Original Prayer: Embodied Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus with Neil Douglas-Klotz

*Practice Body-Based Meditations on the Original Words of Jesus.

The Prayer of Jesus, or Lord's Prayer, is among Christianity's most beloved  teachings, a daily devotion practiced by Christians everywhere.
If we could  travel back in time to the ancient Holy Land - and witness Jesus himself  speaking and meditating upon these words - what would we learn? On Original  Prayer, acclaimed teacher and author Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz immerses us in  the language and philosophy of Jesus' world
to reveal a practice with the  power to change forever the way we experience sacred scripture.

 *The Lord's Prayer - Restored to Its Original Meaning and Language

Neil Douglas-Klotz begins by revealing the rich layers of meaning  enfolded within the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic - the language that Jesus and  his disciples actually spoke. For example, if Jesus said anything about  “good” and “evil,” then he needed to use the Aramaic words _taba_ and  _bisha_. These words really mean ripe and unripe. So the verse “deliver us  from evil” actually means “free us from unripeness” or “from not being at  the right time and place with the right actions.” Through his thoughtful  Aramaic translations, Douglas-Klotz opens a window into the Lord's Prayer  that allows us to hear and understand the teachings of Jesus as he  authentically taught them two thousand years ago.

*A Way to Experience Scripture Directly, through the Body

On Original Prayer, Neil Douglas-Klotz guides us, verse by verse, into a series of 24 specific practices of “body prayer” - the original  Middle-Eastern form of meditation that uses chant, breathing, and awareness  to engage the entire body and spirit in contemplation of scripture. These  are the same kinds of devotions used by the first Christians to delve into  the Gospels - not as a scholarly exercise - but as a living and breathing  experience of God. What we discover from these
meditations is a very  different Jesus: an inclusive and cosmological teacher who lived and taught  a sacred unity between humanity, creation, and the divine.  In the fertile spiritual landscape of the ancient Middle East, prayer,  meditation, and scriptural study were practiced as a single contemplative  path. Now, with Original Prayer, you have within your reach the definitive  resource for experiencing this luminous practice, using one of the most  enduring cornerstones of the Christian faith - The Lord's Prayer.

* What did Jesus actually say? How the language and people of the Holy Land  inspired him

* The Peshitta - the Aramaic Gospels and their profound impact on biblical  scholarship

* Body prayer - visualizations, intoning, chant, and awareness practices  from the ancient Middle    East

* Ripeness, timing, and the cycles of the Earth - the natural cosmology of  Jesus' spiritual roots

* "Remembrance of Unity" - Ways to unite nature, the body, and Spirit  through breathing     practices.
Back to Publications