How to pray and meditate

The Pathwork Guide dedicated several lectures to the topic of prayer and meditation (like here and here). In addition, lecture attendees asked many good questions about these two topics. Here are the Guide’s answers, in Jill Loree’s words, to various questions about how we should go about praying and meditating.

The difference between prayer and meditation

It will be helpful to start off agreeing on what the terms prayer and meditation mean. One way to distinguish them is that praying is a preliminary step to meditating.

Whereas praying is about thinking, meditation is praying with feeling. For when we meditate, we engage more of the forces of our soul than just our thinking forces. But before we can get to the step of meditation, we need to have first learned a certain level of concentration and discipline. And this can come about through prayer.

Since all of life involves blending and balancing the active and receptive principles, it’s no surprise that we find both of these principles in prayer and meditation. When we pray, our minds are active, as we are involved in thinking. Meditating, on the other hand, is more emotional and more flowing. Both are equally important.

In one phase, we might emphasize prayer. In other phase, our focus might be on meditation. It’s actually helpful to alternate like this so that balance and fusion can happen between praying and meditating.

In general, we should work on cultivating whichever one we find to be more difficult.

Helpful routine versus rigid habit

When we first embark on a path of spiritual development, we may not be used to concentrating at all. So our first goal in praying and meditating will be to learn to concentrate. For as we pray, we are learning to cleanse our mind, build awareness and cultivate unselfish thoughts. We are elevating our thoughts in prayer, which helps clear the way for further stages of development.

While we could learn concentration in connection with any subject, learning it through prayer packs more punch. For both cleansing our thoughts and concentrating, as happens in prayer, are vital steps to learn for walking this spiritual path.

Then, having learned the discipline to sit and concentrate and cleanse our mind of stray thoughts, it’s important to guard against the routine of prayer that becomes stale. For that causes our prayers to become lifeless and rigid.

This is true about all our development. We must apply different activities and attitudes as we move forward through different phases. For remaining in a rigid routine, at a certain point, does more harm than good.

So if we find that our prayers for others don’t feel fresh and vibrant anymore, we would be better off keeping them short and turn our attention toward our inner obstacles and current problems.

In this way, we can apply the powers of concentration we are learning for self-finding and self-healing. Which is essentially what we are doing in all our work on a spiritual path. Doing this kind of personal purification is, in fact, a lot more productive that rattling off the same things in our minds, over and over.

Case in point, when we are in first grade, we need to learn different things than what we will learn later on.

Everything is always changing

Humanity is always developing. So over time, we must keep taking different approaches. For example, in the Middle Ages, people tended to act out their cruelty. We couldn’t step back and identify our cruel impulses and take responsibility for them. We simply vented our rage and were swallowed up by our hateful feelings.

This meant we needed a strict authority from outside ourselves to keep ourselves in check. So, in the past, because we were so far removed from our spiritual core—because we couldn’t assume responsibility for our darkness—we projected both outside of us. Hence, we created an outer devil who would possess us, and an outer God who would help us.

Now all that has changed. We have come a long way in learning to use the power of our ego to accomplish great things. And this needed to happen. It’s moved us to no longer being helpless children who can’t take responsibility for our lives.

What we’re facing today, is the pride of our egos.

Therefore, the criteria for a spiritual path today has changed from the past. Now it’s time to learn how to activate such powers from deep within. Our work must now be to overcome our pride and our dependency on the opinions of others. This means we must develop our connection to own inner spiritual truth.*

Stages of prayer and meditation

As we grow and develop, the form our prayer and meditation takes will adapt to the concepts and attitudes we hold in any given stage.

Stage 1: We are in the stage of being without awareness

Humankind starts off in a stage of being, without awareness. In this stage, there is no prayer because we have no concept of God.

Stage 2: We begin to wonder and ask questions

In this stage, we begin to wonder about things and ask questions. Through this spontaneous experience of wondering, we start to fill ourselves with new considerations. And this, in itself, is a form of prayer and meditation.

