Om~Monday: setting intention with meditation

When I was thinking about what I wanted to share with this post, I immediately thought of prayer. Which then led me to the search for the difference between prayer and meditation. In my search I found words from Deepak Chopra.

AHH! I see! I had figured they were pretty much the same thing. During prayer I am always setting an intention.  I am asking for blessings as well as being grateful for all that I have been blessed with. So then I thought how can I set intention with meditation and it occurred to me that I could easily do this. 
I know a lot of people don't pray because of it's huge tie to religion. If we just REMOVED religion from this and thought of prayer as intention then I think we would find a lot more people sending out strong vibrations of beautiful intentions. Avery close loved one makes it very clear that they do not pray because they do not believe in God, which is TOTALLY fine but I feel that the world is missing those massive vibrations of love sitting stagnant in their heart. You don't have to worship a "god" to pray. Pray to the earth, the moon... pray in behalf of your heart. Replace prayer with intention. 

It is during meditation that we are found in such in a beautiful state of mind and this is when we are closest to our divine spirit wouldn't now be the best time to have a prayer? 
There is so much hatred and ugliness going on in the world right now that I just couldn't help but want to set an intention of peace out into the universe and I wanted to know how to do it in the best way that I could. 
I found another great article by Deepak Chopra. He is the KING of meditation I swear. I always find great advice when reading his quotes ( I have yet to read one of his books but IT WILL HAPPEN)
His article is a great and you can go here to read it. 
I'm just going to cover the basics but you can get more detail out of that article. 
Know your intention. First of all I think it's really important that you know what intention you are wanting to set so that you can go into your meditation knowing what you are desiring to send out into the universe. Maybe even have a little statement or prayer you can say. "I ask for Peace and Love to surround those that are suffering at this time". Your intention can be anything.
Center yourself. This is so important in meditation! Take a few deep breaths, you could actually do the exercise I posted two mondays ago. (read here) Let this last for as long or as little as you would like.
Release into the Universe. While in this beautiful and rested state of mind release your prayer out into the universe. Focus on what you want to manifest and let it go. 
Detach yourself from any desired outcome.  I know that I cannot go and hug every single person out there who is hurting and I understand that some may not feel any comfort during these hard times but just my little intention that I brought with me into my meditation will have an affect on many. There is nothing more powerful than the vibration of love. And this is exactly what we want to be sending out into the universe. 
Let the Universe do her job. When we can detach ourselves from what WE THINK needs to happen we can accept what truly needs to be done. We don't always know the reasons for things but we have to believe and have faith that there is a reason for all of this. There is something greater waiting for us and we need to allow for the universe to do this part for us. Everything is of Love. We need to rest our spirits in the divine love. Allowing for things to happen with divine timing. 

Namaste and Peace be with you!