MEDITATIONS BEFORE PRAYER
When you offer prayer, imagine yourself as one who is newly born; without achievements of which to be proud; without high family descent to make you arrogant. Forget all dignity and self–esteem. Remember only your Maker. Before the prayers, remember any good qualities you have, or any good deeds which you have performed. This will put life into you and enable you to pray from the heart. Nachman of Bratzlav What then is devotion? We must free our heart from all other thoughts and regard ourselves as standing in the presence of God. Therefore, before engaging in prayer, we ought to go aside for a little in order to bring ourselves into a devotional attitude, and then we should pray quietly and with feeling, not like one who carries a weight and goes away. Then after prayer the worshipper ought to sit quiet for a little and then depart. Maimonides Let all cry out to God and lift our heart up to God, as if we were hanging by a hair, and a tempest were raging to the very heart of heaven, and we were at a loss for what to do, and there were hardly time to cry out. It is a time when no counsel, indeed, can help us and we have no refuge save to remain in our loneliness and lift our eyes and heart up to God, and cry out to God. And this should be done at all times, for in the world a person is in great danger. Chasidic THE NATURE OF PRAYER We pray for the sake of our soul as we take food for the sake of our body. Judah Halevi However, it is essential that you know how to be careful when you make supplication for your needs. God forbid that your intention should be for the gratification of your own desires, for this is self–worship, of which God has no desire, indeed it is abhorrent in God’s eyes ... Therefore, when you ask of God your material needs, such as health, riches, peace, and other material perfections, your intention should be that these will help you to serve your Creator, seeing that you cannot properly serve God if you lack the material goods of life, which are God–given aids for the aim you really desire – the improvement of the soul. Jacob Emden As the flame clothes the black, sooty clod in a garment of fire, and releases the heat imprisoned therein, even so does prayer clothe us in a garment of holiness, evoke the light and fire implanted within us by our Maker, illumine our whole being, and unify the Lower and the Higher Worlds. Zohar
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