St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.
-Thomas Keating, Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

If we’re being honest, all of us would probably admit that we have too often understood ourselves as praying to God from outside of the Divine Presence. Yet, Christian revelation turns this notion on its head. Jesus tells us that “I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you” (John 14:20). Far from coming from a place outside of or separated from God, our prayer, and our very lives, are contained within and given from the heart of Divine Love itself! Contemplative practices both raise our awareness of our placement in the very center of the Heart of God, and provide the opportunity to rest in and even enjoy that placement!