"Meditation centered upon divine realities is the very essence and soul of prayer. It is the silent reaching of the soul toward the Eternal. Mere petitionary prayer without meditation is a body without a soul and is powerless to lift the mind and heart above sin and affliction. If you are daily praying for wisdom for peace for loftier purity and a fuller realization of Truth and that for which you pray is still far from you it means that you are praying for one thing while living out in thought  and act another. If you will cease from such waywardness taking your mind off those things the selfish clinging to which debars you from the possession of the stainless realities for which you pray: if you will no longer ask God to grant you that which you do not deserve or to bestow upon you that love and compassion which you refuse to bestow upon others but will commence to think and act in the spirit of Truth you will day by day be growing into those realities so that ultimately you will become one with them."