Expanded Heart Meditation
On praying from love, not fear
IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash
Today I want to offer you a meditation practice which is also a form of prayer. It's a practice of connecting with the energy of the heart and allowing it to expand. Wide open, we create a potent and nourishing space in which to speak our prayers for self and world.
Expanded Heart Meditation
Created by Miranda Ruth Gill, Feb 2024
Music: ‘Hope’ by Chris Collins, licensed by indie music box
Prayer is powerful. But it is also a reflection of how we're feeling and relating to the world. I can learn a lot about myself when I start to examine my relationship with prayer.
When I was younger, prayer came from the space of fear. Dear God, please make X stop happening. Please ensure that Y doesn’t happen. Here is a long list of people, animals, places that I love; please keep them safe.
I felt, in some way, that if I could just get prayer right, everything would be okay.
I didn’t realise that what I thought was prayer was really just worrying. It was a sort-of ritual of fear. And because prayer is a powerful place in which you put your energy – where you are expressing your deepest values and that which you want to create in the world – what I was actually doing was generating and amplifying my own inner cycle of fear.
Life, of course, wants me to learn a new lesson. To let go of the endless search for what I think safety or wellbeing looks like for myself or anyone else, and instead embody a much deeper form of trust.
Time changes me.
As I meditate, soft whispers in my heart make me see what I am doing; because without awareness, what change can come?
Slowly, I learn new ways of processing fear. I start to realise that what is being asked of me is simply the letting down of my walls.
Prayer becomes an act of surrender. A time of stillness in which I hold the intention of letting go of everything I think I know, everything I think I need, everything I think is true – about myself, about others, about the world, about all that is beyond it.
I stop defining God and start listening. Prayer becomes a time in which I am willing to be moved. It is liminal space.
Much has changed for me in that silent place.
Recently I have found myself wanting to pray using words again. I feel called to offer into this space of Silence a vision of a more loving reality for this world, which is experiencing so much pain.
Let every heart be moved by Love.
But I don’t want to fall back into the old habit of praying from the space of fear, or the need to control the world around me. So I began practicing a spontaneous form of the meditation which I’m sharing with you today (just play the audio above). It’s a practice of connecting with the energy of the heart; the inner space in which Love dwells.
As we consciously expand this Love out beyond the world and all of its pain and all of its fear, we find a resonant space of peace. We become our prayer.
This is a powerful space in which to speak your vision for a truly loving world.
Everyone nourished; everyone receiving. Everyone living from Love.
It is my hope that the meditation nourishes you as it does me. It’s just over 20 minutes long, though I may also record a short version for those times when you want a shorter sit. Share with me if you’d find this supportive - you can leave a comment or send me a direct message via the buttons below.
Either way, let this reflection serve as an invitation to examine your own relationship to prayer – if you pray, how you pray, why you pray. Notice when prayer is really just embodied fear.
I think that there are so many of us praying from fear right now. But fear does not nourish. It knows no clarity. It only creates more of itself. There is no wisdom that comes from fear.
Wisdom comes when we see our fear and allow it to show us where we have divorced from the knowledge and the living of Love.
This is the pathway home; our long-awaited return to the heart.
From my heart-space to yours,
Miranda x
P. S. I’m deeply grateful to Chris Collins for the truly beautiful music. It was the first piece I came across when searching for the right background track and I knew instantly that it was perfect. Hope you enjoy it.
Thank you so much for this gift 🙏🏻