Prayer and Meditation Compare and Contrast Essay Example

📌Category: Religion
📌Words: 824
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 09 April 2022

Prayer and meditation are undertaken with good intentions, and they tend to enhance your mind, body, and soul and make your personality better. Both meditation and prayer have been essential arts in the course of human history. They are both used in the search for a deep level of peace, find connection within the unexplored parts of the human soul, and experience ultimate meaning even during the most adverse times. Similarly, both are used as ways to reflect on yourself and achieve a higher sense of awareness. Both focus on calming the mind and letting go of negative thoughts and energies. Both are ways to concentrate on the self and ignore your surroundings. Likewise, Meditation and prayer have been proven to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression and promote emotional health and well-being, it may even help you live longer, according to several studies. Similarly, prayer and meditation are highly effective in lowering our reactivity to traumatic and negative events, a marriage, family, and addictions therapist. They are powerful because they focus our thoughts on something outside ourselves. says Dr. Paul Hokemeyer. During times of stress, our limbic system, more commonly known as our central nervous system, becomes hyper-activated, which does two things: it thrusts us into survival mode where we freeze, fight, or flees the situation, we move away from the present state of being into a future state. Likewise, they both offer a sanctuary from the many stresses and distractions of our everyday lives, that subtle moment to be still. They allow us to get lost in thought and escape what may be disturbing us. Although meditation and Prayer are comparable in that both practices relieve depression and feelings of sadness, they differ in prayers usually look up while meditations look within while focusing on the present, while Prayer is future oriented.

With prayer, you’re seeking a connection with someone or something outside yourself. While Meditation is more about becoming aware of all that’s going on inside you and in your immediate environment. meditation, you connect with yourself — with your intuition or internal guidance system. You don’t need words, but if it helps, you can repeat a mantra.  All regrets about the past and worries about the future fall away. You’re left with your present self and its present thoughts, sensations, and feelings. While with prayer, you’re usually asking for something you don’t yet have or asking for something to happen (or not happen). You’re petitioning for a benefit you seek.  Meditation is more about becoming aware of all that’s going on inside you and in your immediate environment. Like sensations, thoughts come and go without your control; the point of meditation is to accept those transient thoughts and feelings without judgment. Prayer is relational. Meditation is individual. 

Prayer involves a relationship between the petitioner and the one being petitioned. The goal is to build on that relationship to encourage honesty, childlike audacity, and trust. Meditation is an individual experience, independent of any relationship other than the one you have with yourself. That said, a habit of meditation can benefit every relationship you have.  Prayer addresses the past, present, and future. Meditation is present-focused. Meditation is focused entirely on the present moment and all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations you experience at that moment. It doesn’t look to the future or revisit the past. The only reality is the present one. 

But no matter what you do; whether you pray to the higher almighty or meditate within your soul, you will alter your life for the betterment of yourself and others. It tries to use a person’s inner thoughts and desires that influence his outer world. While praying, they send their thoughts and wishes to God and praise him. Their prayers are usually goal-oriented which means that people pray for something, for the sick, for the betterment of someone, or the less fortunate people. Prayers can be for forgiveness too. Meditation focuses on the present, to get where one is going, one must first find out where one is; alternatively, to move out of where one is, one must know where one is going. One needs to acquire the skill of removing the judgment component from the thoughts or ideas. It is a form of mental training or exercise whereby you exercise your brain to be relaxed, focussed, and fully aware. What physical workout does to the body; meditation does to the mind. Usually, the act of meditation is performed individually, in a still and calm seated position, with your eyes wholly or partially closed.

Although Prayer and meditation vary in duration and intensity of focus, meditation is usually a more extended practice with sustained focus. In those situations, meditation is settling in and providing the anxieties and fears room to be felt understood. It is more self-sustaining and empowering. Prayer is a desire to change internal or external circumstances. It is fundamentally relational. To meditate is to become well-versed with the contents and proclivities of one's nature, spirit, or psyche. However, the results are not the focus of either prayers or meditations. They come about because we all are more aware of our surroundings. Our actions, not our thoughts alone, will change the world. Although meditation and Prayer are comparable in that both practices embrace silence, spirituality, and solitude, they differ in that Prayer depends on belief; meditation is independent of it.

+
x
Remember! This is just a sample.

You can order a custom paper by our expert writers

Order now
By clicking “Receive Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails.