Guest Blogger-Gianna Kali

Reprinted with permission from my friend Gianna Kali, webmistress of "Beyond Meds".

My prayerful and meditative journey of late–beginning lessons of the soul
March 3, 2009 by giannakali
Every morning when I wake up now I start it first with a period of contemplative prayer, followed by a period of mindfulness meditation.

I only began to pray recently, in the last few months when my physical suffering at times became unbearable. Emotionally too I was struggling with questions about why in the hell I should be going through all this. Before that I had a pretty cynical and even anti view towards prayer for myself, though I always gladly accepted prayer from others.

I like the way Daniel Mackler refers to prayer in this post on being your own therapist here:

Prayer, a hateful word to many because it is so misused (by ultra-religious people) and so disrespected (by those traumatized by the ultra-religious), is a wonderful form of self-reflection. It is done best in silence and privacy, so that only you and your own heart can hear your deepest desires and needs. Prayer is a chance to go as deep as you can consciously go, and a chance to let your soul air its most beautiful truth. The most original and honest prayers open the deepest doors, and let us know who we really are and what it is that is most important to us in our lives. They say that prayer is talking to “God,” and when we remember that the Kingdom of God is within, and that “God” is really just the best of our truest inner self connected with the truth of the whole universe, we remember that when we pray we are talking with our best friend in the universe.

So anyway, I start each day in this manner. Prayer with word and thought in my mind, I speak my heart to the universe, and then meditation with the goal of being present with whatever is in my being and embracing it completely. This may include painful and unpleasant feelings as well as positive. I try to embrace it all and simply be with it.

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