Before we can even pray, we have to create the conditions for prayer by changing how we live. The poet T.S. Eliot said, We are distracted from distraction by distraction. We mean to be distracted from distraction. But we are distracted from even that good intention by distraction. If distraction is the way of our lives, living like a pinball, bouncing from one distraction to another, we must be willing to invest the effort of moving from distraction to attention.
Prayer begins, then, by finding a place apart building our pagoda.
Prayer begins by making a space in our worlds and within ourselves to which we go to stop, to focus, to pay attention. It will take much practice and much effort, just to be able to allow ourselves to do that. We have become servants to what drives us and need permission to stop and enter the place of prayer. And only we can give the permission to ourselves. The better form of prayer or the function of meditation is not to accomplish something.