Light Within

Simplicity is the greatest challenge: In living and especially in prayer. To be simple is not easy. Yet we thirst for the authenticity of the simple, the pure, and the true. It is easier to complicate prayer - even to get argumentative about externals and secondary issues as religious people often do. The disciples of Jesus simply asked 'Lord, teach us to pray'.

The early monks listened to his answer and taught the way of Christian meditation - 'pure prayer'. In this same tradition, the Benedictine monk Laurence Freeman passes on a simple way of entering the depths of the self - to know God by knowing our selves. In silence, simplicity and stillness, developed through the 'poverty of the mantra' we can enter the mind of Christ and so taste communion with God. Through the daily practice of meditation the whole of life is transformed - from within.

In 'Light Within', Laurence Freeman has written an enduring contemporary classic of this desert tradition adapted to the spiritual hunger and needs of our time. He offers a clear guide and introduction to beginning to meditate. He also indicates the support of spiritual friendship that helps many to continue to deepen this inner journey through a worldwide community that has grown out of this practice over the past thirty years. It is a fresh, appealing yet challenging teaching and vision. At a time when so many religious divisions cut across Christianity, other faiths and global society, this book offers real - and well grounded - hope. 'There is no simpler proof of goodwill,' the author writes, 'than to meditate with a person you disagree with… because there is a level of experience open to us all where differences cease to be divisive'.