Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love’s oneness.
Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism explores the inner listening of the heart, and the secret of ‘pray without ceasing’ in which we discover how prayer becomes alive within the heart. Finally there is a chapter on the need at this time to pray for the Earth. How can we pray for the well-being of the Earth? How can we include the Earth in our prayers and our heart?
This little book is an offering of the heart that brings together the Christian and Sufi mystical traditions in the oneness of love to which they belong. It will benefit any practitioner of prayer, anyone who is drawn to discover a relationship with God within their heart.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
Introduction
1. Prayer and Listening
2. Stages of Prayer
3. The Jesus Prayer and the Dhikr
4. The Circle of Love
5. The Heart Prays
6. Prayer for the Earth
7. Personal Prayer
“In our prayers and devotions, we need to reconnect with the sacred substance in creation. We need to place the earth within our hearts, and nourish it with our love, and offer it in remembrance of God.”
Excerpts from chapter 6 in “Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism”, a new book by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.
We are living in a time of ecological devastation, the catastrophic effect of our materialistic culture on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas, and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth, pushing it into the dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. Creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance, and the soul of the world, the anima mundi, which the ancients understood as the spiritual presence of the earth, is crying out. We can see these signs in all the recent floods and droughts, feel it in the poisoning of the land from pesticides and other contaminants. Those whose hearts are open may hear it too, in the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair: human beings, who were supposed to be the guardians of the planet, who long ago were taught the sacred names of creation,(95)have forgotten their responsibility and instead have systematically and heedlessly desecrated and destroyed the earth on a global scale.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS MOMENT IN TIME
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee – Sufi teacher
We live in a culture caught in the illusion of time, rushing towards an unsustainable future. And yet the mystic knows that only the moment is real, only in the moment can we have a direct experience of life, or Truth. Only in the moment can there be real change, can anything new be born.
What is mysticism? How is it different to spirituality? And why is mysticism important at this moment in time?
The spiritual journey can be most simply described as a way to access the light of our soul — the beautiful light with which we came into the world. On this journey we make an inner relationship with this light of our divine nature — the spirit that is within each of us. Through this relationship we come to know our true self and be nourished by the deeper meaning of our soul.
Spiritual paths and teachings give us access to the tools and guidance to do this inner work. For example, the practice of meditation can help to still the mind so that we are no longer distracted by its continual chatter. Psychological inner work can free us from the traumas, anger, anxiety and other feelings that may cover our light. Gradually we come to know more of our true nature, learn to live in the light of our real self. It is said that the goal of every spiritual path is to live a guided life, guided by that within us which is eternal.
The mystical journey may begin with making a relationship with one’s inner light, but the mystic is drawn on a deeper journey toward love’s greatest secret: that within the heart we are one with the divine. The fire of mystical love is a burning which destroys all sense of a separate self, until nothing is left but love Itself. While the spiritual seeker is drawn to the light of this fire, the mystic is the moth consumed by it’s flames. Rumi, love’s greatest mystical poet, summed up his whole life in two lines:
And the result is not more than these three words:
I burnt, and burnt, and burnt.
The mystical path takes us into the center of the heart where this mystery of love takes place. Initially this love is often experienced as longing, a deep desire for God, the Beloved, Divine Truth, or simply an unexplained ache in the heart. Mystics are lovers who are drawn toward a love in which there is no you or me, but only the oneness of love Itself. And they are prepared to pay the ultimate price to realize this truth: the price of themselves. In the words of the 13th century Christian mystic Hadewych of Antwerp:
Those who were two, at first,
are made one by the pain of love.
Gradually we discover that this love and longing slowly and often painfully destroy all our outer and inner attachments, all the images we may have of our self. The Sufis call this process being taken into the tavern of ruin, through which we are eventually made empty of all except divine love, divine presence.
This is an ancient journey in which the heart is awakened to the wonder and beauty, as well as the terror, of divine love. It is celebrated in the Bible in the Song of Songs: “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” And over the centuries mystics of all faiths have written their love stories. Some mystics have been persecuted, like the Sufi al-Hallaj who was crucified for publically proclaiming the secret of divine oneness, “I am the Truth.” Known as the prince of lovers, he expressed the mystical reality: “I am He whom I love, He whom I love is me.”
