Meditation, Yoga, Contemplation, Prayer, Chanting, Karakia, Kirtan, Exercise, Dance, Walking, Quiet time, Rest etc… can all be forms of spiritual connection in this modern world.
The names and forms are different, but the similarities are in the spiritual process. The process of balancing of our individual selves with the larger whole. Any type of prayer is essentially tuning into the eternal goodness that just ‘Is’. As we tune in, all parts of our being settle, including our mind, and we rest into a still middle point which is our own unique Truth.
Our unique truth is our own specific harmony with ‘all that was made’.
Living tuned to our own unique harmonic note is our birthright.
Prayer processes in whatever form involve going deeper inwardly, of putting the mind into a secondary position (it can still be whirring away but it becomes secondary) behind this ‘eternal goodness that just Is’ – which some religions call God.
The re-ordering and tuning process often includes breath work or exercise which brings our awareness to the body, some singing or chanting where the repetitive nature relaxes our thoughts and they naturally fall back into a secondary status or some reading of scripture or religious text where we meditate on ‘God’ which is beyond our individual mind, which is ultimately the creator of our mind.
As we allow our thoughts to settle, we have given up just for a moment trying to reason with them and allowed them space to be. This process is supremely natural. And it feels good.
We can know we are on the right track if we feel more relaxed, often sigh or take a relieving breath out.
Getting to this point, to this resting in the larger good and allowing things, thoughts and feelings to settle is great and often enough. We can just ‘be’ for a time.
Ultimately though and very naturally what we can find is after a period, or periods of ‘prayer’, there comes a feeling of a middle point reached, a stillness, a sureness, an inner knowingness that this moment is right and clear and true. Everything harmonises and ‘clicks into place’.
We’ve probably all felt this place in the middle of a run, a meditation, a walk or sitting quietly. We feel ‘there it is’ and for an instant we know the truth, the middle point, our unique harmony within the whole. We can’t make it happen with our minds but we can create space for Modern Prayer and allow these moments of balance to appear.
We find when this balanced ‘click’ happens, that problems the mind had can disappear or are solved gently and clearly and we just know or understand on a deeper level what to do. These moments are validated by being gentle, clear and peaceful.
This ‘problem solving’ is what can come from any sort of Prayer, with aligning ourselves and our minds with the whole and allowing things to settle. Answers, ideas, solutions can come to us from the larger beingness through our minds but not created by them, they are secondary to the whole.
Any form of true prayer is beautiful, gently holistic and by its very nature, eternal. It balances us just where we need to be today, but from a larger perspective than we can see ourselves.
Modern Prayer processes are a natural part of being a human, a gentle leaning towards regular relaxation into the ‘eternal goodness that just Is’. A regular reordering into correct harmonic balance. Some sort of prayer has always been, is still, and will be in the future – important.
Let us not forget this process in our highly modern mind based technological age (which is not wrong) but allow ourselves the time to digest, process and then see how this information might be integrated into our own balance, our own middle points, our own truths.
And remember if we learn a Modern Prayer process through another, to personalize it for our own lives. Just following a religion, a spiritual teaching, a yoga class is fine to begin with but there comes a time when we must learn how to authentically translate the teaching into our own unique language and individual lives.
The process is beneficial. We find over time that when we have our own form of prayer practice it allows for us to ‘click into place’, to connect to our own truths more easily and in turn allow others the natural freedom to connect to theirs.
The unique individual truths that we connect to through Modern Prayer, are natural, harmonious and eternal. For everyone who ‘prays’.