We have to face the fact, as religious people, that many of the forms of prayer or expressions of prayer that we exercise can be forms of distraction. Can be. Meditation, as we know, does not replace any other form of prayer that you find helpful or through which you can grow in your love of God. But if we don’t have this centrality of contemplation in our practice of prayer, then the danger is, and I am not being dismissive here, but the danger here is that our religiosity, our other forms of prayer, however busy we are with them, can become distractions. And that primary, all important quality of pure attention, which is pure prayer is lost or is not exercised and begins to waste away. At the end, if that process were to continue without interruption, it will just lead to a religious fanaticism or compulsiveness. You know, the kind of religious person who is hyper religious, but really does not pay attention to anybody else or anything else, just to their religiosity.
( Attention and Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
