It's one thing to offer a prayer expressing your intention to love God in prayer (see previous post). The form of prayer that follows that little prayer may be a meditation on Scripture, holy conversation with your Beloved, or intercession for others. But, at some point Love will invite you into the Silence where no words can ever go. It is the Silence from which words come, the home of the Word. To go there, you'll want to express your intention clearly for that journey as well. Here's a prayer I often whisper as I ready myself for stillness before the Beloved:

I still my lips that my mind may seek; I still my mind that my heart may seek; I still my heart, and hide inside the Great Silence, till What I seek finds me.

It expresses my intention to gradually move from the outer parts of my body toward my deepest inner self, where Christ awaits. Such a prayer charts the path I will walk toward the divine encounter, every step a renunciation of self-will, self-interest, and self-control---a yielding to God who alone can carry me across the threshold of what I've known, into the Mystery I cannot know except through the blindness of unknowing, the renunciation of all previous ways of knowing.