Wednesday, June 24, 2015






  
Don't Lose Personal Faith in a Modern World!

The focus on today's entry is on prayer. We live in stressful and at times for some a world that all may be lost. It is not, its our personal disconnect from nature that's lost. In many of my classes I introduce the meditative traditions of China and Japan into peoples life and see remarkable changes occur. Many come to these practice because of the disconnect, and the lost of tradition in our modern world. Personal Prayer, Meditation and Spirituality are part of Qigong. Its important to have these in ones life, prayer is a practice that is in all the spiritual traditions. Prayer has been called the heart and soul of spirituality. Without prayer, spirituality would be void of its main means for connecting individuals to God, the gods, saints, ancestors, or whatever is taken to be a divine or spiritual source of power. Prayer, then, is connection via communion. As such, prayer is what establishes a relationship between individuals and a spiritual power or the Divine.

 We have many kinds of prayer. In our world we have individual, petitionary prayers directed to Divine/God. Public, institutional prayers to serve their purposes; however, it is the individual, personal prayers that are most significant for the process of connecting and establishing a relationship. The focus on petitionary prayers (prayers where specific requests are made and wishes are shared) is justified given that this is by far the most common type of prayer.

As for the focus on prayers directed to Divine, God, or Tao; such prayers have a similar, if not identical form to prayers directed to gods, saints, and ancestors—so we may assume that there is carryover with respect to what prayer means for these other prayer contexts. Prayer as a form of communion and relating follows
similar patterns to those found in relationships between persons.

Therefore, we gain a better understanding of prayer if we see prayer from the point of view of how our human relationships develop. One of the most striking features of modern culture, is the ways of communicating and relating to others has to do with the difficulty we have in distinguishing our own perspective or point of view from that of others. This difficulty comes from I believe the inability to distinguish and coordinate perspectives. Many just cannot be objective and causes divisions within us.

The Different Shapes of Prayer Throughout Life


A life of prayer in the spiritual traditions takes many shapes and maturity and uses. As a young person or maybe even now; our prayers are non resistant for the way we request that the divine is there to answer our wishes. That is, as a young people that had an active prayer tradition, we usually demonstrate an unshakable faith and conviction that our request will come true and our life and the way of the divine's are unified as one. For people of personal faith and spirituality, the attitude is that "The Divine, God or Tao exists to hear and answer our wishes and requests. We have a unshakable Life Path of Inner Meditations, Prayers and Communion with all that is.

In the early part of American history we seen prayer used by world leaders. During the American civil war,one of Abraham Lincoln’s generals once said to him, “Let us pray that God is on our side” to which Abraham Lincoln responded, “No, let us pray that we are on God’s side.” The contrast being here is a contrast in general attitude. For Abraham Lincoln if this is true - it still demonstrates a unshakable faith and one of personal ethics.

 Prayer develops also as a shift away from taking a passive to taking an active stance toward life’s problems. It is used for empowerment to help people to take first steps forward into the unknown. The abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, who was raised a slave, said as a child, he prayed asking almighty to free him. Later on, he said, “My prayers got down in my feet, and I ran away.” This empowerment shift in prayer is most commonly seen in the shift away from asking " The Divine, God or Tao" to change external reality to asking "The Divine, God or Tao" for support needed for the praying individual to have the hope, courage, wisdom, or whatever to act more responsively or effectively.  This empowerment concept is praying for strength, then, makes a significant shift to raise the spirit of the human individual of the "Now". For many of us that made a life change we can recall that time in our life, and remember such spiritual empowering prayers.

The Power of Presence

Many of us will find that prayer’s functions and development has to do with feeling "Universal Presence".

In all the traditions with a concept of  "The Divine, God, Tao etc., there is the practice of keeping the power transcendent and powerful. I feel that many that practice paths like Qigong, Yogic traditions, Native Medicine and Eastern Spirituality find also their private prayer's serves to aid a sense of "Universal Presence". For the adepts of these traditions do not pray so much because they believe in "The Divine, God or Tao" but, rather, the adepts of the path, believe in the tangible, feelable reality and presence. This is  because they actualize a "oneness" with what I call here "Universal Presence". 

Simply, prayer functions and develops to make "Universal Presence" reality and presence felt because that feeling can be empowered. People who have the meditation quality to prayer work, have deeper, more spiritually meaningful transformations occurring. There just seems to be a magical effect always around these types of individual one could say. The wise elders in most traditions will tell one that  there is a clear distinction between appearance (empty prayers) and a deeper intrinsic spiritual reality here.

If one begins to merge meditation, cultivation within prayer; I believe one begins as an effort to harmonize the"Universal Presence" in ones life. 

It functions first and foremost to change the reality outside of ourselves. It begins with a process of prayer which  becomes a way to discover and mold ourselves to what is felt to be Universal Consciousness, will, to feel connected to the breath of the way in order to cope with or change troublesome feelings, and to experience closeness with and the presence of : all that it is" and thereby become empowered.