“The Right Way to Pray”
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: July 4, 2009
- In: Ceremony| Happiness| Meditation
- 1 Comment
Image here.
“For me prayer is a surge of the heart…”
St Therese of Lisieux
I started attending sweat lodge ceremonies a long while ago now and as I did that, I heard all this stuff occasionally about the right way to pray. At first it offended, so I ignored the information and tuned into something going on inside my heart. Years passed and I began to hear other bits of wisdom at the lodges that were new concepts to me too and I began to find great value in them. So eventually, I listened when someone talked about the right way to pray. I still didn’t think I bought the message, but I listened and decided to just let it sit with me awhile and discover why it is I was so convinced this message was wrong. In time I was deeply upset. So deeply upset that I didn’t have any words. My throat was too choked with sobbing to speak them even if I could think of words for my loss and pain. This message about the right way to pray welled up in me from no where…so I let my sobs be my prayer. I didn’t use even any mental words…I just let my pain speak and in silent supplication I prayed for help.
I have only known more powerful prayers and more powerful answers to prayers when I or another has been in a similar state.
Wordless earnestness beseeching for something you can’t do yourself is the right way to pray according to the teachings around my lodge ceremonies.
You don’t pray for things you could do for yourself, but for those things you can’t.
You pray for healing and aid, not for stuff.
That emotion comes from the heart and soul, not from what you think you need. It is bereft of the knowledge to make it better. You are a blank slate willing to do whatever it takes. You are humble. Open. Ready to listen. Ready to earn your way to something else.
That is the right place to begin a prayer in this teaching.
Being completely without expectations or opinions about what should come in answer to your prayer is the rest of it.
Then there’s a vast universe full of answers to get in response.
And you are willing to recieve them.
And so they come.
In such a generous form that we’ll be stunned and made speechless at the beauty of the perfection of what we get.
No molecule is against us.
The Essense of Creation
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: July 1, 2009
Image here.
“To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”
William Blake
While pregnant with my son, I felt like the whole cosmos was streaming through me. It was intense sometimes. Awe…Fright…Blessing…Stunned silence…
All of these were my response to that.
There are moments when my creative process startles me and I feel as if this quote has come to life again in a different way.
Sometimes my spiritual experience during a healing session will feel like this…as if my hands and body are a conduit for something so vast, it can’t possibly contain it…yet there it goes streaming through me and into this person and I watch a miracle unfold that I had absolutely nothing to do with. I’m just as stunned and blessed as the client laying on my table.
Consciousness contains all of this…
Its the essence of creation and we are a part of that with each unfolding second.
Spiritual Solutions to Depression
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: June 27, 2009
“When the soul betrays itself and looses the blessed and longed-for fervor, let it carefully investigate the reason for loosing it. And let it arm itself with all its longing and zeal against whatever caused this. For the former fervor can only return through the same door through which it was lost.”
St. John Climacus
The Ladder of Divine Ascent
I do not think it possible that the soul betray itself.
That said, it is possible for the intellect to betray the deep self and leave it feeling very empty and deprived…burned out.
It is true that the way back from that is to find our fervor again.
In that movie K-Pax…remember that movie?…the task was to find the blue bird of happiness.
That’s how you find your fervor again.
Find your happy thought and embrace it with the enthusiasm of a child.
I’ness Floating Freely
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: June 23, 2009
For years now, there’s been a struggle to stay afloat mentally and emotionally through crisis of one kind or another. For these years, there’s been these reminders now and again that I’ve been self centered.
I once felt a bit ashamed. I just feel compassion for myself and that place I’ve been;which by necessity was one of self preservation and the preservation of my family…so self focused.
Each summer I attend a ceremony to pray for healing and help for my fellow mankind. Its a time of service. I’m a helper. I do whatever needs to be done to get things flowing toward our common goals as a group…to make the ceremony beautiful and effective for everyone…to please the Spirits who can see our efforts.
Its a mental state of selflessness…and as I shift more deeply into the mental aspect of service, I am becoming so aware of my I’ness and how self focused it is. How noisy.
I feel compassion for myself about this state. There’s an elemental of need in its existence. Its a part of the survival of our species to have this awareness…but it becomes addictive in our modern lives..It becomes consuming.
This ceremony is a way of resetting myself each year. And I strive to live these lessons of my ceremony in my daily life all year.
Silence is Golden
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: June 21, 2009
“If you love truth, be a lover of silence.
Silence, like the sunlight will illuminate you in God.”
St Isaac-7th century monk.
I started to hang out around pipe ceremonies about 16 years ago. All along, a core teaching has been to keep silent those things which are for you alone; that is to say, if some important experience happened to me spiritually, I should be silent about it. The message is to let it live in you until it burns like the sun inside you. Until you own it. Until you live its wisdom and carry it lightly. Until the right moment in the right place in time and with the right people is found, you do not speak of it otherwise.
Now that wasn’t what was said to me…all that detail. They just said, “Be silent”.
No more than that.
I didn’t really understand the need for that. I didn’t really observe it all that well at first.
One day, I was feeling more maleable and I decided that with this special event (don’t even remember what it was now actually. *smiles*) I chose to take the advice and be silent. I noticed something right away. I began to feel empowered by the event.
A few weeks later, I spoke of the event. It wasn’t a bad choice. It was neither good nor bad, but I could feel some of that fullness dissipate.
Next time I waited longer before speaking. A few months. This time I waited until another ceremony happened and I spoke of it inside a question that was burning in me. I didn’t speak in direct terms about the event. My question inferred it and no more was said beyond the answer.
When I handled it like this, I felt fuller for having spoken of it.
I learned that in the silence, my Truth illuminated me.
True Gifts
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: June 15, 2009
- In: Ceremony| Leadership| Tantra
- 2 Comments
“Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts.
The only true gift is a portion of yourself.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
At first I passed over this quote. It didn’t immediately resonate, but it nagged at me. I went back and read it again. In the stillness inside me, arose the teaching I’ve recieved from native ceremonies. It is thus:
We might give ti leaves, sage smoke, incense, or some other sort of offering in thanksgiving to the Spirits. We might drop money in an offering plate. We might donate our clothes or food to the needy.
But these are not our things. These were already given to us. They come of the Earth. Therefore we don’t own them. We simply borrow and use them. They are not truly a gift then. They are only a gesture of goodwill.
No. A true offering can only come of our blood, our tears, our flesh, our toil.
The only thing we truly own is our body and our effort.
To give of this is to truly give a precious gift…
For we are truly precious.
Love
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: June 12, 2009
- In: Ceremony| Sangha| Tantra
- 4 Comments
Prayer is an act of love.
Can you Spare me a Dime
Posted by: Greenwoman2007 on: June 11, 2009
“We don’t receive wisdom;
we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”
Marcel Proust
When I read this quote, I thought about how I often wish I could avoid pain. I wish that ‘this cup’ could pass from me. That I wouldn’t be hurting over something I am hurting over. But these are the wise wounds I carry. They are a beautiful thing, even though I wish sometimes that I didn’t have them.
Today, I am feeling grateful for my wise wounds.
Einstein
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