Thoughts on Prayer
My book is refusing to stay quiet. Gr. I am right now working on the Path of Breath, and tools that use breath (actually, I wrote this the other day, at this moment I am writing about chakra blockages), and Prayer was one of the tools I wrote about. It wanted to come out and say Hi it seems.Prayer. Another fantastic blended tool is Prayer. It, gasp, is, gasp, very, gasp, challenging, gasp, to, gasp, pray... when you can't breathe. Tapping into our breath is necessary for being able to focus on what we are praying for, or how we are praying. Are we asking for a specific result from the divine, or the universe, or a specific God? Is there barter involved? Is this some form of daily ritual that has no expectation of return but is instead a form of devotion?Whatever it is, think on the last time you prayed, or watched someone else pray. Some start with the deep breath in, the long pause during which time they focus on their thoughts and feelings, and then the prayer begins. For others it is the long slowing of breath until there is a stillness. Others still clench their body down, biting their lip. Whatever the style is, a ritualized form of breathing has been developed over the lifetime of an individual to help their brain know “oh, now I am going to pray.” The breathing style informs the mind to change from a left brained analytical way of thinking into a right brained intuitive way of thinking. This tool allows for us to ask for what we want without feeling silly, but it also creates a powerful tool for life change.If we are running around constantly thinking in strategic and sequential ways, the whole possibility of what we know and understand is not being accessed. In prayer, we open up a window for the divine (whether that is a shard of us that we don't have access to or a spirit with a personality of some sort) to come out and show us irrational wisdom. Just as the painter sees things that the accountant does not, so does our spiritually minded self see things that our business minded self does not. The associative prayer tools that we have developed in life, or are learning to develop now, offer an opportunity for that access.