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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Prayer:
a dream instructs me
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In my dream I was wrestling with some undefined moral dilemma, some “unearned guilt”. While the issue was not clear, feelings of unworthiness and not measuring up began to suffocate my spirit.
I could see myself meeting with a fundamentalist minister. He suggested that we pray together, implying that more spiritual force could be generated with a combined effort, to dislodge the “sin” in my life and to persuade God to act.
Feelings of trying very hard swamped my mental outlook. I felt like a long-distance runner who could not muster the energy to break into a sprint.
When these efforts proved fruitless, the minister commenced to subtly blame me for lack of success: I was not praying hard enough, he admonished. I wasn’t getting up early enough to pray. I wasn’t spending enough time on my knees. It must be my fault, he was intimating; there must be a greater weight of sin in my life, which I’d not admitted, and this lack of forthcomingness had resulted in God not blessing me.
I felt like a drowning man unable to breathe, as the heavy psychological burdens mounted and oppressed. I didn’t know what to do, as I was not able to try any harder, and therefore I saw no hope of pleasing God in my life.
Suddenly, then, like emerging from deep water into a buoyant and scintillating sunshine, I awakened from my dream. Instantly, I saw the root problem of my delusion.
Prayer has nothing to do with externals nor with anything of the surface-personality. It’s not about trying very hard, or saying the right words, or a joint lobbying effort with others, or time of day, or logging hours.
Immediately, I perceived that prayer, properly conceived, aligns one’s spirit with the Great Spirit, attuning oneself to this Great Mind, all of which can occur in one timeless moment of cosmic clarity.
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