"The purpose of daily prayer is the cultivation of a sense of the sacred. Sacred energy renews us. Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture. Prayer enables us to transform the world, because it transforms us. From the moment we awaken each morning, our minds are at work in one direction or the other. Either we are slaves to the fearful mental habit patterns that dominate our world, or we are consciously taking part in the counterforce to the world's despair.
"We embark upon the creation of a peaceful lifestyle by recognizing the need, daily, to cleanse our minds just as we cleanse our bodies. Through morning prayers and meditation, we embark upon the day spiritually prepared. Without this preparation, we enter the day with yesterday's anxieties — our own and those of millions of others. Through the grace of God, we can be cleansed each day of yesterday's sorrow and yesterday's pain.
"The more we allow our internal world to be illumined, the more our external world will take on meaning. Through meditation and prayer, our nervous systems become prepared for the task of a more powerful external existence. People who love will usher in the new, illumined world. As we turn Godward, the energies of true life stream into our minds and though our hearts. To go within is not to turn our backs on the world; it is to prepare ourselves to serve it most effectively.
"What we need: a comfortable, private place; silence, or as close to it as we can get; and a commitment to making spiritual practice a part of our lives. We must spend as much time as we feel we can give each morning to the communion with God that will expand our consciousness, renew our spirit, and guide our thoughts throughout the day. Silent contemplation, or meditation, is as important a factor in spiritual transformation as is prayer. Along with reading spiritual literature, prayer and meditation form the backbone of our daily practice. Almost any meditation technique we choose takes twenty minutes, at least. Prayer doesn't take long, but the effect it has is miraculous.”
