On Prayer and Meditation

The human mind lacks the ability to tell the difference between what it thinks is true, and what is actually true. Most often when we think of prayer, we think about petitioning to God; asking God for things, when we simply can't tell the difference between what we think is the best outcome, and what the best outcome truly is. For this reason, when we pray, it is often most rewarding to pray ABOUT something, rather than FOR something. (Granted, even petitioning to God has its appropriate time and place - calling out for help, surrendering to God's will, etc.).
Praying ABOUT something can happen in a variety of ways, but most commonly, it takes shape in the form of contemplation. We hold the thing, idea, situation, person, etc. in mind and flip it around in our awareness as one might flip a newly discovered artifact around in their hands; examining it from all sides; observing it in the fullest capacity that one is able to. Questions might arise in the mind...but they are not entertained to the extent that they would be if we were simply thinking about something. The questions follow from investigation, rather than proceed it. With contemplation, understanding arises as one isolates the essence of whatever it is that is being held. The details of the thing simply give it a shape...and in order to understand the essence of it, we need to see past the shape.
The Indian sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj, explained it as though he was simply interested in gold, while others were concerned with ornaments. The essence of the ornament is the gold...not the shape of the gold. The ornament, the situation, the idea, the thing we are holding in mind...it is an expression of its essence, not a product of its details. The gold is unchanging; always the same.
This perspective is somewhat contrary to the idea that answers can be arrived at by process of elimination; by focusing in on the details of a thing; by picking it apart and understanding its pieces. Essence cannot be extracted by thinking - only by complete immersion in the nature of the thing's reality. Realizations follow from a passion for Truth, not from a desire for answers (since it is so very easy to arrive at an answer, but so very difficult to know Truth).
As such, prayer is different from thinking, as it does not follow the same linear principles as thinking. With prayer, alignment of the spiritual will facillitates spontaneous revelation.
Even when one is experiencing peace and joy in life, this manner of contemplative prayer is an extremely useful means of facillitating further spiritual growth. One only need hold something in mind like one of the psalms, or some other powerful teaching, until (or as long as) it becomes progressively illuminated with the light of understanding. Even teachings that we think we understand are served well by this process, as the intellectual understanding can yet be overcome by illumination of the teaching's essence (which is, and can only be, Truth itself). For example, contemplating on a simple spiritual principle like kindness may eventually lead one to a complete understanding of the reality of Love.

Much like contemplation, meditation is also an effective device for aligning the spiritual will. While with prayer, there is a precise focus ON something, meditation is more like turning that focus OFF (which is not to imply that meditation is like being distracted). One might make the comparison in terms of one's sense of sight: Prayer is like devoting our attention to what we are focused on, while meditation is like giving complete attention to our peripheral vision. Effective meditation occurs as one lets go of attatchment to details, to thoughts, to ideas...it facilitates a progressive immersion into the silence which preceeds experience (also called 'Source'). It aligns the spiritual will with that which all of reality arises from (Divinity). Sound could not occur without a backdrop of Silence. Time could not occur without a background of Timelessness. Nothing finite can exist outside the context of the infinite. Meditation guides us to that source which everything arises from.

In both cases the idea is that we are passionate to understand (the) reality (of God). In 1 Thessalonians Ch5, Paul advises that we "pray without ceasing"...where he seems to imply that our alignment with Truth is best serviced unendingly...as though Truth is an artifact which we can (and should) continually be flipping around in our hands...
If we think of prayer in the manner described above, Paul's direction doesn't seem quite so impossible to follow. Holding and flipping the world in our hands like the precious artifact that it is, illumination is inevitable.

-Rob