There is Less than Nano-seconds in a Prayer

While I listen to my daughter watching a movie across the room I relish her laughter.  At the same time I am confounded by the rising music and background noises that fill the movie scenes to grab my attention.  Even so, within me a moment has just occurred that I feel the consciousness of an internal space.  I can best describe this as silence.  This black-hole of internal space opened even while all these noises were invading every thought I was trying to put aside.  That moment of open internal space; that space holds my prayer, my connection with greater forces.  That moment, in that space, I feel an internal settling that surrounds and blesses us.  It is a prayer.  And so here I revise my earlier description.  What I called silence a moment ago held a prayer.   It is a prayer and it occurred in that nanosecond of silence. I felt complete gratitude.  It was barely noticeable.  Except that I am listening.

Ego Busting

I’m not sure if we give prayers or they are received for us to express.  But prayer is felt as much as expressed.

When done “right”, ego is not in the equation.  I love Jay Leeming’s poem, Ego. (shared here without permission – please visit his site.  And his book of poetry Dynamite on a China Plate is full of poems I can quote.  This is a wonderful work!)

Ego

Getting rid of your ego

is like trying to throw away a garbage can.

No one believes you’re serious,

and the more you yell at the garbagemen

the better the neighbors

remember your name.

Wrestling with ego is always a losing proposition; ego wins.  The trick seems to be to release the ego, or to even forget one has an ego.  It seems a delicious unaware self quietly steps in and does the things that come naturally.  These are the things we are meant to do.

In prayer a wonderful lack of ego can exist.  The gatekeeper that is the ego can be given permission to stop away for coffee, or a potty break, or to go stretch it’s legs.  While the ego steps away, or fades from sight, or is forgotten the gates are open and the soul and god are allowed to connect.  Sometimes I hope for a a connection – as lovers, as family, yet always as one.

Pretty Basic Stuff

It’s not that hard to figure out. I realize there are a lot of books out there to help with prayer. I’ve been reading many of them. There are a lot of motivational speakers too that are basically saying the same thing. I’ve been enjoying YouTube presentations for some of them. Organized religions each touch on this basic premise. I haven’t been researching that long and I think I’ve got the jist of it. The thing, that element, the essential point of successful prayer (drum roll here) is love. The best prayers are made of pure clear love.

If I am to throw any loop into any of this, it would be that it is worth it to spend/use/employee/apply some of our prayers in polishing our love. As a whole, I believe we are kinda rusty on the kind of love that facilitates our lives, helps those around us, and those far away. I would like to suggest it is not a wasted effort to spend some of our prayer time in clearing up this love we each possess.

As love is made clear, intention becomes clear. In this life, at this time, we are creators. It is best we are clear in what we intend to create. Let’s not forget the best creations are born of love. The best creations are made of love. In clearing our love, we naturally clear our intentions and that is when prayer in the form of creation is answered. It’s a beautiful loop, a wonderful circle: love-intention-creation. It is far above positive thinking, positive thinking is merely the beginning of the road to get to here, to get to a clear elemental love.

Playing with the curtain

The more I meditate on the right here-right now the more complete I feel.  The disjointedness that I sometimes carry with me dissipates.  As I come out of this meditation visual, auditory and tactile experiences are heightened for a while and my sense of wonder is refreshed.  Which brings me to the fact that I have been reading some quantum physics theories regarding time, and space, and matter these last couple months.  Some of these theories give me a feeling of empowerment in my meditations to experience the feeling of time as very now and very expanded.  I feel empowered to feel the space I am in plus imagine additional dimensions.  I find myself considering how these dimensions would impact my life if I could be aware of them and not just imagining the concept. 

This has given me a feeling of purpose in my meditations.  It has given me a feeling of expansion and of experimentation.  These meditations are open to ideas I hadn’t considered and I’m not sure can be fully considered in our three-dimensional abilities.  These meditations have become a game of sorts.  It is as if I have been given scientific permission to “play” in the spiritual realm.  It is very western philosophy of me to not feel that spiritual permission was not sufficient.

There are times when the “veil” that separates our lives from spiritual fulfillment seems to play against my cheek; when I am able to exist within my meditation.  I wonder if we are able to even play with the hem of the curtain separating this side from another side.   Is this mental stimulation or a mental trick?

