Prayer is asking; meditation is listening for the response. Different traditions call these two processes by different names, but they are essentially two wings of the same bird. It is difficult to fly with only one wing – and it is also difficult to have a healthy lifestyle if you only talk or only listen and don’t act on what you learn by listening.

Talking and listening via prayer and meditation is the start of interdimensional communication. Through focus, you are identifying with an energy you wish to connect to – in this case a higher spiritual force such as an angel, guru, or religious leader – and then listening to the information their consciousness conveys to you in return. This is a process of identification.

You are also doing the same thing when you want to listen to the energy of a pet, a plant, a tree or a rock – or of any other life form in the universe. You are learning to link to a specific frequency, and listening to what their consciousness is seeking to convey to you. In prayer and meditation, you are defining who you are and who your beloved spirit form is, as two different energies who are separate but who can merge and separate at will.

The process is similar in interdimensional communication. You are one energy form seeking to identify with another, linking consciousness to communicate then separating to go back to your own form.

This is what I was prepared to work with people on at last Saturday’s workshop. Alas, I was stuck at the airport for two days, due to a series of storms between Chicago and New York, and was listening to my own guides telling me not to get angry or upset and asking me to listen as they showed me where to position myself energetically inside my own energy field so that I could be at peace during the whole extended, repeated delay and cancellation of flights experience. So I was getting practical lessons while those in the workshop were learning other meditation techniques from Tammy!

Here’s a lovely cloud formation I saw on the flight home – it looks like a cloud person “asking” and “listening” as well!

This article was originally published in 2014.