Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism
Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism
Couldn't load pickup availability
Description
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.
Endorsements
The seamless manner in which Vaughan-Lee moves back and forth between the Christian and Sufi mystics bears witness to the divine love that wholly transcends, even as it wholly permeates the mystical dimensions of the world's great religions and, for that matter, all of existence... This book is a little gem that will be savored and treasured by all who are being interiorly drawn along the path of love.
... an extraordinary blend of passion and dignity ... guides us deep into the blazing quiet of our own being, where prayer becomes the magic carpet that carries us to union with the object of our most profound longing—a union that results in the melting of lover into Beloved, so that only love remains. This, Llewellyn teaches us, is our sacred birthright.
... brings together the Christian and Sufi inner paths of devotion in a beautiful, compelling way. Combining his own deep personal experience with writings ranging from St. Teresa of Avila to Mevlana Rumi and Abdul Qadir Jilani, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee has produced something unique: not an academic treatise, but a poetic book on prayer meaningful to the everyday lives of seekers in both traditions, a prayer of the heart in its own right.
