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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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