Stage 3: We realize there is a supreme intelligence

Next, we gain a realization that there is some kind of supreme intelligence involved with life. At this stage, our prayer happens in the form of admiration as we marvel at the universe and splendor of nature. This is the way we worship.

Stage 4: We are confused, immature and feel inadequate

In this stage, our minds are confused, our emotions are immature, and we feel inadequate. This causes fear, clinginess, helplessness and dependence. Our prayers express our wishful thinking and greed, and our inability to accept reality as it is. We plea for help.

If, in this state, our prayers seem to be answered, it’s not because God is acting in our favor. Rather, in some way, in spite of all our self-deceiving and evasions, we are sincere enough to start to open an inner channel. In this way, the laws of being can start to penetrate us and our lives. Only later will we be able to make the distinction about what is really going on here.

Eventually, we will catch on that our own participation in our own self-development is what drives whether our prayers are answered. This is what turns the tide about feeling helpless. Our own personal self-discovery work will dismantle our belief in an arbitrary, willfull God who we must appease by following manmade rules.

For now, though, the strength of clear thoughts and an unconflicted mind in any given area will appear to us as a prayer that is answered.

Stage 5: We develop independence

As we grow further and move into a state of independence, we let go of the notion of an imaginary God who punishes and rewards, and who leads our life for us. At this point, we may well arrive into a state of atheism. We deny the reality of any higher being, and so of course we don’t pray. Or at least we don’t pray in any conventional way.

We might, however, meditate about ourselves. We might start looking within with sincerity. And this, we may have figured out by now, is really the best sort of prayer, in the truest sense.

Alternatively, we might at this atheistic point, become completely irresponsible. We fail to think critically or look deeply within. Essentially, we escape from ourselves, in much the same way another person may use God as an escape from looking at themselves.

Stage 6: We face ourselves and develop self-awareness

As some point, we become ready to face ourselves as we really are, right now, and actively pursue self-awareness. Starting out, we might still be accustomed to prayers that beg for help. We’re used to asking God to do for us what we could be doing for ourselves. But despite this old habit, we start to look within.

As we reach deeper and deeper levels of our being, we will gradually stop using the kind of prayer we used in the past. For a time, we might not even pray at all, in the usual sense of prayer. But now we might begin to learn to meditate. And that, friends, is often the very best prayer!

We meditate by looking at what really motivates us. And we allow our actual feelings to come to the surface. Then we question our feelings and their reason for being.

When we are involved in this kind of activity, praying in the old way becomes more and more meaningless, and even contradictory. Now, our prayer is the action of self-awareness and taking a good, hard look at ourselves in truth.

Our prayer is our sincere intention to face whatever in us is most unpleasant to look at. How is this a prayer? Because it contains a sincere attitude of wanting to be in truth, for the sake of truth. And truth is the doorway to love.

For without truth, there is no love. And without love, we can’t have an experience of God.

It’s literally not possible for love to grow when we are busy pretending a truth we don’t actually feel. But love can grow through our desire to face a truth, no matter how imperfect our desire might be.

• Our attitude of wanting to be in truth is prayer.
• Being candid with ourselves is prayer.
• Staying alert to our resistance is prayer.
• Owning up to something we have been hiding and feeling shame about is prayer.

As we keep growing these self-development processes, a new state of being slowly comes into existence. It happens little by little, with interruptions. But if we keep working towards being in truth, it happens.

Stage 7: State of being

Finally, we reach a state of being where prayer is no longer an action we utter with our words or thoughts. Prayer is now a feeling of living in the eternal Now. We flow in a current of love with all beings; we understand and we perceive. We feel alive.

This stage involves many indescribable feelings that make up our prayers, in the highest sense. It includes an inner awareness of God, in God’s true reality.

Reaching this form of prayer is an experience that cannot be imitated. We can’t learn it through any particular teachings or certain practices or disciplines. Rather, it’s the natural outcome of having the humility and courage to face ourselves completely, without holding anything back.