Mystics may be drawn inward, but the oneness of the divine also embraces the outer world. When the eye of the heart is open all of creation reveals its divine nature; everything is seen as an expression, a manifestation of the One Being. Mystics are also involved in the demands of everyday life. One of Christianity’s most loved mystics, St. Teresa of Avila, worked tirelessly founding nunneries and looking after her nuns, while at the same time mystical prayer took her into ever deepening states of inner absorption, oneness and ecstasy. Mysticism does not mean to retire from life, but to live the unitive life. “God,” St. Teresa would say, “lives also among the pots and pans.”
The truth of mystical love is one of humanity’s great heritages. It should not be confused with its cousin, spiritual life. The spiritual journey is a wonderful way to come closer to what is sacred. It a way to live in the light of our divine nature, to be nourished by the mystery and meaning of the soul. It opens the door to what really belongs to us as sacred beings. But mysticism is quite different. The moth who feels the warmth of the fire is on a very different journey to the moth drawn into the flames themselves. This is the ancient journey from separation back to union, from our own self back to a state of oneness with God. Step by step we walk along the path of love until finally we are taken by love into love; we are taken by God to God, and there is no going back, only a deepening and deepening of this love affair of the soul.
Even if we are not all drawn to tread the path of the mystic, we need to be reminded that this note of divine love belongs to all of us. In a time of so much division in the world, it is important to reclaim this primal truth that belongs to our heritage: this great song of the soul that celebrates the oneness that is within the heart of each of us and underlies all of creation. This has particular relevance when we confront our present ecological crisis. We can no longer afford to think of the environment as something separate, outside of us. We need an awareness of the “oneness of being” of which we are all a part, and actions that come from this awareness. This awareness of unity is one of the most important contributions of the mystic at this moment in time.
Within the heart of each of us, within the heart of humanity, is this song of mystical love. It has been present for millennia celebrating the divine unity that is our real nature, and the deepest secret of our relationship with God. Hearing the many voices that today so easily consume our attention, it is easy for us to forget this quiet voice of divine love. And yet it is one of the great secrets of humanity, passed down from lover to lover, needing to be embraced, to be known, to be lived.
Prayer is a way to be with the divine — from the prayer born from need, where we use words to express our needs, to the deeper prayer that takes us beyond any words into the oneness and silence within the heart. This video is about the simplicity of the “Prayer of the Heart”:
PRAYER – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Prayer is the simplest and most natural way to communicate with the divine. Prayer is the heart speaking. There are the prescribed prayers, the rituals of inner communion. But there are also our personal prayers, our way of being with the sacred that is our deepest nature and that of the world around us. In whatever way we are drawn to pray, there is a pressing need at this time to include the earth in our prayers.
We are living in a time of ecological devastation, in which our materialistic culture has had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth until it is in a dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. If we dare to listen, creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance.
We can see these signs in the increasing floods and droughts, feel it in a land that has been poisoned with pesticides, and those whose hearts are open may hear the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair, that humanity who was supposed to be the guardian of the planet has forgotten its responsibility and instead desecrates and destroys the earth on a global scale.
The earth needs our prayers more than we know. It needs us to acknowledge its sacred nature, that it is not just something to use and dispose. Many of us know the effectiveness of prayers for others, how healing and help is given, even in the most unexpected ways. There are many ways to pray for the earth.
It can be helpful first to acknowledge that it is not “unfeeling matter” but a living being that has given us life. And then we can sense its suffering: the physical suffering we see in the dying species and polluted waters, the deeper suffering of our collective disregard for its sacred nature. Would we like to be treated just as a physical object to be used and abused? Would we like our sacred nature, our soul, to be denied?
For centuries it was understood that the world was a living being with a soul, and that we are a part of this being. Once we remember this in our minds and in our hearts, once we hear the cry of our suffering, dying world, our prayers will flow more easily and naturally. We will be drawn to pray in our own way. There is the simple prayer of placing the world as a living being within our hearts when we inwardly offer our self to the divine.
