I am curious. I have read about prayer here, using various prayers from prayer books and the Jesus prayer, but I also read a rather offhand statement (so it may need the context to really apply) that Eastern Rite Catholics do not do muc in the way of "visualizing" during prayer, which I tooK to mean that the Eastern tradition does not include practices such as those recommended by St Prancis, during which the person praying imagines himself actually present at scenes from the life of Christ, altho I may have misunderstood.
In the Wextern tradition, there is a body of literature about meditation, but there is one basic formula, and what I have read (nothing *very* mystical) seems to be variations on the one formula: suggestions for a series of meditations, slight variations in techniques, and the like. What made me suddenly wonder was that I read in one the suggestion to "excite in oneself" the appropriate affections [which I think means a particular type of feeling]" before entering into the meditaiton itself. All this made me wonder what the Eastern position on this is.
Thank you all, and I hope Lent is going well for all... altho I am not fasting every day, I am still getting quite a shaking up of my spiritual life.