Before we can reach this highest state in which we can relate to God—where praying and being merge into one—there is just one thing we can do. And it’s the best prayer in the whole world: It’s the constantly renewed, continual intention to face ourselves in truth, without any reservations.

We must become willing to remove all our pretenses that we are currently better than we are. We must find all the obstacles between what we consciously think is true about ourselves and what is really in us. And then we must remove whatever blocks us from connecting with others.

This is the pathway.

How to meditate

There are many ways to meditate, and any way that helps us is a good way. But what’s effective for one person might not be so effective for another. For example, some might benefit from fixing their mind on an idea or object. Better yet, instead of concentrating on an object, we could use the issues in our personal life that come up when we try to quiet our mind.

In other words, we can use our life experience to understand ourselves and our reactions better. In this way, we combine the art of learning to concentrate with the skill of understanding how our psyche operates.

We can do this through a daily review in which we look at the past day to see where we felt disharmony of any kind. To start off, we can meditate before we begin our day, sending this thought deep into ourselves: “There are wise inner forces in me that can help me make this meditation fruitful and constructive. I ask them to help me see myself, and I know that this thought will have effect.”

Then, as we go through our day, we can notice where we had negative feelings. On a piece of paper with three columns, we note the occasion or situation in the first column. Then we note what kind of feeling we registered in the second column. All day long, we’ll want to keep expressing our desire to not look away, but to truly look at what we felt. Then, in the third column, we explore why we felt this.

If we are patient, consistent, and don’t shirk any issues, this exercise will do the most to get us actively going on this particular spiritual path. Once we get rolling, this practice of daily review will show us patterns that point to where and why we are stuck. Then we can meditate on what we uncover.

Whenever we have an issue in which we are negatively involved, we can hold onto ourselves, relax, and send this thought into ourselves: “I am currently not in truth. For any time I am confused or anxious, feeling hopeless, hostile or depressed, I must not be in truth. And I wish to be in truth.

“I ask the divine intelligence that is present in me to show me where and how I am not in truth. I am willing to let go of my self-will and all my pride. I release my fear and just want to see the truth. I want to expand and live a constructive life. My desire is to fulfill my destiny as a happy person. For happy is what I am meant to be.

“I wish to dissolve and clear away all the limitations inside me. But I can’t do that unless I know what they are. So I want to look at them.”

Every day, we can look at every little issue—none of them are unimportant—and determine the places we felt disharmony. If we do this, our hidden inner problems will eventually show themselves, even if on the outer surface the issue seems totally trivial.

Doing this form of daily review is an excellent and effective way to meditate.

Asking for inner guidance

To receive guidance from our inner self is not as simple as it might seem. For there is no formula for making it happen, and it only comes about gradually.

The first thing to realize is how tremendously powerful it is to deliberately activate inner guidance using the mind. Saying, “I want guidance about this specific thing,” is what brings results. The more specific we are, the more effective will be the results.

But if we are general and vague, it will be much more difficult to perceive guidance when it comes. For guidance responds exactly the way we called it forth.

The process we call meditation is really a dialogue between our mind, which activates guidance, and our mind that relaxes and lets the activation happen. Then we must learn to listen and understand the language of how guidance comes. Sometimes it is from intuition and sometimes it is from outside us. It comes in many different ways.

If guidance is truly wanted, it will come. The key is to truly want to get answers, to be in truth. By truly wanting to receive guidance and stating that desire—and also becoming more specific in our desire—we establish contact with our inner divine nucleus, or Higher Self. That is the home of cosmic truth inside us.

But keep in mind, it matters where we stand on our spiritual path. The right thing to meditate on today may not be relevant tomorrow, if we are moving forward. So we can also meditate about what’s the right meditation for us in this moment.

What’s true for me today?

