When people think of relaxing and becoming more spiritually connected, usually one of two thoughts come to mind: either kneeling and praying to a higher power or that of sitting and meditating. But, while prayer and meditation seem interchangeable, they are totally different practices.
The difference between prayer and meditation lies in the internal intentions of the person. Meditation is an exercise in practicing awareness performed to achieve a stillness or inner peace, and a separation of one’s identity from their thoughts. Prayer is usually an internal plea to a being or deity that absolves someone of the ill feelings regarding their current circumstances.
Knowing the effects of meditation and prayer can help you figure out which practice to engage in, especially for developing on your spiritual journey.
As you might know, I’ve meditated daily for years and that’s something I’m very passionate about. So I’m glad to share some of the things I’ve learned and to portrait how both, meditation and prayer, have their own use, and which one is best for you and your needs.
Meditation vs. Prayer
Meditation and prayer are first distinguished by their style of practice. Meditation involves quieting the mind or watching the mind from a distance while maintaining an absence of judgment and presence of acceptance. Prayer involves using the mind to have a conversation with God or a higher power while being completely open and honest.
Meditation involves coming back to yourself now as a form of presence. Prayer is an act of vulnerability that involves exposing yourself for all that you are to a higher power that’s willing and able to help you, accept you, and love you.
I think it’s important to note, there are different types of meditation and each of those types has different schools and different teachers which have different goals and techniques of doing the practice. Because of that, I won’t dive into specifics, since they might drastically wary from one type of meditation to another, and instead, give you a simplified overview of a more general approach to meditation.
Differences Between Meditation and Prayer
While the idea of meditation and prayer may seem very similar, in practice, they exist very differently.
- For starters, meditation doesn’t normally involve any active thinking. While thinking is inevitable during a session of meditation, the purpose of meditation is to pay attention to the nature of your own mind and to view it from a non-judgmental distance.
- Prayer involves actively using thought to communicate to a higher power. It can be about changing the circumstances a person finds themselves in, or even a simple check-in with God.
- Meditation seeks to quiet and be at peace with the inner animal of our mind that is always thinking, pondering, assuming, and questioning. Prayer sets out to use the mind as a vessel for connecting with a higher power.
- Meditation focuses on achieving a higher level of concentration in an attempt to be okay with the full spectrum of human emotions and the burdens of excessive thinking (without identifying with your thoughts). While prayer involves the usage of the mind and heart to communicate with God as a way to feel relieved from negative feelings and circumstances.
Similarities Between Meditation & Prayer
In the long run, prayer and meditation are both attempts to accomplish a similar thing: improve your quality of life and make you feel better.
The two practices are often done to help us deal with current feelings and circumstances: they’re just gone about in different ways.
Although some people might think that prayer is inherently more vulnerable than meditation because it involves revealing yourself to someone in your true form, however, both practices require a great deal of vulnerability. Meditation requires the participant to accomplish one of the most challenging tasks in the world: being okay with yourself.
Prayer involves the same thing, except that you’re okay with a higher power seeing you in all your beautiful imperfection.
Both meditation and prayer are usually done in silence and solitude, however, it’s not a requirement. You can do both almost anywhere. Both activities are quite personal and could be used as a safe space from the troubles of life.
Understanding Meditation
In this seemingly ever-connected world, people are starting to find that the devices that are meant to connect one another are isolating each of us. The United States has started to become a world leader in feelings of loneliness and isolation, with suicide rates only going up.
It’s debatable whether technology is solely responsible for the rise in loneliness, but it can be inferred that people aren’t as connected as they used to. Everyone is just so busy.
Meditation isn’t necessarily an escape, but it provides the chance for an individual to take a moment back. (It actually has an astonishing amount of benefits as I experienced so myself).
One of the main things that meditation does is that it allows a person to feel connected to the present moment.
Instead of feeling like time is always slipping through your fingertips, it grants you the feeling that time is in your hands and under your control. Meditation provides us with a space to become one with ourselves in the moment, without judgment.
It gives us the space to learn about ourselves and to be okay with our own company, regardless of how pleasant or negative we are as individuals.
The Ability to Accept Your Emotions
Meditation grants us an escape from escapism. It’s no secret that in today’s world, there’s a whole genre of business “dedicated” to “fixing” millions of people across the United States. Self-help, as noble as it is, has something in it that attracts hordes of people.
Perhaps it’s the enticing promise of being able to have a life that’s better than the one we own—a life that’s only separated from us by the requirement of mindset and other hopeful nouns. Regardless, there seems often to be the suggestion that we should grow past our negative feelings, and that our negative feelings are things we shouldn’t have.
Meditation, by sitting down with oneself, closing the eyes, and focusing on each breath—each moment, each inhale—as it comes in and comes out, we’re really sitting down with our emotions and feelings. All the things we want to run away from, those yucky feelings that we’re all so uncomfortable with, come rising to the surface of the moment, and we sit there and embrace it.
Through meditation, you’re able to sit down with all your emotions, whether they feel good or not, and not judge these emotions as things, as entities and viruses in your body that need to be erased. Through meditation, you are accepting yourself as whoever you are at this very moment. Good or bad, you’re taking in all your feelings and learning to be okay with them.
