Prayer: Beyond Petition to Presence

So in a way, what it sounds like is a confusion about the word prayer itself, and that's understandable confusion because most of the world uses prayer as a synonym for petition. You see, we make a petition to God saying that 'this is what I'm going through, can you please help me with this?' You see? But in the ancient traditions, we have seen—and you've seen so many examples from all traditions right from Advaita to Sanatana Dharma to Sufism to Christianity—where there is a broader definition of prayer, which is to live in His presence, to come to the recognition of His presence within us and then to live there.

So it's right that if prayer means only that asking and petition part, then I would not say that during our contemplative time we focus only on that. But if prayer is that which allows us to hand over ourselves to God so that we can remain empty in that open and receiving posture, which all spiritual practices are bound to bring us to, then this cannot be contradictory to the spiritual path. So maybe it's more of a semantical problem with what usually is considered to be prayer.