Praying in the Heart

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Our physical heart is the source of the flow of the life-sustaining blood stream. It is the physical center of our biological life. Corresponding to the physical heart, there is within us a spiritual heart. It is the source of our choices, loves and hates. It is the "organ" of our freedom. It is the center of our consciousness, the place where awareness originates. Prayer is an act of free choice. It takes place in the spiritual heart where love and awareness are born. A prayer that would be said only in the body, only with the lips, would be no prayer at all. All true prayer, as free loving awareness of God, takes place in the heart...is prayer of the heart. That is why we are told to go down into our hearts in order to pray purely.

Yes, we must make an inward journey into our own depths if we are to pray sincerely. We have attended to the proper external place, time and posture for prayer. All that was only necessary preparation for the journey into our hearts. There we will meet Jesus. In order to carry this instruction further, I will have to select an exemplary prayer formula. You may use any words you wish. I will use the Blessed Name of Jesus. For me, this Name implicitly contains all the revealed Truth of God and it is the sum total of all the petitions that could be addressed to God. With the prayer formula, Jesus, we will go down into the center of our consciousness, down into our spiritual heart.

In order to make this descent, we may use the beating of our physical heart as a medium. The very act of directing our attention to our physical heart withdraws our attention from everything outside us. We will use our physical heart to assist us in entering our spiritual heart by learning how to say our chosen prayer by heart. I must first gain your agreement that a person's heart can say "Jesus," or any prayer, just as well as a person's voice. What is a word? It is a bodily motion joined to a mental intention. When you say "yes," you are making a physical, bodily motion, forcing air through the voice box with special movements of tongue and mouth. At the same time you intend that motion to signify your assent or agreement. When you say "Jesus," you mentally mean the Reality which you intend to signify by the physical motion in your throat and mouth. It is quite possible to intend to signify the same meant Reality of Jesus by the physical motion of your heart beat. It is simply a matter of learning to "mean" Jesus by your heart beat as you once learned to "mean" Him by producing the oral sound of His name.

At first, put your hand on your chest and explore there until you have a clear feeling of the rhythmic "beat-rest" motion of the heart. After a while, you will develop a sensitivity to your heart beat so that you will be able to attend to it at will, with no help needed from the hand. To begin with, say the Blessed Name, Jesus quietly under your breath in association with the "beat-rest" rhythm of your heart. After some practice, you will be able to drop the under-breath repetition of the Name, and then you will just listen to your heart say Jesus with its every stroke.

Once you have accomplished these mechanics of the prayer of the heart and become comfortable with it, something disconcerting will happen. You will find that your heart says the prayer Jesus too fast for you. After "hearing" your heart say Jesus a few times, you will be taken up into a very concentrated and loving attention to Him. This amounts to passing from your physical heart down into your spiritual heart. But while you try to abide, gazing with love upon Him, your heart will continue pumping out its rhythmic Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. At this point, it would be a distraction to you to pay attention to the prayer uttered by your physical heart. Now you are in your Spiritual Heart. Stay there, held by your awareness of Jesus. Forget your physical heart beat for the time being. Do not hold yourself bound to listen to its prayer with every beat. The prayer of the physical heart has done its work; it has served its purpose. It is no longer useful. Leave it alone to beat and pray on its own. You are busy now with a higher activity: attending to Jesus in a single impulse of love in your spiritual heart.

It will not be more than seconds or minutes at most, before you lose your concentrated love and attention to Jesus. You will suddenly find yourself outside your heart. You will discover yourself engaged in thinking or remembering. You will be lost somewhere in your mind. Now you must leave your mind with its endless thoughts, feelings and memories. You must return to your heart, there to meet Jesus. Immediately you turn your attention to your physical heart. You listen again to its beating out the Blessed Name: Jesus. Again, perhaps, your attention will become strongly fixed on Jesus. You then let your attention to your physical heart beat fade away. Because now again you are in your spiritual heart invoking Jesus in a single unbroken stream of loving desire and consciousness.

To sum up. Use the prayer of your physical heart as a passage to the prayer of your spiritual heart. It is not necessary nor desirable to listen to your heart say Jesus with every single beat. It is sufficient to return to the heart and listen to it utter the Blessed Name Jesus whenever we are not in our own center of consciousness, the spiritual heart.

Whether we invoke the Name of Jesus with our lips, minds or heart, let us put our whole heart and soul and mind and strength into our prayer. These observations apply as well to any formula of short prayer. In addition to a special daily period devoted exclusively to prayer in the heart, we should try to say it frequently during the day. But not too often! Never more than we are inspired by God. Never more than we can fill with meaning and sincerity.