of unbridgeable distance from theFather, lights the ame of desire.


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Only now we can say we see the emergence

of true prayer, ascetic discipline that is madeof knowledge achieved which will bring the

individual to a growth, no longer isolated, but

in unity with the Father.

There is no longer the need to push the man to-

ward the search for God, but toward the re ofdesire, namely, the sum of needs. It will ine-

vitably lead to the silence of his mind. Desire

leads to detachment, the space between living

the experience and feeling it intimately, where

it has always been. But now, at this moment, it

is revealed, coming from above. Something

that takes the color of the emotions, arises.

The mind cant recognize what happens and

slips back, in silence.

The breathing stops, and there right there asmall point is born and develops the profound

mystery that perhaps more than any other,

should be investigated. Like a small light, like

a ame, comes on and connects us to the im-

mensity of the universe. That happens in us,

innitesimally small beings!

From innity to the nite, this contact takes


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shape and everything becomes magically

calm. Everything outside becomes less im-portant a bitter, and at the same time, sweet

feeling ows in our heart. A grateful warmth

envelops everything, motionless as the night

on the lake. In the time that this feeling ows,

everything remains immobile, as in the faint

light of childhood memories.

Then, nally, something speaks to us, and

that sound gives us warmth, like the embra-

ce of a mother, of her breathing, beside and

within us.


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God as the witness of our existence

We can see a deep human desire to communi-

cate, to get in touch with that energy which we

perceive as its origin: a requirement that all

of us both men and women feel as a need

which has to be externalized in terms of action.

Prayer is the action that becomes manifested

as a profound need for an inner feeling

which, as we have seen, needs to arise: rst

to produce relief (even if mostly unconscious)

in the lodge before God, the burden of our exi-

stence and then, to the emergence of sponta-

neous requests for help that has remained over

the centuries so nave, so human, although the

thought has evolved in complexity and sophi-

stication: a mans request to the divine, whoin fact, is still exactly the same today as it was,

two thousand years ago.

But why do we have a need to pray, why should

we continue to ask even if we have neither

experience nor any memory of any responsefrom God, who, apart from sophisticated in-

tellectual ruminations, is dened by our wisest


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mystics and thinkers as Unknowable, the im-

measurable, the indescribable?

The answer must be sought in the attitude of

the man who prays with the unconscious re-

quest that underlies the very act of prayer.

When we deposit the bundle at the feet of the

divine, there arises a heartfelt request whichhas driven man from the beginning of his exi-

stence: Hear me, and for a moment, please,

look at me. Show my existence as real.

The man, even before a pardon or a favor,

asked for a moment of personal observation, a

recognition of his own individuality: and he is

doing this act not to believe in the existence of

God, but to conrm his own existence.

We believe further that the question of his veryexistence accompanies the man from the very

beginning: the comparison with nature, work,

relationships, with other men, and strong emo-

tions, that he continually tries with no other

reason than to feel the need to dene himself

in relation to something external to himself.

But that is not enough: in fact, the man exists,


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maybe only in relation to his creator: If

You, who has created me, You, the architectof everything that exists, are looking at me

even for a moment that will mean that I re-

ally exist, that Im a concrete point different

from the rest

In this appeal, we nd the seed, the basic unitof prayer, a sort of ancient code left on this

ancient planet.

He longs for the gaze of the Father, as a baby

needs attention.

That glance, that moment of contact, is

everything to him, and for that, he is willing to

pray for his entire existence.

It is the hand that stops before stroking, thatZen was able to raise the ancient art of zan-

shin, the thought of not thinking. When this

happens after long suffering, we experience

the light of an explosion from the experience

that some Zen poets and mystics have called

the sunshine in the rain. So, who can sayright now where the man ends, and where the

divine begins?


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The whiteness of the light falling snow lights

the being that looks and listens. With thissimple Haiku, we are going to close our free

analysis of one of the most signicant growths

of a man in the bosom of his existence: prayer.


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Observation

In this troubled time, with changes so large

and fast, the time when social divisions are

more apparent, it would be desirable to have

a better understanding of this great opportu-

nity that man has gained over time. Prayer isnot the only answer, but it is certainly a way

to bring the issue at the heart of man and of

his fears, his loneliness, his still unanswered

questions.


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Prayer as a Connection to Our Being

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