What are your earliest memories of your mental prayers and meditations? How and when did you begin? Was it initially spontaneous, or did you deliberately set out to practise mental prayer and meditation as soon as you learned what they were? If you don't mind my asking, what was the content/subject matter (generally, or specifically, as you wish)? When and how did your mental prayers and meditations change as you got older?

My age was 7.  I would think that the family would make a difference in age.  When did mom and dad say prayers were important and etc.

At age 7, the day before my Holy Eucharist, my dad took myself and 2 sisters mushroom hunting to help offset things to eat for the family celebration.  After going through 2 woods, nothing.  The 3rd time I said to God, we need these mushrooms and my dad said, time to go, nothing here.  I spied one and then lost sight of it and tried again, please God, and I saw a huge mushroom.  I ran down that hill yelling, "Mushroom".  We came home with 2 large grocery bags. 1960.

What are your earliest memories of your mental prayers and meditations? How and when did you begin? Was it initially spontaneous, or did you deliberately set out to practise mental prayer and meditation as soon as you learned what they were? If you don't mind my asking, what was the content/subject matter (generally, or specifically, as you wish)? When and how did your mental prayers and meditations change as you got older?

Must have been before I was 4 or 5, can't say exactly when but I remember my mom always teaching me (in the language/ways mothers talk to their little children) about how Our Lord and His Blessed Mother were very great - and to pray to Her always and often, so at a very young age, that's what I did and why I did it. Back then, I think most often my mental prayers were for my family and grand parents mostly.  

Man, talk about thinking back years and years and years and years ago lol.

I don't remember.

I grew up in a very close Catholic family - and all my earliest memories as a baby were being carried into church and sleeping in my mom's arms during Mass.

You know how very little kids today know all about Santa even before they know how to speak - and you have little baby getting all excited about things like that?

That's how young I was when I knew about God, Our Lady... knew God was up on the altar. I'll admit that I used to literally imagine that the statues in our church were real people. The chapel where we attended Mass during my very early years (my dad was one of the founding members) - there was a statue of Our Lady that I loved to look at and imagine Our Lady standing there and watching us.

When we said our rosaries every night in front of a statue of Our Lady - I imagined that the statue WAS Our Lady and she was listening to every word.

I remember my mom and siblings telling me that God and Our Lady and Our Lord knew everything I thought and did...  but the way I thought about it was since they knew everything I thought and did, they probably understood me best. And that made them closer to me than anything. That led to me thinking thoughts directed at them - since I didn't have to say anything for them to hear.

Funny memory as a child (think 4 or 5 years old - very young) - the chapel we attended would have a low mass first, and then that would be followed by a high mass. Sometimes. The first time I heard a high mass - and the choir was singing the Asperges Me - I remember creeping up the stairs in awe, thinking that it was a choir of angels. My mom called me before I got a peek in the door, so I remember going home in our station wagon just glowing and bubbling over because I got to hear angels sing. It was a really huge deal to me and something I'll never forget. :)

Getting a little older than that -  obviously I lost a lot of that early simplistic childlike innocence... but main thing that changed was me realizing that Our Lord wasn't just living on the Crucifix in our living room and Our Lady wasn't stuck in the statues. They were with me all the time. :)

Admittedly - I did go through a funny phase during my preteens (when I was 10-12 years old). I read about St. Rose of Lima (I think it was her) - and how she carried a heavy cross on a daily basis in memory of Our Lord's way of the cross. I decided to do that too. I made a cross out of big branches and would drag it around my property here at home - including out along the front edge of our property where the neighbors could see. It went through my head that it would be really embarrassing for them to see me and think I was crazy - so it was a greater mortification than carrying the cross up close to the house out of sight. As I carried the cross, I would think about the way of the cross.

That was a definite memory of actual meditation - but I know definitely all my life there was never a time that I did not think of God and Our Lady. It's just how I was raised and/or it was ingrained in me.

Thanks for your replies.

Please do consider replying if you haven't yet.

And to those who have, would you like to tell how your mental prayers / meditations developed or changed as you gained experience?

And if there are any converts who feel that my question doesn't apply to them because perhaps they didn't start praying / meditating until they were past childhood, please note that I asked about your first, earliest prayers / meditations, not necessarily those of your childhood.