“Knock and it will be opened unto you,” said Jesus Christ. The symbolism of knocking is that we pay attention and try to figure out what we need most, at the stage we are in. For our path is constantly changing. And we can’t pray, with equal focus, on everything at once.

How to pray

One thing we can pray about is spreading truth among humanity. We can also pray for those who are unhappy. And of course, we can pray for people we love, which is easy. In addition, we can offer prayers for those whom we don’t like. The more we dislike them, the more we should pray for them.

Try observing how it feels to wish such a person happiness. Be honest.

We can say to ourselves, “A part of me wants to wish them well. But another part struggles to offer good wishes for certain people.” If we do this, we are not living a lie. Give it a try. We can always ask God to help us feel love, wholeheartedly, for everyone, at least while we are sitting in prayer.

Beyond this, the Guide suggests that we all should pray for peace, for justice and for the spreading of divine law. But we can only contribute to peace and brotherhood/sisterhood by cultivating these qualities in ourselves. For regardless of what we pray for, as long as we have hatred, intolerance and resentment in us, we will actually be contributing to the opposite of everything we are praying for.

Once we realize that we are an important part of the universe, and that we have the ability to hinder divine love, peace and truth, we might feel like we are more responsible for what’s going in life. Then our prayers for good things to happen in the world won’t be so separate from our own need to develop further, along with everyone else.

As the Pathwork Guide teaches, by facing and healing ourselves, the self-will, pride and fear inherent in every human being will give way. These will shift to humility, love and being willing to align with God’s will, in all ways. But again, it’s not enough to pray for these things in a general way.

Our work is to observe in ourselves exactly where our own reactions, thoughts and feelings don’t line up with what is pleasing to God. What specifically do we fear? And once we understand this, we can pray for help to overcome our fears. Perhaps there is something we need to accept. Or maybe there is something we need to change.

As long as we keep praying to weave our personal problems into the fabric of our prayers, over time, our efforts will bear fruit. We will reap the powerful benefits of prayers.

When to pray

There is no right time to pray, because everyone is different. If we find it difficult to master discipline, then choosing the same time and place to pray every day may be helpful. For another, discipline might be better developed by not binding ourselves to some prescribed plan. It depends on our way of life, our character and so many circumstances.

There are no rules about this.

That said, the Pathwork Guide suggests rising and retiring with God. Try devoting a few minutes to prayers upon rising in the morning and again when going to bed. Or if another time of day suits us better, go with that. This doesn’t need to take more than a few minutes. In addition, we may want to dedicate a longer period of time, say 30 minutes, to prayer at another time during the day.

Selfishness in prayer

We often don’t realize that we need to pray for what we want. At the same time, we may worry that our prayers are selfish. What really matters most here is our motive. This is true regarding all our desires; it depends on how we go about things. The key to sorting out whether we are being selfish is actually quite simple.

If we pray for something solely because we want it—because we think it would be pleasant to have—and for no other reason, then this is a selfish prayer. As such, it will not do us any good at all. For the only thing that has an affect regarding prayer, is having a pure spiritual force coming from our soul.

To say a selfish prayer like this is to reveal a misunderstanding of life. And all misunderstandings sit upon untruth, even if we are basically an honest person. Any untrue thought—even if we come to it innocently and in good faith—cannot flow with the true forces of our Higher Self. For it is a spiritual law that “like attracts like”. And this law is unchangeable.

When we begin to walk this spiritual path, we must learn to inquire within about our motives. Why do I want this certain thing? Why am I having this emotional reaction? If the answer is not apparent to us, this would be an excellent thing to pray about. We can pray not only to see ourselves, fearlessly and truthfully, but also to have our motives become more pure.

Such a prayer for help in seeing and purifying our motives is not selfish. What’s more, it’s not selfish to pray for the good of others. Praying for someone who has hurt us—if we can do so and really mean it—is a purifying act. Further, it’s not selfish to pray for the courage and strength to face ourselves and get past our resistance to self-development.

There is nothing selfish about that.

