The Power of Prayer: Back to the Basics

Although I have a regular spiritual practice, there are times when I “hunker down” returning to the basics. With all of the noise in the collective field I found myself recently requiring a renewed discipline to go deeper into the I Am Field that lives within me.

All religions teach five basic spiritual practices: 1. prayer, 2. meditation, 3. study, 4. giving, and 5. spiritual community. The more “practiced” I become, the less rigid and open my heart is, I acknowledge other forms of spiritual food for me that exist outside of these five primary ones. I now add a. being outside and drinking in the fresh air, b. the choices I make throughout the day to open my heart or close it, c. engaging with creativity, d. acknowledging The Divine in the Life in front of me, e. engaging The Intuition within me, f. listening and tending to my body.

In other words, the more aware I become of the Allness of God, the practice of Presence resides in the present. And, I return to original five for foundational support.

The first of these is prayer.

I will highlight the five basic practices over the next five blog posts. Giving each a highlight.

Prayer is talking with God and talking from the Divine Inner Presence.

The Christian mystic Joel Goldsmith, says he prays until God prays him.

“”Suppose that I receive a call from Mr. Jones who explains that he has bad digestion. Immediately, there is just one word that pops right into my thought—just one word. It would make no difference if the call were not from Mr. Jones, but instead was from Brown, Smith, Blue, or Purple. Moreover, it would make no difference whether it were indigestion or polio, cancer, unemployment, or a contemplated divorce. There still is only one word that comes into my consciousness, and that word is God, G-o-d. No matter who the person is who calls and no matter what the nature of his claim may be—the house is burning down, the children have fallen into the lake—the answer is the same: one word—God.”

Joel teaches that our goal is to get to the place where, in any treatment (prayer), we can turn our thought to God and find that God immediately takes over and completes the treatment.  But he points out that nobody ever gets to that point without practice, and he encourages us to do the practice, even if it means giving many, many treatments until we reach the goal.”        excerpt from:  https://www.goldsmithglobal.org

My prayers nowadays consist of me sitting down, opening my heart, speaking the words, “Right where I am, God  is.” If I am praying for someone else, which I do as part of my spiritual advising work, I begin with “Right where (the person’s name) is, God is. Then I sit. Saying this reminds me that The Divine Intelligence/Wholeness has this one. I become a conduit or support team member. I see the person surrounded by the Light of God, I see their being in my 3rd eye area, my heart or in front of me lit up the Light of God. And, I sit. I may sit for a few minutes or a few hours until I am moved by that Presence to speak through me. Sometimes The Light in me is guided to hold them, rock them, sing to them, look closely until there is a shift witnessed.

My prayers used to be very wordy, and can continue to be at times. Yet, I’ve noticed the prayer is more about showing up for someone else in The Field of God’s Good. My prayer life has evolved from a beseecher to a repeater, to an affirmative pray-er (I wrote a book on affirmative prayer, if you are interested), to now allowing The Only Thing That Is to co-create through me and with me for Divine Love.

When I had my first direct experience with God fifty-five years ago the world appeared quite different. Now old structures are falling apart and the evolving edge is active with realized Divine Love. Prayer is one way of remaining involved with the New which always emerges toward and from The State of Heaven.

Over a decade ago I invested three years in prayer, meditation and mostly silence. During that time I observed shifts within my consciousness consisting mostly of shedding old wounds and surrendering many of my trained beliefs. During this timeframe I was in the field of depression/deep despair for three weeks. I had the realization it was the field of “Lost Souls.” I asked why I wasn’t acting out of the field while it consumed me. The answer was a visual and audio response. I witnessed prayer in Light surrounding this lifeless field since the beginning of time. I knew that there was and has always been someone holding prayer for me and other, “Lost Souls.”

And, I remember, Prayer never Ceases.

Reverend Bonnie will be speaking this Sunday, May 15th at Unity of Spokane, 10 am. You can watch the service on Facebook Live: facebook.com/UnitySpiritualCenterSpokane