The Fourth Dimension

I am of the firm belief (pun intended) that prayer accesses the 4th dimension.   Scientists can prove there is a 4th dimension.   They can prove 10 dimensions currently (with one hand tied behind their back for that matter).   But, the explanation is difficult as our mind currently thinks, perceives, in 3 dimensions.

Who is to say what prayer accesses?  Who is to say prayer doesn’t access other dimensions? This concept of other dimensions is tough to consider without being dubbed psychotic or a scientist.  Interesting that I would put those two labels in the same sentence.  The notion of infinity, whether infinite dimensions, infinite time, infinite space – this is tough stuff to wrap one’s brain around.  All I’m thinking on today is merely one additional dimension than we currently openly experience. This alone, in a very focused manner, is enough to explode brain cells in new directions of wonder.

This 4th dimension, or any of the others that are currently beyond imagination, have an effect on each of our actions. I am convinced we are affected by a dimension we cannot in our current mode of thought comprehend.  It is in prayer that I wonder that we may actually be able to access this.   Whether access means to “see” it, or “feel” it, or what, I don’t know.  There is the six senses: touch,taste, hearing, sight, smell and that sixth sense – extra sensory – over sensory, above sensory, more than sensory – isn’t that the same feeling when each of us feel love?  Am I making too big of a leap here?

My mind wanders over to meditations. There are available guided meditations of every flavor. I would like to know a meditation, I would like to find a meditation, I would like to be an instrument within a meditation to experience the fourth dimension. I would like to be able to bring this dimension back to each of us so we may each experience this. A new language may need to be born in order to re-imagine this dimension. I’m not convinced this is in our imagination, or that it is even an image (playing etymological games here). If space is the final frontier – this then is easy to consider a new “space”.

Time Machines

There is physics in prayer. Principles of quantum physics are being found to apply in obvious manner rampantly all through the guiding fabric of prayer. I love this stuff. In the matter of meditations even, quantum physics bear out Ram Dass’s basic, most compelling teaching – “Be here now”.

This may be old hat for many readers yet I find it fascinating that these scientists of quantum physics for lack of anything better to ponder (bellybutton lint? – or has that already been done?) ponder the essence of time and space. They seek to understand time in a measurable, mathematical sense. It seems to have started (relatively) as a question of the speed of light and then the essence of time took over the equation, and well, here we are pondering how to properly measure time at all.

Theorists have found in fact, that the future, the past, the present are each elementally combined. A fascinating thing has come to light mathematically that all the past and all the future for each individual, meet and forever meet at one single point. That single point is now, this moment, for each of us.

This awareness of now, containing all one’s history and all one’s future is quite compelling. It is a meditation in itself.

Is it the time machine we seek?

All prayers welcome

I have wanted to read, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert since it came out.  I bought several copies for friends that first Christmas it was available.  I gave instructions to my friends that when they were done, I would be allowed to borrow their copy and read it for myself.  I realize it’s been a couple years.  I am in the middle of my library copy at this time.  Nobody’s wanted to give up their copy yet, or they are still passing it around among family, or most likely they forgot how starved I get for good reads.  I need to put my instructions in writing or purchase my own copy first and let them salivate waiting for me to finish.  Regardless of my sorry state here is a wonderful excerpt (shared without permission, but hopefully plenty of due) on prayer.  I’ve been both Elizabeth and Iva in this exchange.  Maybe you too?

“I explained to Iva my personal opinions about prayer.  Namely that I don’t feel comfortable petitioning for specific things from God, because that feels to me like a kind of weakness of faith.  I don’t like asking, “Will you change this or that thing in my life that’s difficult for me?”  Because -who knows? – God might want me to be facing that particular challenge for a reason.  Instead, I feel more comfortable praying for the courage to face whatever occurs in my life with equanimity, no matter how things turn out.

Iva listened politely, then asked, “Where’d you get that stupid idea?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where did you get the idea you aren’t allowed to petition the universe with prayer?  You are part of this universe, Liz.  You’re a constituent- you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known.  So put your opinion out there.  Make your case.  Believe me-it will at least be taken into consideration.”

“Really?” All this was news to me.

“Really?  Listen-if you were to write a petition to God right now, what would it say?”

And I’ll leave you there, with this question…what would it say?