We remember the sorrow and suffering of the world in our hearts and ask that the world be remembered, that divine love and mercy flow where it is needed. That even though we continue to treat the world so badly, divine grace will help us and help the world — help to bring the earth back into balance. We need to remember that the power of the divine is more than that of all the global corporations that continue to make the world a wasteland, even more than the global forces of consumerism that demand the life-blood of the planet. We pray that the divine of which we are all a part can redeem and heal this beautiful and suffering world.
Sometimes it is easier to pray when we feel the earth in our hands, when we work in the garden tending our flowers or vegetables. Or when we cook, preparing the vegetables that the earth has given us, mixing in the herbs and spices that give us pleasure. Or making love, as we share our body and bliss with our lover, we may feel the tenderness and power of creation, how a single spark can give birth. Then our lovemaking can be an offering to life itself, a fully-felt remembrance of the ecstasy of creation.
The divine oneness of life is within and all around us. Sometimes walking alone in nature we can feel its heartbeat and its wonder, and our steps become steps of remembrance. The simple practice of “walking in a sacred manner,” in which with every step we take we feel the connection with the sacred earth, is one way to reconnect with the living spirit of the earth.
There are so many ways to pray for and with creation, to listen within and include the earth in our spiritual practice. Watching the simple wonder of a dawn can be a prayer in itself. Or when we hear the chorus of birds in the morning we may sense that deeper joy of life and awake to its divine nature. At night the stars can remind us of what is infinite and eternal within us and within the world. Whatever way we are drawn to wonder or pray, what matters is always the attitude we bring to this intimate exchange, whether our prayers are heartfelt rather than just a mental repetition.
It is always through the heart that our prayers are heard, even if we first make the connection in our feet or hands. Do we really feel the suffering of the earth, sense its need? Do we feel this connection with creation, how we are a part of this beautiful and suffering being? Then our prayers are alive, a living stream that flows from our heart. Then every step, every touch, will be a prayer for the earth, a remembrance of what is sacred. We are a part of the earth calling to its creator, crying in its time of need.
The video is an extract from a set of talks on prayer, given by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee June 2011, Omega Institute.
The mystical path is the most intoxicating and paradoxical, difficult, and even dangerous journey one can ever take. Fragments of a Love Story is a series of personal writings describing the passionate love, heartache, and confusion that belong to this journey. In particular Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explores what for him is a central paradox: what belongs to the individual, the “I” who makes the journey, and what belongs to God. Whose journey really is it?
He discusses this primary mystical question from his own experiences of 40 years travelling the mystical path within the context of the Sufi tradition. Some of these passages are very personal, heartfelt, full of contradictions and difficulties he has experienced. Other passages are more objective, more detached, placing his experiences and questions clearly within this ancient mystical tradition. In this way he shows how the Sufi path is lived today by a contemporary mystic.
Fragments of a Love Story takes the reader beneath the surface into the heart of the mystical relationship with the Divine, which for the Sufi is the relationship of lover and Beloved. He describes how this secret love affair is within the heart of each of us, waiting to come alive, unique to each of us, and yet how confusing it can be, especially for our rational Western consciousness.This book is about the story of the soul and the passion that exists within the core of our being, and how demanding and difficult it is to live this love affair. But it also describes the beauty, wonder, and power of the divine love that awakens within the heart — a love that is within each of us.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi teacher and author, and these writings come from his own experience of the Sufi path.
Taking Spiritual Responsibility for the Planet
If we take spiritual responsibility for what is happening to the world, we incarnate the Divine into ourselves and into the world. It is not just physical responsibility, it is also spiritual. We bring the light of divine consciousness—which as human beings we carry—into ourselves and into creation.
This week on “Super Soul Sunday,” watch Oprah’s riveting conversation with Sufi mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. The ancient tradition of Sufism could change your view on spirituality forever. Then, don’t miss the U.S. television premiere of Love Hate Love. Executive produced by Sean Penn, this documentary tells the story of three families forever changed by acts of terrorism—and why they choose a path to hope.
Prayer is a way to be with the divine — from the prayer born from need, where we use words to express our needs, to the deeper prayer that takes us beyond any words into the oneness and silence within the heart. This video is about the simplicity of the “Prayer of the Heart”: PRAYER – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Prayer is a way to be with the Divine—from the prayer born from need, where we tell God our needs, to the deeper prayer which takes us beyond any words into the oneness and silence within the heart. This video is about the simplicity of the Prayer of the Heart.
