Prayer, Meditation, And Contemplation

Mysticism is a wide spectrum, involving many different facets and outlets for the experiencing of the Ultimate. The most common and prevalent in Western culture are the practices of prayer, meditation, and contemplation. By examining Kenneth Leech`s ideas on prayer as a window to our true nature, Kierkegaard`s idea that God is the criterion in each person`s process of becoming, and Thomas Merton`s ideas on contemplation as the prerequisite for positive action, this paper will claim that mystical experiences such as prayer, meditation, and contemplation are essential practices for those seeking spiritual completeness and progressive action, even for contemporary college students who feel they have no time for such practices.

Before an understanding can exist of the significance of prayer, one must first understand what prayer is. Leech writes that To know God is to know one`s own true Self, the ground of one`s being. So prayer is an intensely human experience in which our eyes are opened and we begin to see more clearly our own true nature. Prayer, then, starts with the Self. One must look within him or herself and have a genuine desire to commune with the Ultimate before that person can engage in a true prayer. God resides in each person uniquely; so to open up a communication with Him is to look within oneself and understand the subject`s true nature which has been constructed by God. This true nature is the essence of the subject aside from temptation and weakness. It is the ideal that resides in each person, and this ideal, as Kierkegaard says, is God.

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