Why Is Prayer a Pain?

Copyright Don Ray 2015

Should prayer be difficult?

Shouldn’t contemplative prayer, connecting with Source, be easy and natural?  If it is not easy, is it our fault?....or the fault of the  noisy world?

Shouldn’t contemplative prayer be the best part of the day, the wonderful and desirable escape to Reality and peace and healing from the day’s maelstrom of demands and madness?

And shouldn’t God and the loving Spirit and the Christos be readily available, responding to our summoning?

Yet contemplative prayer is not easy, not automatic, not simple.

Rote and recited prayer seems too easy.  Mumble or read or project the words, scripted or impromptu, and you have submitted your invoice to God.

But contemplative prayer?......listening as well as talking?......not so easy.

It is hard to hear God when our minds keep so stridently insisting that we instead listen to them.

It’s as if God wants to know we really want the contact.  It is as if we really need to prove to ourselves that we want the contact.

Giving thanks at dinnertime takes little time out of the day and costs essentially nothing.  In-depth contemplative prayer requires giving up something.  We could instead be doing something, and best of all, doing something without first taking time to examine whether it is the right thing to do.

There is little automatic and natural about contemplative prayer.  It is as automatic and natural as rock climbing or skydiving.  But all these are immensely rewarding, the latter two rewarding momentarily, the first rewarding eternally.

By its nature contemplative prayer is a discipline (a word tantalizingly close to “disciple”).  There is commitment in contemplative prayer; it is a conscious and chosen act; it is an act that instantiates a chosen priority.

If contemplative prayer were easy, more people would do it.  If it were not so rewarding, no one would practice it.

That contemplative prayer is not easy speaks to its meaningfulness.  That it requires discipline hints at its potential for promoting personal growth.

Contemplative prayer will be easy when we no longer need it, when each moment of our existence flows in such perfect Communion with Source and Sustainer that taking time out to engage in contemplative prayer would be redundant.

The fact contemplative prayer is not easy and requires taking “time out” speaks to the absence of consideration of the Holy in our daily life, awareness of and openness to the loving Spirit not naturally unfolding in our tasks, a fact that indicts the motivation and objectives of our tasks.

The difficulty of contemplative prayer does not speak of a problem with contemplative prayer, it reveals the problem with the rest of our lives, worldly and disconnected from Source.

So apply the discipline, reserve the time, try to quiet the mind, accept awareness of the beautiful but also awareness of that within and without that is anything but beautiful; breathe in the Holy Spirit in times of contemplative prayer that we may breathe out Love while busy in the world.

If you know someone for whom this might have relevance, please pass it on.

Copyright 2015 Don Ray