Author’s Note to This Revised Edition
When this book first appeared, it was written from within the living tradition of Unity and New Thought and from my own early effort to understand meditation and prayer as practical paths of spiritual transformation. I still value that original purpose. The book was meant to help readers move beyond secondhand religious ideas and discover, through direct experience, the inner reality of God, the soul, and the creative power of consciousness.
In the years since writing it, my understanding has continued to unfold. Some words and assumptions that once served me now need clarification. I no longer think of spiritual growth as the soul becoming something it is not already, nor do I understand prayer as a technique for persuading God, manipulating conditions, or forcing results. I now see the spiritual life more clearly as the awakening of consciousness to what is already whole, complete, and quietly present at the level of the soul.
For this reason, I have revised this work not by erasing its earlier voice, but by bringing its central ideas into clearer alignment with the understanding that later emerged in my writing. Where the original speaks of expressing the attributes of God, I now also hear the language of the soul. Where it speaks of God’s desire or God’s will, I understand this less as the intention of an external being and more as the natural movement of the Creative Life Force seeking expression through every individual life.
Some passages have therefore been clarified, softened, or reframed. Language that could suggest an interventionist God, a formulaic view of healing or prosperity, or a mechanical use of denial and affirmation has been reconsidered. At the same time, I have no wish to remove the practical heart of the book. Meditation remains, for me, a practice of entering the silence and becoming conscious of the spiritual reality already present. Prayer remains the conscious alignment of thought, feeling, and action with that reality.
I have also chosen not to hide the fact that this book reflects a journey of understanding. Every book belongs to a stage of growth. A revised edition should not pretend the original was written from the author’s later perspective. Rather, it should allow the original insight to remain visible while removing unnecessary confusion and ideas that no longer represent the author’s clearest thought.
I offer this revised edition, then, as both a continuation and a refinement. If the earlier edition helped readers develop a practical prayer life, I hope this one helps them move even more deeply into the inner source from which prayer, meditation, healing, prosperity, relationships, and creative living all proceed. The aim is not to make the soul more spiritual, but to help consciousness become more transparent to the soul that has been whole from the beginning.
In later works, I have used phrases such as native soul and complete soul to describe this same spiritual essence: the soul as already whole, fully present, and lacking nothing essential. This book does not require those terms in order to stand on its own, but it points toward the same understanding. Meditation and prayer are presented here as practical means by which consciousness becomes receptive to the soul’s wholeness and learns to express that wholeness in the ordinary circumstances of life.
This revised edition also includes expanded review sections and a thirty-day guide intended to help readers move from understanding into lived experience. These additions are offered in the same spirit as the rest of the book: not as a rigid program, but as practical invitations to become still, listen inwardly, release what obscures spiritual reality, and let the soul’s wholeness become more visible in daily life.
J Douglas Bottorff
How to Use This Book
This book is meant to be used as well as read. Its purpose is not merely to explain meditation and prayer, but to help you enter a practical experience of both. You may certainly read it straight through, and that is often the best way to become acquainted with the whole movement of thought. But the deeper value of the book will come as you pause, reflect, practice, and allow the ideas to become part of your own consciousness.
I suggest that you approach these pages slowly. The ideas presented here are not intended to be accepted simply because they appear in print. They are invitations to test something in your own experience. When a statement touches you, troubles you, challenges you, or seems especially important, stop with it for a while. Let it work in you. Ask what it reveals about the way you have been thinking, praying, relating, healing, choosing, or meeting change.
Meditation and prayer are not separate from ordinary life. Meditation opens consciousness to the inner source, and prayer carries that awareness into thought, feeling, speech, choice, and action. For this reason, do not think of the practices in this book as occasional religious exercises performed only in quiet moments. Quiet moments are important, but the real test of spiritual practice is the way you meet the day before you: the conversation you would rather avoid, the fear that rises unexpectedly, the decision that asks for courage, the relationship that calls for honesty, the opportunity that asks you to grow.
You may find it helpful to keep a notebook or journal as you read. Use it not for complicated analysis, but for simple honesty. Write down the thoughts you want to release, the qualities you want to establish, the questions that arise, and the insights that come during meditation. If a denial or affirmation speaks to your present need, copy it, adapt it, and work with it until it becomes your own. The words themselves are not magic. Their value lies in the inner movement of release, receptivity, and establishment they help awaken.
As you read, resist the temptation to turn prayer into a formula for forcing results. Prayer, as used in these pages, is not a way of persuading God to act or of manipulating conditions through repeated words. Prayer is the conscious alignment of mind and heart with spiritual reality. It begins by releasing the fear, resentment, limitation, or false identity that has been shaping your experience. It continues by establishing in consciousness the qualities of the soul—life, love, wisdom, peace, wholeness, freedom, and creative power. From this clearer state, appropriate thought, speech, choice, and action become more possible.