After all, if we believe that wanting to be happy—which inevitably, eventually results from purifying ourselves—is self-serving, then remaining unpure and unhappy must be the better aim, right? Since that would seem selfless.

Don’t forget the way God’s laws work: Only people who are happy can bring happiness to other people. We’re not talking about cheap happiness here, which is the kind that is easy to come by. We are talking about the real thing that only comes through hard work. The kind that no one can take away from us.

We’ll never see an unhappy person truly making someone else happy. It’s impossible.

Praying for happiness

So, while an unhappy person might do a good deed, or maybe do a single unselfish act, they can’t make any else happy. This means that, beyond praying for others, the main intention of our prayers should be to purify and develop ourselves. We may then consider that the happiness that naturally comes as a byproduct of our work is a means to an end. It is not the end itself.

But don’t worry too much if a bit of selfishness about becoming happy is present as we get underway in our upward climb. We can accept ourselves as we are, which is of course imperfect. What’s important to understand is that happiness comes as a byproduct of purifying ourselves. Even if our motives are mixed, working towards happiness will still help carry us toward realizing the truth.

What doesn’t work is believing that happiness comes from giving in to the desires stemming from our lower nature.

There is hardly anyone who is completely free from selfishness. It’s better to see this for what it is, and not try to force it away. That will only make it go into hiding in our soul, where it does even more harm. It’s better to have the courage and clarity to know it is there, and we are aiming for something higher.

Also know this: it’s impossible to be both secluded and happy. The thing that really threatens us is to allow our separating walls to crumble. But by keeping our walls in place, we defeat our own purpose. We contradict our inherent desire to develop, which is on par with our fear of it.

We want to be happy and make others happy, but we can’t do either of these as long as we stay separate.

What’s the way out of separateness? We must do the very thing that’s seem so incredibly hard to do: We must go through our shame and give up our pride. There is nothing selfish about praying for help in doing so, as a means to deal with our problems in life. And facing our problems is the way to become happy.

Plus, keep in mind, God also wants us to be happy.

While not always said out loud, humans have a long tradition of mistakenly believing that being godly means being unhappy. That to be godly, one should be severe, and a martyr. This image is deeply engraved into all of humanity.

But no, it is not so.

There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty about becoming happy, even though it’s best to not pray directly for happiness. We can pray, though, for the strength and ability to remove our inner obstacles. These are what sit between us and our happiness.

This means we must navigate our way through our unhappiness, which we have inflicted upon ourselves through our ignorance and error. This is what will lead us to the clear light of peace and harmony. This is what will bring us beauty and joy that will not depend on what anyone else thinks, says or does.

This is the right spirit to have when we pray.

Praying silently or out loud

It really doesn’t matter whether we pray silently or out loud. For no doubt about it, if our words are concise, they will be just as effective either way. This is true because all thoughts create form, the same way that spoken words do. In fact, if we express words lightly, without giving them much meaning or impact, they have less power than silent words that we think and feel deeply.

Some people, however, may find it difficult to pray out loud in front of others. And this is something we should look into. For it means there is a block. What kind of block? Usually it’s a sign of pride. We might have told ourselves that our inability to pray in a group has to do with modesty. But we need to explore our feelings a bit more, asking why it feels so embarrassing to say a prayer in front of our friends.

What we will discover is that our embarrassment is connected with a feeling of humiliation.

When we pray to God, we will naturally feel humble. But to humble ourselves in front of others brings up feelings of humiliation. Being humble, then, is part of our emotions we want to avoid. As a result, when we are with others, we want to look like we are on top of the world. We are secure.

We want to hide and not let others see us as we really are, and as we also need to show ourselves to God: uncertain, insecure and groping in the dark. In other words, showing our true face, the way we show it to God, feels humiliating. And that, folks, is our pride.

But if we are truly a humble person, we will not be afraid to show ourselves as we currently really are. We will have the courage to be ourselves.

