The difference between prayer, meditation, contemplation, mindfulness, and just plain thinking

And what you’re really practicing

I wrote about this several years ago and felt that it was worth a revisit. This time in a more poetic form.

The Sacred Distinctions

Prayer is your heart reaching out —
a whisper into the Great Mystery,
a thread from your soul spun into the unseen.
It’s the language of longing, devotion, release.
It is not confined to temples or folded hands —
it happens in your thoughts,
in your ache,
in your wonder.

Meditation is the return.
It is the silence after the asking.
It is when the Infinite breathes into you —
not with words,
but with knowing.
It is where you remember
you were never separate to begin with.

Thought builds with logic —
structure, reason, control.
Contemplation softens the edges —
inviting insight through still focus.
Meditation is the falling away —
no grasping, no chasing,
just space.
And in that space,
truth finds you.

Mindfulness is presence
woven through the everyday —
a sip of tea, a walk, a pause before you speak.
It is the art of being with life.
Meditation is presence distilled —
a sacred stop
from which clarity ripples out.

Your thoughts are prayers.
Every repetition, every fixation,
is a message sent,
an offering made.
You are always in conversation
with the Divine.
What you dwell on,
Life reflects.
This is why your inner world matters.
This is why you sit.
To soften the noise.
To clean the mirror.
To listen for the voice within the stillness.

Meditation is not easy.
It is not meant to be.
It is where you meet your resistance,
where you practice returning
to something vaster than fear.
It is not about emptying —
but about opening.

And then, something beautiful happens:
Your thoughts begin to soften.
Your habits begin to shift.
Not by force,
but by grace.

This is how you begin to habit differently.
To live from alignment
rather than reaction.
To walk as one
who remembers who they are.

With immense Love
and prayer for peace in our head and heart, and on this planet,

Savitree