How to teach prayer. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
- Prayer, alongside meditation, is an integral part of religious traditions. God can be prayed to but also saints and angels.
In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark ask whether and why prayer is not widely discussed, how prayer can be practiced, and what prayer might be.
They share personal practices of prayer and explore the agency of angels and saints. They ask about the entities that people report encountering when using psychedelics, alongside other questions such as how to pray for people and what can be expected from prayer.
The desire to pray seems to be an almost universal human impulse. Much more might be made of it.
For more conversations between Rupert and Mark see
www.sheldrake.org/audios/shel...
www.markvernon.com/talks - บันเทิง
thanks for all your videos
Thanks for your saying and doing. I enjoyed the conversation and liked the theme.
'The garden's full of furniture and the house is full of plants!' (Flanders and Swann)
Thank you Mr Sheldrake for bringing up this matter. And Mr Vernon, your personal comments seemed spot on.
My Mexican Catholic wife prays to God and to various Saints as she was taught down here… Excellent results!! Wonderful to witness!
As an old Anglican myself, Christian prayer, i have long believed, should follow the Lord’s prayer - or a set prayer - perhaps the Jesus prayer - and then should be as direct, natural and honest to one’s person and tongue as possible while retaining the highest degree of respect and manners for the Almighty Father as possible to make praise genuine.
Yes, one can and should utterly bare one’s soul with the Lord and do so more easily than with any mortal soul, but one should try to form full phrases coherently at times - concentrate one’s mind - rather than just drift through those periods of floating unformed thought which of course happen often serendipidously.
To become like Brother Lawrence - to try to learn to live in the presence of God - to try to pray without ceasing as St Paul puts it - is, in many ways, to take Christianity on with seriousness… And this, correctly construed, can mean to infuse your life with profound levity, awe and uplift to be somehow employed or deployed for the benefit of all those around you modestly and fully unpretentiously - almost unconsciously - and yet purposefully.
Prayer can radiate from some people and this is particularly key to the Christian person, it seems to me - I don’t really know why I should say this… “Truth”, maybe…? (!)
It was a joy to feel this while in your company - thank you again.
I’d love to hear more about both your thoughts on this. Thank you.
Lovely discussion!
What a refreshingly honest conversation. I have had a great difficulty learning to pray again after many years of not doing so. I'm more comfortable with older prayers because they seem to be crucial in formation of community. The prayer of confession, in a post magical thinking sense to me is that of recognition in speech of who I am today and the petition for the awareness and energy to keep turning to the divine and the leading of the Spirit. Recognition of modern life's tendency to be the express lane to idolatry. So it's not just me dealing with it alone.
6:05 (Liberal) Quakers don't start with a spoken invocation, but with silence. One could say that silence is their invocation. For an outsider, it looks like they're just meditating. But to them it's like a collective prayer, in "expectant silence".
Thank you for this an invitation to contemplation, which I don’t remembering you mention, maybe a third aspect to the inhalation & exhalation of the breath, maybe the holding, or the point between the out & the in. And indeed the title is a very interesting question, which goes far beyond the mechanics of learning & reciting, but maybe has to do with transmission.
And transmission of course touches into your discussion of the Spirit World. In Sufism there are specific names for these Worlds the World of Bodies, the World of Spirits, and the Spiritual World. The world of 😮Spirits is of course vast of of many levels.. maybe also called the Imaginal World, the World of Values & Qualities etc.. is it also the World of Souls? So as you discussed, the meeting with our personal Guardian Being is maybe here where we can connect with them, or our own soul, to the Spiritual World & the world beyond existence.. and all that.. I found myself during your conversation opened to that connection & in the simplicity that Prayer is…
Thanks for the suggestion of Compline Mark.. I’m struck how helpful a light structure or ritual can be to take us across the bridge into the next world (or through the Eye of the Needle)
Hey mark, enjoyed the conversation, just wodering if you have come across the chris bledsoe story over in the states? His story is full of orbs, angels, hathor and everything in between with much evidence in his arsenal. Its well worth having a gander
Also, I'm reminded of this quote by Francois Fenelon: "Meditation is not prayer, but it is its necessary foundation; it brings to mind the truths which God has revealed. We should be conversant not only with all the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and the truths of his Gospel, but also with everything they ought to operate in us for our regeneration"
Thank you so much for this wonderful talk.
Just as an exercise to please my heart on this Sabbath morning, I write here a few verses from the Qur'an to second what you both said.
RE ANGELS' JOB
"When revealed your Lord to the angels, 'I am with you, so strengthen those who believed.'"[8:12].
[Also see at 2:30 - 34, 3:125, 7:11, 8:9, 15:30].
"God chooses from the angels (as) messengers, and from the men." [22:75].
"He is the One who sends His support/blessing upon you and His angels so that He may bring you out from the darkness to the light. And He is to the believers Merciful." [33:43].
[Also see at 3:39 (angel to Zechariah), 3:42 (to Mary), 4:172 (to Jesus son of Mary), 33:56 (to Muhammad); 16:2 (in general)].
Note. A fine line between seeking God vs. seeking the angels [even as a mediator]. According to the Qur'an, the Source is God and hence only God must be sought.
"And not He will order you that you take the angels and the prophets [as] lords." [3:80].
RE RANKS OF MAN
"And He is the One who has made you successors of the earth and raised some of you above others in ranks, so that He may test you in what He has given you." [6:165]
"God raises those who believe among you and those who are given the knowledge, in ranks. And God of what you do is All-Aware." [58:11].
WHY PETITIONARY PRAYER IS NOT ALWAYS HEARD
In Arabic, the word Ra-de رضى not only means to please but it also means to choose. So the pious [according to the Qur'an] are those who are pleased with what God has chosen for them.
"God is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. That is the great success." [5:119].
HOW TO PRAY
Although you will find people arguing in the favour of [citing the Talmud or the Hadith] the institutionalised or ritualistic way of praying [which is fine too], but the truth is there is no mention on how exactly to pray neither in the Torah nor in the Qur'an.
[Qur'an 22:26] "And when We designated for Abraham the site of the House (saying), do not associate anything with Me and purify My House for those who encompass and those who stand and those who bow and those who prostrate."
The words "encompass," "stand," "bow," and "prostrate" of course mean what people "do" ie, the rituals [in the mosques, synagogues, churches etc.] but the words are also symbolic, directing those who believe to "establish" the religion of God.
------
Sabbath salam.
Awesome! I'm actually writing an article about prayer right now and I have a copy of Rupert's book "Science and Spiritual Practices" right in front of me! I can understand why prayer isn't taught or talked about more often. It is a difficult subject to write about.
I recommend you to check islamic studies as well on this subject.
@@mahzar8054 that's a great recommendation. And, in fact, I have. I actually talk about that briefly in the article. It was learning about Islamic prayer that really inspired me in the first place.
Appreciated the discussion - thanks! As the conversation moved onto the subject of angels I thought I’d recommend a fascinating little book - “The Angels and their Mission: According to the Fathers of the Church” by Jean Danielou. A real eye opener into the understanding of angels and their role from some figures in the earliest years of the Tradition.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Would love to hear you talk about contemplation as in the work of Thomas Merton or the cloud of unknowing. I sense meditation and prayer collapses into one Being/Love if I understood correctly.
You close your eyes and/or clasp your hands and talk, verbally or in your head, to something that doesn't exist...What else is there to teach about prayer?