Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough

by Michael Easter

The research suggests that we should try what we believe works best for us. For example, one study found that stressed-out Catholics saw greater reductions in their heart rate and other stress measures when they prayed versus meditated. Meanwhile, a person drawn to meditation would probably do better with meditation. After analyzing the research, I couldn’t help but feel that it isn’t how you’re praying. It’s that you’re praying. So whether it’s a prayer to Jesus or Allah or meditating on koans or your breath or, as Mary Oliver explained her own practice, “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields.” Just do something that helps you get out of yourself. Once I’d put in a collective twenty sessions in the chapel, I discovered that I fall more into the Oliver camp. My favorite part of each day occurred at 6:45 a.m. As the brothers finished Psalms and lapsed into silent prayer, I’d slip out of the chapel. I’d sit on the cloister stairs to watch the sun rising over the wilderness. I’d notice the birds being birds, the bugs being bugs, and the sun bending and illuminating a new day. I don’t think that these brothers are wrong about their take on silence. Silence is when we hear.