Episode 19: Quality of Prayer

One Heart One Mind

Thomas McConkie

Meditation, Spirituality, Mindfulness, Contemplation, Psychology, Buddhism, Development, Thomasmcconkie, Religion & Spirituality

5 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There is prayer, and then there is prayer. When you pray, do you ever get the sense that you’re not really praying? That nothing much is happening? Through the teachings of John Climacus, a 7th century spiritual teacher, and through personal story, Thomas speaks to the importance of attention in our prayer life. Ultimately, our quality of attention and quality of prayer turn out to be one and the same offering.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another episode of One Heart, One Mind.
0:14.0	I'm your host Thomas McConkey. Thank you for listening.
0:19.0	The episode today is on the quality of prayer, which really is about the quality of
0:27.0	attention. I want to talk about teaching from John Climachus. This is an old saint in the tradition, a teaching from the ladder of divine
0:41.4	ascent. Then I want to share a little story about attention. I want to take us into a practice.
0:48.6	That's where we're going today. So right now, stiffen up that spine and notice the quality of your attention.
0:57.0	I think this is like really the heart of the teaching to me.
1:03.0	When I first started paying attention to the quality of my attention,
1:08.0	I was amazed at how much the quality of my attention filtered the world
1:15.2	gave rise to a particular experience of the world. I think I had assumed for all my life that
1:23.3	the world was just what it was. And as I paid more attention to my quality of attention,
1:29.6	I realized that I was actually an active creator in the experience of the world. And that's
1:37.6	where we're going today, starting with John Climachus. So John Climachus is also known as John of the Latter. He lived
1:47.8	at the end of the 6th century, halfway through the 7th century. He was a spiritual writer.
1:54.1	He was a mystic, which is to say a lover of God. And he's best known for his book,
2:00.1	The Ladder of Divine Ascent.
2:05.0	I'll jump into the reading.
2:06.9	I just want to do a close reading on a couple of lines from the ladder of divine
2:11.0	ascent and then connect that to what it means when we pay attention to our quality
2:16.6	of attention and how the quality of our attention really is the quality of our prayer.
2:22.3	John Climachus writes,
2:25.3	Prayer is communion and unification of man and God according to its quality.
	...

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