Who Should Be Meditating?
Meditation is for everyone because it simply makes you better at life. One of the most amazing things about meditation as I personally experienced it, is that the difference in your quality of life between meditating even for 5 minutes a week and not meditating at all is absolutely insane.
It’s life-changing.
Personally, I was extremely skeptical when I sat down to meditate for the first time. I didn’t believe at all that it would work. And it’s funny because that’s the exact thing that got me hooked to keep doing it — I didn’t believe in it at all, and yet it still worked regardless of what I believed in. It was a jaw-dropping revelation for me. I was so blown away by the results that I started doing daily, progressing my way forward.
Meditation can improve many things:
- Reduce stress levels
- Improve ability to deal with stressful situations
- Improve concentration
- Alleviate symptoms of depression and ADHD
- Improve emotional intelligence
- Reduce anxiety
- Reduce or eliminate physical pain (My personal favorite, as I completely got rid of the chronic pain in my shoulders area from a fall injury, that happened over 10 years ago and bothered me every day. )
Meditation may even make you more creative. And that’s just scratching the surface of what 5 to 10 minutes of practice every day can bring you.
Because the effects of meditation are so beneficial to our capabilities as emotionally healthy human beings and managers of stress, it can never be overstated just how much meditation is beneficial to our lives.
How Do You Meditate?
When beginning meditation, most people have a lot of different ideas about how to go about it. Many people dive into the activity expecting their minds to go blank, and if that doesn’t happen, they dismiss the experience as either not for them or simply ineffective. The truth is, your mind isn’t necessarily supposed to be blank. Here’s a quick guide on how to meditate and what to expect when doing so:
- Get Comfortable: You can either sit in the traditional position with crossed legs and your hands in your lap, or you can sit in a chair with your spine resting on the back of the chair. Ideally, you want to be anywhere that you can be comfortable for a few minutes of the day.
- Close Your Eyes and Focus on Your Breath: Set a timer for 5-10 minutes. This might feel like an eternity if you’re just starting out, but that will change. Keep your eyes closed for the entirety of the time if you can, what you’re going to want to do is take a few deep breaths.
- Focus on Each Inhale and Exhale: You’re going to want to take your attention and focus it on each breath. Notice the air filling up your lungs and expanding your stomach. Follow the breath until it reaches its apex, and then slowly let that breath go. Follow the breath until it completely leaves your system. Do not try to control or force the breaths, but rather just observe the process. Repeat this process until the timer runs out.
- Be Patient with Yourself: When meditating, you’re inevitably going to have thoughts, and that’s okay! Whenever you notice yourself getting lost in the stream of consciousness that is your mind, congratulate yourself for being able to notice that you’ve gotten sidetracked, and gently, kindly bring your awareness back to your breath. That is one of the most important parts of the meditation process — noticing the shift of attention, its direction, and then bringing it back where you want it to. You are mastering your mind.
Meditation is an excellent opportunity to see what kind of thoughts you have. They might be positive, they might be negative, and they might be anxious. Whatever it is that proliferates your mind, the idea of meditation is to become aware of the stories in your head and become at peace with those thoughts without judgment.
As you continue through your meditation practice, you will find your ability to clear your head and be devoid of any thought more consistent. The more you practice, the sooner you’ll be able to experience a detachment from your thoughts and then eventually, a complete separation of your identity from the contents in your head.
Meditation vs. Mindfulness
If you were to ever read about meditation and the styles that come along with the skill set, you’d have come across a term called “mindfulness” by now. Every time meditation is brought up in conversation, it seems impossible not to bring up this magical term. At first glance, it might seem that mindfulness and meditation are the same, but that’s not very accurate.
There is a type of meditation, in fact, my favorite one — that is called Vipassana or more known to the Western world as “mindfulness” meditation.
However, usually, the term mindfulness refers to the continued practice of keeping your attention in the present, usually focused on your senses. It’s the noticing and conscious awareness of your senses as you go about your day.
When you’re driving in your car, an excellent example of mindfulness would be to focus on the feeling of your hands wrapped around the wheel. Notice its texture and how it feels having your fingers coiled around it. Keep your eyes on the road, of course, but don’t just stare into space, notice how you get closer and closer to your destination, and how the road seems to get swallowed up every second you drive.
Mindfulness is about delicately bringing your attention to the present, and sustaining that attention.
The purpose of mindfulness is to combat the two dispositions of the mind that it tends to flow in—that of the future or the past. When left to its own devices, you might find that your mind is either busy tormenting you with previous social grievances or projecting somewhere into the future of possibilities. You’re either worrying about the time you tripped in public or thinking about a significant event that hasn’t happened yet.
The practice of mindfulness stems from the realization that both states that the mind finds itself in don’t exist simultaneously. There is technically no future, and the past has already, well, passed. There is only the now, and while for chronic thinkers, this may be a hard reality to come to terms with, mindfulness is the practice of simply being in the now. It distinguishes itself from meditation by being a constant focus.
