The great thing is prayer. Prayer itself. If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying. We were indoctrinated so much into means and ends that we don't realize that there is a different dimension in the life of prayer. In technology you have this horizontal progress, where you must start at one part and move to another and then another. But that is not the way to build a life of prayer. In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have. And you realize that you are already there.

*Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Christian Contemplative.

Prayer from and within Silence, often called Contemplative Prayer, is the expression of Silence as a fullness, a presence. The fullness expresses the unspeakable Fullness, or Emptiness, for the Fullness is a subtraction from things in themselves and self as itself, drawing Life back into Life. We call this going Home, and we find Home includes a deepening, enriching freedom from externality, within externality, for Home moving more into and through us draws us more into Itself, into a Unity of Love among all things. To do this, Life engages life, so the Dance of Grace within and around us: so, Prayer cannot essentially be an escape from life, but puts us more into life. To attune to this unseen Movement among-all-things entails surrender, not once but a life of surrendering, until surrender is all that remains. All is moved and moves, drawn back into Love by Love. Prayer, then, includes all life as the expression of Life. We begin by praying, until Life Itself expresses through us as Prayer. Words may be used, or may not, the essential being Prayer Itself, or Life expressing into life and back into Itself, into Love, or Home. No particular place, words, technique, or posture is required, even if these are used, to enjoy this Grace by Grace - which is none other than Grace, too, enjoying Itself. Grace, being Grace, has no essential addition for Grace to work, to love us back to Love. That which always is deepens in experience of Itself, at least until all left is that Something happening in a pure, inexplicable simplicity playing upon the surfaces of Itself.