The Second Unbreakable Habit 

Day 2 Consistent Prayer & Meditation

The only difference that separates you from a monk might be the consistency, and perhaps length, of how you meditate and pray.

If you think about that it’s actually quite profound.

Consistency, meaning frequency, as well as length of earth time, mines your spirituality.

Having a daily practice of reading spiritual writings from any of the Nine Great Religions, would suction your heart to the divine realms, guaranteed, if you are actually present whilst reading it, and you maintain a radiant and joyful heart - yes there are prerequisites to the guarantee as well!

Why is it that writings from the Nine Great Religions give you that heart vortexing that regular words don’t?

Simple.

The order in which the words are aligned give it magnetic power.

Did you know that the only difference between a rock and a magnet are the direction and alignment of the atoms? That simple difference, of the atoms having a specific order, doing things in a specific sequence, gives just about anything, magnetic power.

Also why asana movements in yoga, or the long obligatory prayers, are distinguished from movements like walking or running - sequencing matters!

Which is also why consistent prayer and meditation are the second unbreakable habits for the 19 days of purification - to also ground and fortify you to what is important, and ensure every action you take, is guided and fortified by the Divine.

To reiterate the difficulties of purification from yesterdays ‘importance of gratitude’, where we focused on gratitude as the first unbreakable habit, is because we want to make sure that we purify whole-some-ly, fully, and deeply.

Only when you have all the right practices in place, does purification become a little less unsettling, by being guided daily by prayer and meditation, including the practice and habit of expressing gratitude for the abundance in your life, does any journey become even remotely bearable - it’s going to be difficult either way, but to ensure the greatest success, having those unbreakable habits in place, gives us power and energy to complete it with a little less challenge, and a whole lot more divine aided grace.

“Intone, O My servant, the verses of God that have been received by thee, as intoned by them who have drawn nigh unto Him, that the sweetness of thy melody may kindle thine own soul, and attract the hearts of all men. Whoso reciteth, in the privacy of his chamber, the verses revealed by God, the scattering angels of the Almighty shall scatter abroad the fragrance of the words uttered by his mouth, and shall cause the heart of every righteous man to throb. Though he may, at first, remain unaware of its effect, yet the virtue of the grace vouchsafed unto him must needs sooner or later exercise its influence upon his soul. Thus have the mysteries of the Revelation of God been decreed by virtue of the Will of Him Who is the Source of power and wisdom.”

-Bahá’u’lláh 

So now that the first half of todays post was about the word “consistency” let’s go into talking about the difference between what prayer and meditation are.

Prayer is a conversation with God. It’s like the request, the opening of your hands to receive divine inspiration, and given that we humans have a genuine hard time of letting go of things, even when we are sincere in our intention, we hold out our closed fist to God to take away what is in our hands, we really don’t seem to understand the mechanics.

That’s why reading the words of the Prophets and manifestations of God is important because umm, They got it down with the letting go part, Their movement and Their stillness is entirely directed by God.

Reading Divine Scriptures, ensures, that we got our receptacles correct - open palm facing upwards! Cause it doesn’t matter if it is raining blessings all day long, as long as we don’t have a cup or a bucket, a receptacle of some kind to receive it, we are not going to receive anything.

Meditation is the practice of hearing the answer more fully, and communing with your own spirit, and since our spirit is in the image and likeness of God, we are literally talking to our own souls, our own image and likeness of God, in short, an aspect of God Himself, the direct key that we only have with God alone, our very own private line~

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Nahal Haghbin is an Integrative Yoga Therapist in training from the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy and a globally certified Yoga Alliance Yoga Teacher based in China.  She conducts lectures, private and group asana and consultations on Yoga & Integrative Yoga Therapy in person and online. She works with menstrual disorders and with female health and wellbeing. Book an online yoga session with her.