Prayer, Meditation, and Stillness
Updated: 3 hours ago
Spiritual Growth Series
By Bear Van Gelder
Most conversations about spirituality ask what it means. This one asks something more practical: what do you actually do? If spirituality is felt, lived contact with what is ultimate, sustained through attention, then how do we cultivate that contact with our bodies, our breath, and the ten minutes before bed?
Every tradition on earth answers that question with some form of the same three tools: prayer, meditation, and stillness. They are not identical, but they are cousins, not strangers. Each tradition has built its own doorway into the same room.
Before you read, pause
Let's not just read about stillness. Let's practice it for a moment first. Sit comfortably, let your hands rest, and close your eyes or soften your gaze. Breathe in slowly through the nose… hold for a moment… and let it go, longer than it came in. Do this for four full breaths.
Notice: you don't have to fix anything about your mind right now. Just let it settle, the way sediment settles in still water.
I. Prayer as Address
Prayer, in most traditions, is address: speaking to Source as a Thou, rather than describing Source as an It. The Psalms of the Hebrew scriptures are, among other things, a masterclass in this kind of raw, unfiltered address:
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10
Notice the order of operations in that verse: stillness comes first, and knowing follows from it. Not the other way around. We tend to think we need to figure Source out before we can be at peace. The Psalm suggests the reverse: the peace of stillness is itself the doorway to knowing.
Jesus, teaching his disciples how to pray, warned against a particular distortion of the practice:
“When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” — Matthew 6:7
And he offered instead a short, direct model, the Lord's Prayer, that begins not with a list of requests but with orientation: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). Prayer, in this model, starts with reverence and relationship before it moves to petition.
The Quran describes Source's nearness in a way that reframes what prayer is even reaching toward:
“When My servants ask you about Me, I am indeed near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls on Me.” — Quran 2:186
This is a striking claim: the distance we imagine between ourselves and Source when we pray is not, according to this verse, actually there. Prayer is not a long-distance transmission. It is closer to a remembering.
II. Meditation as Silence Beneath the Words
If prayer is address, meditation is often described as the practice of quieting the addresser: sitting with silence itself, beneath and before words.
The Buddhist tradition has developed this practice with extraordinary precision over twenty-five centuries. The Buddha's teaching on mindfulness of breathing (Anapanasati) instructs the practitioner simply to know the breath as it is:
“Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.” — Anapanasati Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 118
Thich Nhat Hanh built an entire practical spirituality around this single instruction:
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)
The Hindu tradition, particularly through the practice of dhyana described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, defines the aim of meditation as the stilling of the mental fluctuations that ordinarily obscure our deeper nature:
“Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah” — “Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind.” — Patanjali, Yoga Sutras 1.2
And the Bhagavad Gita describes the state that follows:
“When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.” — Bhagavad Gita 6.19
Take a moment and picture that flame. Most of us live with a mind like a candle in an open doorway, flickering with every draft of anxiety, comparison, or replayed conversation. Meditation, in this teaching, does not extinguish the flame. It simply moves the candle out of the wind.
III. Stillness as the Ground Beneath Both
The Tao Te Ching approaches this from yet another angle, describing stillness not as a technique but as the fundamental nature things return to:
“Returning to the root is stillness, which is the way of nature. The way of nature is unchanging. Knowing constancy is enlightenment.” — Tao Te Ching, chapter 16
And on the paradoxical power of yielding rather than striving:
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu
The Carmelite mystic Teresa of Ávila, writing to the nuns in her charge about the practice of what she called “mental prayer,” described it not as effortful concentration but as friendship:
“Mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than an intimate friendship, a frequent conversation held alone with the Beloved who we know loves us.” — Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565)
Her contemporary and collaborator, John of the Cross, wrote of the deep stillness that lies past the noisy surface of ordinary thought, in what he called “the dark night”: not despair, but a necessary unknowing on the way to deeper union. His teaching points always back to love:
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” — Attributed to John of the Cross, drawn from his Dichos de Luz y Amor
IV. Stillness in the Jewish Tradition: The Sabbath
Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, wrote an entire book on one of Judaism's central spiritual technologies for stillness: the Sabbath, a full day set apart from labor.
“The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (1951)
Heschel calls the Sabbath “a palace in time,” a reminder that stillness is not merely a private inner technique. It can be a structure built into the rhythm of a whole life and a whole community, protected and returned to every seven days regardless of how the week has gone.
V. What These Practices Are Actually For
It would be easy to treat prayer, meditation, and stillness as self-improvement tools, ways to lower our blood pressure or perform better at work. They can do those things. But every tradition insists their deeper purpose is relational: they are how we keep the channel to Source open.
Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century monk who spent much of his life washing dishes in a monastery kitchen, wrote one of the most beloved texts on this in Christian mysticism:
“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” — Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (1691)
Brother Lawrence's radical claim is that prayer is not confined to a chapel or a cushion. Washing a pot, done in conscious awareness of Source's presence, is prayer. Simone Weil wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. By extension, it may also be the rawest form of prayer.
VI. A Simple, Cross-Traditional Practice
If you want a place to begin, nearly every tradition converges on some version of this: sit. Breathe. Let the body settle. Let the mind's noise pass like weather, without fighting it or following it. Return, gently, again and again, to a single point: a breath, a word, a name for Source, a phrase of scripture. Do this for a few minutes. Then rise, and carry the stillness into the doing of your ordinary day, the way Brother Lawrence carried it into his kitchen.
The Psalmist's instruction remains the simplest doorway of all: be still, and know. If you have a minute right now, try it before reading on.
Questions for Reflection
For journaling, or for talking over with someone you trust.
Of prayer, meditation, and stillness, which one already has a place in your life, and which one feels most foreign? What would it take to try the unfamiliar one this week?
“Be still, and know.” Where in your life have you been trying to know first, and be still second? What might it look like to reverse the order?
Brother Lawrence found prayer in washing dishes. What's one ordinary task in your day that could become a small practice of presence?
The Sabbath is described as “a palace in time,” not an interlude. What would it take for you to protect one recurring block of time as genuinely set apart, not just leftover?
Key Takeaways
Stillness comes before knowing, not after. “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Prayer is address, not performance. Avoid “babbling” for effect; start with reverence, then move to request. (Jesus, Matthew 6:7-9)
Source is already near. “I am indeed near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls on Me.” (Quran 2:186)
Meditation begins with the breath. “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.” (Anapanasati Sutta) “Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness.” (Thich Nhat Hanh)
The goal is a steady flame, not a blank mind. “Unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.” (Bhagavad Gita 6.19)
Stillness is nature's own way, not an achievement. “Returning to the root is stillness.” (Tao Te Ching 16)
Prayer can be friendship, not formality. “An intimate friendship, a frequent conversation held alone with the Beloved.” (Teresa of Ávila)
Structured stillness can anchor a whole life. The Sabbath as “a palace in time”: not an interlude, but the climax of living. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
Ordinary tasks can become prayer. “The love with which it is performed” matters more than the size of the task. (Brother Lawrence)
This week's practice: Five minutes, same time each day. Sit. Breathe. Return gently to one word or phrase whenever the mind wanders. No goal but presence.
Carry this stillness with you. Not as something you leave behind on this page, but as something you can return to, one breath at a time, in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday. Be still. And know. Go in peace.
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