Meditation is akin to the action of doing reps for your mind. Each time you meditate, the easier it’ll get to sustain your attention on any given task or moment. The stronger your mind gets. Mindfulness is simply the next logical step from meditation. It’s sustained attention in the moment.
Understanding Prayer
The way I see it: If meditation is about closing out one’s thoughts and tuning into the moment, prayer is about tuning in to one’s thoughts and closing oneself from the external world. Prayer is about sitting down and connecting one’s thoughts to a higher being. It’s about taking one’s vulnerabilities outside of the self and placing them into the more capable hands of a higher power.
Prayer is about feeling connected to a higher being and feeling calmer, knowing that your problems are outside of yourself. It can be said that prayer is also a means of dealing with personal feelings, not dissimilar to meditation, but instead of pure acceptance, prayer grants the person with a feeling of relief.
In a sense, after praying, your problems stop being problems. Your perception and your attitude toward the situation changes. Unlike meditation, people who pray are likely to feel a pleasant disconnect from themselves and the circumstances they find themselves in. By placing those feelings into another being’s hands to deal with, it becomes like wiping your hands clean of your feelings. It’s out of your control.
Prayer is practiced to change the world or something unpleasant in this life, while meditation is practiced to accept the world and whatever is unpleasant in life the way it actually is. While that’s not to say that after meditation, you can’t or shouldn’t bother to change your circumstances, one form over the other has a more significant emphasis on changing the now.
Improving Your Character
Prayer has a knack for showing people how fortunate they truly are. It’s common practice to come to God to make situations better and to receive help because life has become too “hard” or too “unmanageable.” Prayer shows people that, in many ways, we’re so much better off than billions of people.
Prayer shows us that life may not be perfect, but by being alive and relatively well off, our individual lives are worth having and living through, good and bad. With prayer comes the realization that each one of us is uniquely blessed to experience this world at this time.
There’s a feeling of sheer humility and gratitude that comes from consistent prayer, unlike any other practice in the world. Prayer turns into an opportunity to think about someone other than yourself.
Within prayer, there’s an acceptance that you’re not a perfect human being. There are expectations you might have for yourself, or expectations others might have of you, and sometimes they can’t always be met. Baring that weakness for God to see, and letting that forgiveness wash over you can help extend the same lack of judgment to others.
Prayer teaches you a very important concept that we, as people, are all in this life together. We are all in the same boat. As a person, you’ll find yourself becoming more positive, appreciative of others, and understanding.
How Do You Pray?
While the specifics of form and incantation may differ from religion to religion, there’s a general practice to praying that’s recommended. Praying is widely considered a conversation with a higher power, so with that in mind, here are some general, helpful tips to get you started:
- Figure Out Who You’re Speaking To: It can be any deity that you believe in, or the Universe, but it’s important and respectful to understand who it is that you want to talk to.
- Be Completely Vulnerable: Remember that when you’re praying, no one else has to hear you. This is an entirely internal, private discourse between you and that of your God. You don’t have to worry about being judged or scolded for opening up. It’s a safe space, so be honest in your deliberation.
- Be Thankful and Grateful: Answers to our life’s circumstances may not always be obvious, flip-switching indications of being heard. It’s important always to be thankful for what you do have, and grateful for the blessing that you’ve already received.
Praying doesn’t have to be ultra-specific and perfect. If you’re interested in just trying it out for yourself, don’t worry about saying the right things all the time, as that can cause added stress to an unfamiliar activity. If you do your best and be open, you’ll likely be heard and accepted.
Reasons to Pray Instead of Meditate
Other than the obvious, which is — it’s actually much harder than many people assume it to be, and many people struggle to make time to meditate regularly.
Also, when life gets tough, sometimes it’s challenging to sit down and accept it. With meditation and mindfulness, there’s a lot of emphasis on merely accepting the feelings that bubble up, and accepting the circumstances that we have in our lives. But truthfully, simply accepting doesn’t guarantee us to feel better about those feelings and circumstances. Accepting isn’t always enough.
By instead using the faith that you vest in a higher power, praying to that power can grant you a very much needed strength and yield you with the feeling of utter relief. Like a parent taking care of a problem that a child was having severe anxiety over, there’s a feeling of absolute trust. The parental figures will take care of it no matter what in the eyes of the child because that’s how children view parents growing up.
No matter what the problem is, it’s massively reassuring to know that problems in life can and will be solved, and prayer offers that.
Final Thoughts
While meditation and prayer can both feel like immensely spiritual practices with similar effects on the person, the intentions behind the activities are really what separates the two actions.
Meditation is a way of getting back to the self, of being still and accepting yourself without the judgment that usually gets in the way. Meditation is quite literally taking a breath amidst the myriad distractions of the mind and society.
Prayer is a means of connecting with a higher power. It’s usually done to swap one’s unfavorable circumstances into more favorable ones by vesting a vulnerable plea into the hands of a higher power.
But, even though these two practices are different, I don’t think you need to pick one or the other. Praying and meditation aren’t mutually exclusive, and there’s plenty of room to fit both in your life.