If you are new to meditation, begin simply. Do not look for extraordinary sensations or dramatic experiences. Sit quietly, relax the body, and turn attention inward with patience. If the mind wanders, gently return. If nothing seems to happen, do not assume nothing is happening. Every sincere movement toward stillness helps consciousness become more receptive to the spiritual reality already present. In time, the fruit of meditation may appear not only during the practice itself but also in moments of unexpected peace, insight, gratitude, courage, or clearer perception during the day.
If you already have an established spiritual practice, let this book deepen rather than replace it. You may discover language that differs from what you have used before. You may also find that some familiar religious ideas are being reframed. Do not hurry to defend old assumptions or adopt new ones. Let the practice itself be your teacher. The aim is not to exchange one set of secondhand beliefs for another, but to move toward firsthand spiritual knowing.
The Review and Practice sections at the end of each part are intended as places to pause, integrate, and apply what you have read. Do not rush past them. You may want to reread them before moving forward, especially if you are working through the book over several weeks. Use the questions, practices, and prayers as opportunities to notice what you understand more clearly, what you are resisting, and what practical step is now being asked of you. Spiritual growth rarely proceeds by information alone. It unfolds as understanding becomes practice and practice becomes a more honest way of living.
After the main text, you will find a thirty-day practice guide. You may use it after reading the book, or return to it later whenever you want to renew your practice. It is not meant as a rigid program or a measure of spiritual success. It is a companion for continuing the rhythm of stillness, release, establishment, reflection, and action in the practical circumstances of daily life.
Above all, be patient with yourself. There may be times when the silence feels natural and prayer feels alive. There may be other times when the mind is busy, the emotions are unsettled, or the old familiar patterns seem stronger than your spiritual intention. These variations are part of the path. Return again to the simple practices: become still, listen inwardly, release what is false or fearful, establish what is spiritually true, and take the next honest step.
Read this book, then, with a pencil in hand, a listening heart, and a willingness to experiment. Let meditation teach you the inner stillness from which the soul may be known. Let prayer teach you how to carry that knowing into the practical conditions of life. If you use the book in this way, it can become more than a discussion of meditation and prayer. It can become a companion in the continuing work of allowing consciousness to become more transparent to the soul that has been whole from the beginning.
Introduction
A newly ordained minister decided to hold a garden party for selected members of his congregation whom he wanted to get to know better. The night before the party, he realized he had forgotten to invite Mrs. Brown, an elderly charter member who also happened to be a generous financial contributor to the church. Quickly, he picked up the phone to deliver the invitation personally. “I’m sorry, but you’re too late, Reverend,” retorted the angry Mrs. Brown. “I’ve already prayed for it to rain on your party!”
Isn’t it interesting to observe how people view the purpose and effect of prayer? Though we may chuckle at Mrs. Brown’s vengeful attitude, we know that her assumption is not uncommon. Many people have thought of prayer as a way to get God to change someone else, grant a special favor, bless one team over another, or arrange circumstances according to personal preference. When prayer is understood in this way, thoughtful people naturally turn from it, seeing it as a practice for the superstitious, the self-righteous, or those who hope to gain divine assistance for merely human wishes.
Yet when meditation and prayer are understood from the inside out, no practices are more important to spiritual awakening. Meditation is not an attempt to reach a distant God, and prayer is not a technique for influencing an external power. Meditation is the practice of becoming still enough to recognize the spiritual reality already present. Prayer is the conscious alignment of thought, feeling, imagination, and action with that reality. Meditation helps you notice the inner life already moving within you, and prayer helps you live from it. Together, they help consciousness become transparent to the soul, that deeper spiritual essence which is whole from the beginning and seeks expression through every facet of life.
Because so much emphasis is placed on meditation and prayer, questions such as these naturally arise: “How do I meditate and pray?” “What should I expect to happen?” “What is the difference between meditation and prayer?” “How do I quiet my mind?” “How does prayer work if God is not being persuaded?” “How do I know whether I am aligning with spiritual truth rather than merely repeating words?” These and many other important questions will be raised and addressed in the pages of this book. But before we begin, it is important to establish where these practices fit within the larger movement of spiritual growth.
I do not feel it is possible to fully understand meditation and prayer unless we first understand, to some degree, our place and purpose within the whole of life. While many people limit prayer to immediate needs, its deeper function is to help consciousness awaken to and cooperate with the spiritual life already moving within us. In everyday language, prayer is not just asking for help; it is learning how to meet life from a clearer and deeper place. In Part One of this book, “Laying the Foundation,” my intent is to place our relationship with the Infinite in a perspective that explains not only how to meditate and pray, but also why we meditate and pray. We meditate to become conscious of the spiritual source from which we spring. We pray to bring that realization into the practical field of thought, feeling, choice, and action.