Audio excerpt taken from “Prayer”: talks given by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, June 2011 at the Omega Institute. To listen to complete talks please visit: goldensufi.org/audio.html#Omega_2011
Prayer is the simplest and most natural way to communicate with the divine. Prayer is the heart speaking. There are the prescribed prayers, the rituals of inner communion. But there are also our personal prayers, our way of being with the sacred that is our deepest nature and that of the world around us. In whatever way we are drawn to pray, there is a pressing need at this time to include the earth in our prayers.
We are living in a time of ecological devastation, in which our materialistic culture has had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth until it is in a dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. If we dare to listen, creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance. We can see these signs in the increasing floods and droughts, feel it in a land that has been poisoned with pesticides, and those whose hearts are open may hear the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair, that humanity who was supposed to be the guardian of the planet has forgotten its responsibility and instead desecrates and destroys the earth on a global scale.
The earth needs our prayers more than we know. It needs us to acknowledge its sacred nature, that it is not just something to use and dispose. Many of us know the effectiveness of prayers for others, how healing and help is given, even in the most unexpected ways. There are many ways to pray for the earth. It can be helpful first to acknowledge that it is not “unfeeling matter” but a living being that has given us life. And then we can sense its suffering: the physical suffering we see in the dying species and polluted waters, the deeper suffering of our collective disregard for its sacred nature. Would we like to be treated just as a physical object to be used and abused? Would we like our sacred nature, our soul, to be denied?
For centuries it was understood that the world was a living being with a soul, and that we are a part of this being. Once we remember this in our minds and in our hearts, once we hear the cry of our suffering, dying world, our prayers will flow more easily and naturally. We will be drawn to pray in our own way. There is the simple prayer of placing the world as a living being within our hearts when we inwardly offer our self to the divine. We remember the sorrow and suffering of the world in our hearts and ask that the world be remembered, that divine love and mercy flow where it is needed. That even though we continue to treat the world so badly, divine grace will help us and help the world — help to bring the earth back into balance. We need to remember that the power of the divine is more than that of all the global corporations that continue to make the world a wasteland, even more than the global forces of consumerism that demand the life-blood of the planet. We pray that the divine of which we are all a part can redeem and heal this beautiful and suffering world.
Sometimes it is easier to pray when we feel the earth in our hands, when we work in the garden tending our flowers or vegetables. Or when we cook, preparing the vegetables that the earth has given us, mixing in the herbs and spices that give us pleasure. Or making love, as we share our body and bliss with our lover, we may feel the tenderness and power of creation, how a single spark can give birth. Then our lovemaking can be an offering to life itself, a fully-felt remembrance of the ecstasy of creation.
The divine oneness of life is within and all around us. Sometimes walking alone in nature we can feel its heartbeat and its wonder, and our steps become steps of remembrance. The simple practice of “walking in a sacred manner,” in which with every step we take we feel the connection with the sacred earth, is one way to reconnect with the living spirit of the earth.
There are so many ways to pray for and with creation, to listen within and include the earth in our spiritual practice. Watching the simple wonder of a dawn can be a prayer in itself. Or when we hear the chorus of birds in the morning we may sense that deeper joy of life and awake to its divine nature. At night the stars can remind us of what is infinite and eternal within us and within the world. Whatever way we are drawn to wonder or pray, what matters is always the attitude we bring to this intimate exchange, whether our prayers are heartfelt rather than just a mental repetition.
It is always through the heart that our prayers are heard, even if we first make the connection in our feet or hands. Do we really feel the suffering of the earth, sense its need? Do we feel this connection with creation, how we are a part of this beautiful and suffering being? Then our prayers are alive, a living stream that flows from our heart. Then every step, every touch, will be a prayer for the earth, a remembrance of what is sacred. We are a part of the earth calling to its creator, crying in its time of need.
The video is an extract from a set of talks on prayer, given by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee June 2011, Omega Institute.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher and author of a number of books, including “The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul.” In recent years the focus of his writing and teaching has been on spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition and the emerging global consciousness of oneness, and the subject of spiritual ecology. He is the founder of the Golden Sufi Center. His most recent book is “Fragments of a Love Story, Reflections on the Life of a Mystic.”
Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love’s oneness.
