Ancient wisdom tells us that the whole universe was created from a word, a prayer from God.
Humans have prayed since the birth of humanity. They have put their dreams, hopes, and desires in prayers that have reached the Creator and allowed us to thrive and survive through many crises.
Gathering around fires, praying together, humans have learned that it is only through the power of good prayer that meaning and love can thrive. Gently remembering from the Great Spirit that the World, and all creation, came into being through prayers.
Communities of humans have only been built through the prayers of dedicated spiritual individuals and leaders who called upon the goodness of all to come together for the greater good.
My relation with prayer is that beyond just helping me set a direction for my life, it allows me to surrender into something greater than myself. In connecting to God, Spirits, I get in touch with something that gives me an outside view, a higher perspective on my Self. It feeds me with insight and guidance coming from a “Source” that hold infinite wisdom, a wisdom that always shows great care, love, and compassion for my human life.
Prayer gives meaning. It gives perspective. It humbles.
Also, through prayer, I have learned to love myself without filters, in a more complete way. Renouncing to “fix” myself I have learned to look at my soul, my heart, my body, my life, and my path, as a great divine work of Art. I have brought light into the darkest places. I have learned to see my humanness as a divine creative expression of love.
I do not know of any other practice that can give that level of meaning to life and that brings day after day more answers to the biggest question of all: “who am I?”.
Prayer has also allowed me to look at all of creation through the eyes of God. An unconditional love, where everything and everyone has beauty, innate goodness and wisdom. Seeing that to understand the Mystery of creation, the Mystery of Life, I needed to explore the Mystery of God relentlessly.
It has been my experience too that “good prayers” can save lives. Can restore sanity. Can tame fears. Can hold a safe, sane and nurturing center in me, in a world that can often feel insane and daunting. As a reflection of that inner illumination, the world I see now is brighter, more loveable, more meaningful. I have learned to forgive more easily, to surrender more quickly, to trust more often.
I have also witnessed the power of prayer in my work as a medicine man. Seeing how Spirit willingly come to those who need an answer, who need healing, guidance, and meaning.
Great Spirit Prayer
“Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind, Whose breath gives life to all the world. Hear me; I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.
Help me to remain calm and strong in the face of all that comes towards me. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
Help me seek pure thoughts and act with the intention of helping others. Help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy Myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes.
So, when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.
I have seen prayers lifting the wounded and the comforting the scared, erasing even for a moment their pain, and giving them a new place inside themselves that can hold the power to bring back life in the dying parts of the body and the soul.
I have seen the magic of Grace, coming with prayers, and shifting life forever.
In a world that screams for Love, for meaning and for healing, I believe good prayers, paired with meaningful and focus action, can solve all the crisis we are facing as individuals, families, communities and countries.
In the midst of the actual storm of our dying civilization and ecological collapse, I believe prayer has a central role to play in restoring humanity sanity, thriving communities, and a healthy Earth.
My hope with this sharing, with my prayer, is that it will open your heart to the power of prayer, to some new possibilities in your life, and that it will re-connect you to one of the most ancient practices of mankind. I hope too that you will deepen your prayer until it reveals its mystery to you. Its power of creation.
I am by no means an expert on prayer, nor do I think any of my views represent a universal truth on prayer. It is just my truth, as I feel it today in my heart. An evolving open truth, in an ever-expanding healing heart. I do not "believe in prayers", I know that prayers work as I have seen (and keep seeing) the materialization in my life of everything I have prayed for.
I have also witnessed how "unclear" prayers, not aimed properly, have created things I did not intend. That goes for all the words, thoughts and feelings I have ever said or experience, all of them are prayers. Either we "know" we are praying or not, every word and action is a prayer and materialize a reality in the world. It's a choice to be conscious and mindful of all of them. Slowly shifting what we tell ourself and others.
So I invite myself, and you, to join this Prayer. A prayer for goodness. A prayer for the healing of Humankind. A prayer for the healing of the Earth. A prayer of reconciliation and bridging between all faiths, and between believers and non-believers.
Spirit is listening...
“To Confront the Word”
From, I asked for wonder – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
It is not enough to articulate a sound.
Unless one understands that the word is stronger than the will;
unless one knows how to approach a word with all the joy, the hope, or the grief he owns,
prayer will hardly come to pass.
The words must not fall off our lips like dead leaves in the autumn.
They must rise like birds out of the heart into the vast expanse of eternity.
To begin to pray is to confront the word, to face its dignity, its singularity,
and to sense its potential might.
And it is the spiritual power of the praying man
that makes manifest what is dormant in the text.
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