My journey into the reality of the Soul involved the use of both meditation and prayer, like two vectors that are two parallel that meet only in in Infinity beyond the manifested  reality. I found that all spiritual traditions, in one way or another, sum up to a method of working with these two tools.

Prayer is the art of opening the Heart,  recognizing Divinity within oneself and merging consciously into it. It is all about resting and abiding in the depth of the singul path that we call a Soul, and recognizing the Self, God or "that" which is it's center. Thus there is no one outside of us to whom we should pray. It is only then that we can find that divinity in manifested in Totality and beyond it. Furthermore, praying consciously means purifying obstacles – unblocking trapped emotions from past experiences – that leads us to emotional clarity and stability. I would advised those people that do not belong to any spiritual tradition to invent their own prayer, use it daily and let it  transform any pain on the path to Self Surrender.   

In our current western civilization and modern science prayer is looked upon as a shameful or anachronistic practice coming from dogmas of religious faith that exteriorize God in many ways. But for me it was always clear that we do not pray to God under any figure rather to an aspect of myself and in order to learn how to open my heart. Prayer exists in all spiritual traditions because at one stage or another the worshiped figure becomes "that" which we are within the Heart. But it is important to note that even in the traditions that concentrate directly on the heart, like sufism, the mind must first become transparent, surrender  or be transcended in some way for the heart to be an expression of bliss. When this happens we meet our true need and our wish  is spontaneously realized so that only gratefulness and gratitude remain. 

Meditation is the art of transcending the Mind by withdrawing our consciousness from senses and thoughts to reach absorption in the Unmanifested Source. In meditation we first learn to become present and mindful through activation of conscious witnessing, gradually transforming our profound identification with thoughts and  the body and learning to recognize Pure Consciousness as that which underlies all physical reality. In this process our subconscious belief system and past life tendencies pop up to the surface of the Conscious Mind and we are required to heal and dismantle them.    When natural witnessing is achieved meditation is no longer concerned with thoughts and sensations but with absorption and pure rest beyond the Manifested. This is done like in sleep: although we want to sleep we also have to let go of wanting (otherwise we stay awake) and so we learn to rest within a deeper of ourselves each time until we reach the Absolute, God or the Self. Here too, without a conscious surrender of the heart to the death of personality this can not be achieved. 

The meeting place between meditation and prayer, complete restfulness of the mind and blossom of the heart is like a magic kiss where our singular effortless Being emerges. As long as we need to meditate and pray effort is required to gain Self recognition as the root of our voyage as a Soul.

Many teachers that have realized the Self and experienced the singularity of the Soul at least once, avoid or feel shame about prayer afterwards, despite the fact that they know transcending the mind does not necessarily mean to abide within Heart. That is why they still exteriorize Grace as something that “comes and goes” by its own rules, instead of recognizing it as a quality of the NOW that we can always reach through constant prayer. Thus for them the opportunity to consciously help others through prayer to Grace can become their path to growth.

Others that have devoted themselves to prayer understand it’s power, but may still suffer instability and narrow mind because they did not yet transform their subconscious belief systems or are unaware of it’s existence.  In this case they will preach against the interpretative use of the mind and confine themselves and their disciples to their religious or spiritual dogma.

To me the combination of meditation and prayer is maybe the longest way to workout our spiritual path but perhaps it is also the safest one, if we choose not to stick to a known or official tradition and look upon our own individuality as the gate to Divinity. Equilibrium between the use of these two tools is a matter of  the singularity of the Soul, that guides us beyond space and time, where both the mind and the Heart are finally tuned to Infinity, and Silence meets Love to become our true sense of Being.