Hence, this one seemingly small symptom of struggling to pray from our heart in front of others hides a significant factor for our development. To face and overcome this, we shouldn’t force. Rather, we can evaluate our reactions in the light of truth. Then we can approach this problem from two sides, including both the inside and the outside.

Why it’s hard to start

As we all know, or will soon find out, spiritual development does not go up, up, up, following a straight line. It goes up and down in spirals. It is quite possible to be on a downward curve that is a step higher than our last upward curve. But the upward curves always feel better.

On an upward curve, we feel an elation and sense of liberation that’s not there on a downward curve. And yet we had to work our way up to our latest downward curve. On downward curves, we always run into conflicts that we haven’t resolved yet. And they make us feel unsettled.

Until we have worked our way through them and understood them, downward curves make us restless and fearful. Our goal is to fit them into as much of the whole picture as we can now see. Once we do this, off we go on another upward curve, enjoying the clear, fresh air that comes with gaining a bit more truth.

But every time a downward curve comes, we must delve back into the darkness of our error and confusion. And doing that cuts us off from the stream of divine flow.

We tend to oversimplify things, thinking the unpleasant things we are experiencing—and our depression about experiencing it—is cutting us off from the divine flow.

But we’re only half right.

For the unpleasantness we’re now experiencing on the downward curve is just a reflection of something inside us waiting to be dug out. It’s a necessary effect of a cause we have set into motion. And that inner cause is what cuts off the flow.

How long does this last? It depends on us and the problem we are solving. But during this time, we will be surrounded by the challenges that come with this world of manifestation. Yes, we may have tasted another reality at other times, but now we can’t connect with it.

We feel disconnected, but this is a necessary step. For it launches us into doing battle, once again, so we can achieve victory, once again. And fortunately, every victory means we are on another upward curve.

When we are mired in our temporary darkness, it’s natural that we won’t feel the absolute truth of God. For in the moment, we are not vibrating with the truth. And we can’t force this to happen using our will. What we can do, and should do, as we go through these periods of darkness is think our way through what we are finding, in light of what we now know.

For now, this knowledge sits only in our ego mind. But as we move forward, we will be filled with a deeper knowing that will lift us up.

The Lord’s Prayer

Once we get rolling on our journey of personal self-development, we want to adjust our prayers to match our inner needs. For to stay fresh and alive, our approach to our inner selves needs to evolve. In which case, using a prepared prayer or ready meditation may not serve us best.

In keeping with this, it’s much better to be spontaneous in using the Lord’s Prayer, according to our present need. When saying this powerful prayer, it helps to mindfully tune into its original meaning.

For example, when we say, “Our father”, we are not talking to a person who lives in heaven. We are turning our attention toward the spirit of truth and the divine powers that dwell inside each one of us. For we can all access that universal consciousness.

It is there that we will find unity among everyone. For that Higher Self, or spiritual being, is one. It is yours, and it is mine, and it is everyone else’s. This same source is what we are aiming to contact in our spiritual development. We want to unify ourselves with it and become integrated with it.

It is, at one and the same time, individual for each of us, and multifaceted for all of us. For we are each individual people, with this source of oneness in all of us. There exists a oneness in purpose and in, well, everything. And we could call this the “father”.

The master came here to teach us that the kingdom of heaven is within our souls. It’s always within. If we understand this, the rest of these teachings about prayer and meditation will drop into place. By understanding things in this different way, prayer and meditation become more meaningful.

Most importantly, we’ll start to see that what we do to ourselves, we do to others. And what we do others, we also do to ourselves.

This also goes a long way in explaining what else is in the Lord’s Prayer.

Healing others through prayer

There are very few people who possess the strength to directly heal others using prayer. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pray for our brothers and sisters. For thinking of our loved ones—or anyone for that matter—in prayer and meditation can be a tremendous help. We can’t even begin to appreciate how much we can help in this way.

