In our meditation, prayer is always going to be the most powerful impulse in everything we do. We must be very careful when meditating not to just think in terms of "I want to be better, I want to improve, I want to change." That is limiting our experience by our identity. It's our identity that stands in the way of our experiencing in meditation. Meditation, I would say, is essentially a transformation of our sense of identity.

Consider that our meditations are a rehearsal for life, rather than a retreat from life. Consider that in our commonplace way of going about life, we are reacting to the challenge of circumstances rather than acting. As the world comes upon us we learn to say, "I can't play ball with you because I want to first consult my deeper self." That's what meditation is all about.

We place a buffer between the challenge of the world and our inner self so we're able to muster the potentialities in our being, rather than just proceed by what is called the strategy of the ego, which is reactive. We're used to reacting; in fact, that strategy represents a kind of defense. Normally we don't know any other mode of defense, so we count upon this to protect ourselves when we are abused or humiliated. That's what wars are about. We need to wean ourselves from that strategy gradually. If we don't wean ourselves, we are going to have psychological withdrawal symptoms. We'll feel sorry for ourselves because we've become weak, instead of strong, and we don't know how to deal with the challenge of the world.

When we begin to meditate, all kind of random thoughts are going to impinge on our consciousness in a disorderly way. We think, "I can't meditate. I can't control these thoughts." What we are doing is beginning to be aware of the process of digestion in our psyche, in which we are digesting the occurrences, the situations in the environment.

There is an osmosis between the environment and our psyche. We are so used to thinking of that which is experienced as the object, and ourselves as the subject, that when we start meditating, we have to begin to realize the world we think is outside - circumstances which could be quite traumatic - has been imbibed by our own being, our own psyche. There is an osmosis. We are interpreting events, assessing situations, in order to decide what we are going to do. Consequently we are imbibing in ourselves, ingesting in ourselves, a distorted view of the situations. We have a biased view of situations because we are looking at them from a personal point of view, which is only one point of view.

The first thing to do when we meditate, is try and see the problem, or problems, from the point of view of ourselves, and the point of view of another person, then more people, who are involved in the problem. That's one way of eschewing looking at things from a personal vantage point. If you look at Notre Dame from one vantage point, you haven't seen Notre Dame.

Think of a difficult problem, a personal problem where there is difficulty with another person, and try to get into the skin of that other person. Try to see what it feels like to be that other person. Of course, we tend to be judgmental if we are looking at another person from our own point of view, but when we start looking from his/her point of view, we can see his/her motivations. Perhaps we can see how his/her mind is deceiving him/her. We have to be very truthful to avoid the distortion of a justification. That is the first step.

The next step is to include more people who are involved in the problem. Our vantage point is only one vantage point. Now we are looking at the problem from several vantage points at the same time. It's not necessarily true that ours is right and the others' are wrong, or that the others' are right and ours wrong. Something is gained by that expansion of our consciousness into what we consider to be the consciousness of other people.

There is a further step. Start again with one person. We try to see ourselves through the eyes of that person, so we can see the way that person sees us. His/ her perspective on us is quite different from our self-image. It's not necessarily true that our self-image is right. In fact, it's one of the most deceptive aspects of our thinking, of our identity. It's not necessarily true that others' perspective of us is better than ours, but in any case we are certainly enriching our perspective. We are better able to understand why s/he is doing what s/he is doing. We can see his/her action is based upon a false assessment of our being. I think that helps one to some extent. I don't say it's a solution, but it does help us to deal with resentment. As Christ said, "They know not what they do."

The next step is to expand the object of our consciousness, to include more and more beings. Walking in nature, in the forest for example, we become aware of nature not as the objects of our cognizance, but as really living beings who are also involved in some kind of consciousness. We suddenly find ourselves in a transfigured world.

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