Parts Two and Three explain the theory and practice of meditation and prayer, offering practical explanations of their functions as well as simple steps for their use. At the end of each part, the Review and Practice sections invite you to pause, reflect, and apply what has been presented before moving on. Part Four offers suggestions on how prayer may be applied in the areas of healing, prosperity, and relationships. These applications are not presented as formulas for forcing outer results, but as ways of releasing limiting patterns and allowing the qualities of the soul—wholeness, freedom, love, wisdom, peace, and creative power—to become more fully expressed in daily life. The aim is to help these qualities show up in the way you think, speak, choose, work, heal, relate, and grow. In Part Five, I present some thoughts on growth dynamics, using the biblical account of Cain and Abel as a framework. It is helpful to understand the inner forces that resist growth so we may meet change with greater courage, self-honesty, and trust in the Creative Life Force unfolding through us. The book concludes with a thirty-day practice guide designed to help you carry the whole movement of meditation and prayer into daily life.
This book is by no means presented as the last word on meditation and prayer. I do, however, believe it offers practical and challenging insights into these essential disciplines. My hope is that it will help you move beyond secondhand religious ideas and discover, through direct experience, the inner source from which prayer, meditation, healing, prosperity, relationships, and creative living all proceed. The aim is not to make the soul more spiritual, but to help consciousness become more receptive to the soul that has been whole from the beginning. This book is an invitation to become still, listen inwardly, release what no longer serves you, and let your daily life express more of what is true at the deepest level.
Part I: Laying the Foundation
An Integral Part of Nature
In this broad earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection.
By every life a share or more or less,
None born but it is born, conceal’d or
unconceal’d the seed is waiting.
—Walt Whitman
The natural rhythm of life orchestrates and harmonizes every aspect of the manifest world. This rhythm is a “seed perfection” permeating the unfoldment of things. Everywhere in nature, we see patterns, checks, and balances that support the ongoing movement of the creative flow. When one species becomes numerous enough to threaten its shared environment, the predator of that species increases also. When the preyed-upon species declines, the predatory species declines accordingly. As harsh as nature’s economy can appear, it has carried forward the process of biological evolution for millions of years.
Detecting harmony in nature is not difficult. If we are not patient enough to observe the symbiotic relationships existing among the individual expressions of life, we can read about them or watch the results of countless nature studies that biologists, naturalists, paleontologists, botanists, and others have provided for the general public. As these studies repeatedly reveal, nature’s attention to balance, survival, adaptation, and perpetuation is astounding.
When we come to the world of the human species, however, balance and harmony are not always so evident. It is tempting to define humanity only in terms of selfishness, greed, territorialism, racism, violence, and short-sightedness. George Bernard Shaw once observed, in effect, that humanity often achieves its highest ideals more convincingly on paper than in lived reality.
Like the captain of a certain police force, we may have developed a pessimistic attitude toward human nature. The station had been quiet most of the week and the detectives had spent a great deal of their time playing cards. In the height of his boredom, one of the officers grumbled, “What a boring job! No fights, no thefts, no riots, no murders, no nothin’.” “Rest easy,” said the captain. “Things will break soon. You just gotta have faith in human nature.”
Certainly there are grounds upon which to base this attitude, for we have reached a point where, by our own hand, it is possible to damage the delicate conditions that support life on this planet. The very powers that make human creativity so extraordinary can also become destructive when they are governed by fear, ignorance, or separation from the deeper spiritual center.
Human beings, however, do not operate outside the realm of nature. Astronomer Fred Hoyle emphasized this point in Frontiers of Astronomy, observing that ordinary human experience is inseparably connected with the large-scale structure of the universe.
We are an integral part of nature, not an exception to it. It is therefore too simple to regard humanity as a cosmic accident or as a blundering intruder upon the earth. The evidence of our long evolutionary development suggests something more subtle: consciousness is unfolding within nature, and through us nature has become increasingly aware of itself. This does not excuse our destructive tendencies, but it does place them within a larger movement of growth, trial, error, correction, and awakening.
So far has the human race come that the welfare of many species, including our own, now rests in large measure in our hands. This has become increasingly apparent as we intervene in and assume responsibility for the management of other forms of life and the environments that sustain them. Our growth carries with it undreamed-of responsibilities and implications that can sometimes frighten or anger, but more often inspire awe if we keep our minds forward-looking. We would do well to share in Paul’s vision of creation waiting for humanity to awaken to its divine sonship and to help creation itself move toward freedom from bondage and decay (Rom. 8:19, 21). Spiritually understood, this “revealing” is not the rise of a superior creature over nature, but the awakening of consciousness to its unity with the Creative Life Force moving through all life forms.
There is order in the way our species is unfolding, and we may dare to call it divine order. Each of us is here as a unique expression of the Creative Life Force, and each carries a purpose important to the grand scheme of things. So great is this purpose and our reason for existence that we, as individuals, may never fully grasp its scale. Yet we can know our place in this scheme and learn to do our part in carrying it forward. We do this not by trying to fulfill the demands of an external deity, but by awakening consciousness to the soul and allowing its qualities—life, love, power, and intelligence—to find expression in the circumstances of daily life. To cooperate with the creative flow is to become conscious of this inner movement and to let it shape our thoughts, choices, relationships, work, and prayer.