Prayer, Meditation and Faith

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. – Swami Sivananda

Doubt is a virus that attacks our self-esteem, productivity and confidence. Faith that you and your life is perfectly unfolding is the strongest vaccine.
– Sean Stephenson

There is a saying: “prayer is talking to God, while meditation is listening.” This is a kind of facile distinction, however. It really depends on the depth of one’s meditation or prayer and, most importantly, one’s faith. The three are interconnected. We must begin with at least a quantum of faith to either pray or meditate – otherwise, what is the motivation? “Faith in what?” is not as important as trust, willingness, dedication and surrender. Known as “shraddha” in the yoga tradition, faith means being willing to extend our sense of possibilities beyond the known; beyond the recycled precedents of our egos, cultural conditioning or the opinions of others.

Of course there are numerous instances of blind, misplaced and foolish trust. We must use reason and intuition, both the left and right hemispheres of our brains. Rather than trusting some charismatic leader who may be nothing more than a convincing, self-serving salesman, we can learn to trust our own deeper intuitive judgment. Everyone goes through a process of learning from their mistakes. Meditation helps us to deepen our intuitive connection; our ability to listen to information beyond our usual linear processing. It is not so much the thoughts in our head as the subtle feelings in our body.

Ultimately, meditation, prayer and faith boil down to faith in one’s own deeper or higher nature. For the yogi there is no God separate from one’s innermost consciousness. It is difficult and shocking when we start to learn this. It arises when we begin to let go of the ego. As Paramhamsa Niranjan advises,

“Faith will only appear when ‘I’ does not exist. Faith will disappear when ‘I’ comes into existence because ‘I’ always represents the intellect, the logical dimension, whereas faith represents the universal dimension which connects a human being with the transcendental Self, without the imposition of any religious ideology, dogma or ritual. Faith is your spontaneous connection, your remembrance.” (From Yoga Magazine, 2005)
http://www.yogamag.net/

In this sense we can make a distinction between faith and belief. While faith is a process of entering more and more fully into a non-dual knowingness, belief is primarily an aspect of our conditioned intellects. We believe things because we have been taught to believe them whether we are religious or materialist. We then construct our perceptual world around those beliefs. Psychological studies show that we tend not to perceive data that doesn’t fit our personal paradigms. Either that or we rationalize it away. The majority of beliefs that we hold on a subconscious level were imprinted on our psyches when we were too young to evaluate them critically.

“Prayer,” as many of us have learned it, tends to come from dualistic beliefs. We pray to some distant God who has wields power over our world and our lives. It comes from an egoic place, often times when aspects of life seem out of control. Almost everyone knows the adage, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Sometimes these prayers seem to evoke a positive response, sometimes it seems as if God has not heard us. If our faith is weak, we may then conclude that prayer is a waste of time. Perhaps there is a better, less dualistic way pray however.

Meditation can take us from belief to faith. In meditation we start with what is most basic to our awareness; the sensations of the body, movement of breath, the chaos of our thoughts. Gradually we settle into an awareness of the field of consciousness in which body, breath and thoughts are contained. We sometimes refer to this as the “inner witness,” or observer. With consistent practice, abhyasa, this awareness deepens into an awareness of our connection with the universal field of love, infinite intelligence and wisdom. Instead of making demands from our limited ego viewpoints, we tune into the universal conscious and allow it to work through us and our lives. Paramhamsa Satyananda explained,

“Faith is the greatest asset of man's personality. If you have faith, you have everything. Without faith, you have nothing. A good husband or wife, a nice house, and plenty of money can cause problems and give rise to doubts. Faith is not a result of external observances, it comes by constant inner awareness, not of the senses or the turbulence and disturbances of the mind, but of the soul, the atma. As you go deeper within and face the inner light, you become faithful. Where there is faith, there is power and enlightenment.” (Yoga Magazine, July 1980)

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