Rat Praying Thing!
I'm a bit suspicious about praying. When I was a kid, I suppose I prayed a lot. There were sick people about the place and I used to pray that they got better. They never did. Telling kids to pray to God for specific things might just screw them up. Should you tell kids to pray to a creator God when you don't believe in one yourself?
Praying to something outside yourself is obviously a sign of alienation. You're obviously alienated from the thing you're praying to. You're separate anyway. But people are alienated. Could praying help that circumstance?
When I taught myself to meditate, I thought I was trying to control the language bit of my mind with repetitions (of Susquehanna)(that still sounds brilliant! I made it sound like that to me!). Then I was watching for a change in the mental background. This never happened to me with praying, but I never went into praying with that kind of awareness. I wasn't looking for a change. I suppose by the time I started teaching myself to meditate, I was well used to altered states and was looking for some change.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.
From reading St Teresa's life, she must have got ra bliss, ra rapture and ra ecstasy by saying stuff like that to herself. I'm dead interested in this just now. These nuns were praying blinking day and night. They were never done praying. She talks about concentration and recollection (as assume from mental wandering) as well.
St Teresa says there were four stages to prayer. I was a tim till I was nearly an adult and no priest ever said that to us. The last stage of prayer, according to the woman, is the prayer of union. That sounds familiar. Union. Yoga. That's unity with God. If not a buddhist, definitely a hindu!
Mystical experiences maybe come in two types. One is unitive, which is the kind I had. (It's about fifty pages into The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf).
The other is contemplative. That seems to be when you sort of witness things. You're not a part of something as much as seeing it. There's a brilliant description of one of these in the autobiography of Cellini. He was a rennaissance joe. He was stuck in a dungeon. One day (he's in despair, of course, as you might be!) when he got the whole works. God on a throne, archangels, angels, the works. The Book of Revelations reads like this. Like the guy was looking at something.
That boy must have had a lousy agent. He had to live in a cave on the island of Patmos. I went to visit him there since we share the same name. Hotboy. But he was dead. I've never been so freaked and impressed by a place in my life! Freaky doesn't describe it! Go there sometime.
Anyway, St Teresa seemed to have moved from seperation to union through praying like mad. But I still don't get it. How come she saw devils and stuff like that? She must have been getting both kinds of mystical experience. Unitive and contemplative.
Inner heat yoga can give you visions, I believe. You can see hell. If it's not there, how do you do that? Back to what's there and what's not there again. I think the first conference after Guatama died was about that question. What is reality?
Praying to something outside yourself is obviously a sign of alienation. You're obviously alienated from the thing you're praying to. You're separate anyway. But people are alienated. Could praying help that circumstance?
When I taught myself to meditate, I thought I was trying to control the language bit of my mind with repetitions (of Susquehanna)(that still sounds brilliant! I made it sound like that to me!). Then I was watching for a change in the mental background. This never happened to me with praying, but I never went into praying with that kind of awareness. I wasn't looking for a change. I suppose by the time I started teaching myself to meditate, I was well used to altered states and was looking for some change.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.
From reading St Teresa's life, she must have got ra bliss, ra rapture and ra ecstasy by saying stuff like that to herself. I'm dead interested in this just now. These nuns were praying blinking day and night. They were never done praying. She talks about concentration and recollection (as assume from mental wandering) as well.
St Teresa says there were four stages to prayer. I was a tim till I was nearly an adult and no priest ever said that to us. The last stage of prayer, according to the woman, is the prayer of union. That sounds familiar. Union. Yoga. That's unity with God. If not a buddhist, definitely a hindu!
Mystical experiences maybe come in two types. One is unitive, which is the kind I had. (It's about fifty pages into The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf).
The other is contemplative. That seems to be when you sort of witness things. You're not a part of something as much as seeing it. There's a brilliant description of one of these in the autobiography of Cellini. He was a rennaissance joe. He was stuck in a dungeon. One day (he's in despair, of course, as you might be!) when he got the whole works. God on a throne, archangels, angels, the works. The Book of Revelations reads like this. Like the guy was looking at something.
That boy must have had a lousy agent. He had to live in a cave on the island of Patmos. I went to visit him there since we share the same name. Hotboy. But he was dead. I've never been so freaked and impressed by a place in my life! Freaky doesn't describe it! Go there sometime.
Anyway, St Teresa seemed to have moved from seperation to union through praying like mad. But I still don't get it. How come she saw devils and stuff like that? She must have been getting both kinds of mystical experience. Unitive and contemplative.
Inner heat yoga can give you visions, I believe. You can see hell. If it's not there, how do you do that? Back to what's there and what's not there again. I think the first conference after Guatama died was about that question. What is reality?
posted by Hotboy at 10:17 PM
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about praying, meditating (what's the difference anyway) - Tim Page, the vietnam correspondent who is said to have inspired the dennis hopper character in apocalypse now, was interviewed on Australian TV recently. an extremely nice man, part dalai lama, part danger junkie, he is a Buddhist/Taoist, a good combo in my view.
http://www.theblurb.com.au/Issue50/TimPage.htm
http://www.timpage.com.au/
anyway, in the interview he revealed that he prays almost daily, using incense sticks and a photgraph of his late adopted mother. I'm going to try it, even though my mother's real and still alive. I was going to add "... and kicking" but backstabbing's more like it, that should make for a challenging meditation.
cheers, robmcj
Is that the photographer who got nearly killed twice, the boy that floated about half dead in the bay? Saw him on telly once. He was with a patrol as they walked up to a sign that read something like ... now you die, you yanky swine! Lots of shooty shooty followed. Hotboy
P.S. Weird being described as a novelist.
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