After all, each thought and each feeling creates a substantial form in the Spirit World. No thought is ever lost, especially if it is a good and constructive one that comes from a place of love and goodwill. They add to the cosmic river that streams through the universe.

This helps the forces for good become stronger than the forces of evil. Of course, every evil thought also contributes to the reservoir and gives strength to the darkness.

If it aligns with God’s will that our prayers can directly help someone, there will be an immediate result. Keep in mind, though, that sometimes our dear one needs to go through certain difficulties in order to free themselves from their bonds. This, of course, is what can lead to permanent happiness for them.

But even so, our prayers for them will still not be lost. Of this we can be sure. Its form still exists and will have the proper effect when the time is right.

If we are among those who have connected with God in our souls, devoting more time in prayer is highly recommended. There is value in praying for all the unhappy souls who can’t yet see even a glimmer of light within.

So often, we waste time brooding and thinking unproductive thoughts. The more productive thing to do is to pray. By doing this, we add great force to the Plan of Salvation that is working to elevate all of humanity.

Using mantras

Mantras are repetitious phrases used as prayers. Usually they are, at best, a form of hypnotic self-suggestion. As such, they don’t contribute insight, growth or deeper understanding. We can further our development far more by spending five minutes trying to understand our problems and gain truthful insight into them than we can through hours and hours of repeating mantras.

We don’t need an expert opinion to sort this out. Simply ask yourself: Does it make sense that uttering the same phrase, again and again, gains us anything? Notice for yourself the way repeating a phrase more and more makes it lose more and more of its meaning.

Eventually, a mantra becomes an automatic process. It can’t help becoming that. And while it may temporarily produce a trancelike state, complete with certain sensations, does that truly produce inner growth? Only a hypnotic state that leads us to deeper recognitions about our conflicts and our inner problems can ever be really growth producing.

The benefit of a mantra exercise may lie in helping us learn to concentrate. If it does that—and we do need to develop the ability to concentrate—it’s not a waste. The next step is to concentrate where it is meaningful: where our fears and difficulties lie. The more we develop, the more we want to train our awareness towards these kinds of things.

How to get started

Become still and let these words from the Pathwork Guide fill you. Let yourself flow along with them:

“Be still and know I am God, the ultimate power. Listen to this power within, to this presence and to these intentions. I am God, everyone is God. God is all, in everything that lives and moves, that breathes and knows, that feels and is.

“God in me has the power to make the separated little ego know the ultimate power to integrate this ego. I have the possibility to feel all my feelings—to deal with and handle all my feelings. This possibility is there in me, and I know this potentiality can be realized the moment I know it. And I now choose to know I can be alive; I have the strength to be weak and vulnerable.

“I can accept my numbness now, my insecurities, my feeling state and my nonfeeling state. I can listen into this state and wait. I can be still and feel into me. I can be still and hear my superior intelligence, the God intelligence, instruct me. I can establish this contact.

I will pay the price by giving the best I have and am to life. I will live my life honestly in wanting to give the best. For then I will be able to receive the best without cringing. I do not fear to invest the best of myself into life.”

–The Guide’s wisdom in Jill Loree’s words

Adapted from:

Keywords: Prayer & Meditation (Read all original Q&As with the Pathwork Guide on the topics of prayer and meditation on The Guide Speaks)

*From original Pathwork Lecture #204: What is the path?

Jill Loree’s concentration exercise for beginning to quiet the mind

While sitting with your eyes open, find something in the room to gently rest your gaze upon (not stare at). With your eyes looking at one place, take three slow deep breaths. Focus on the breath and not allowing thoughts to intrude.

During the third breath, use your peripheral vision to choose another spot to rest your gaze on for the next three breaths. If/when your mind wanders, just start again. No judgement. This is a muscle that is not easy to build.

When lying down with your eyes closed, shift your focus to different parts of the body, such as a kneecap, a fingernail, an ear lobe, a nostril. Also, relax the muscles of your face.

Five minutes a day is a good place to start. Don’t overdo it.