Happy Monday morning. It's a new week, and over the weekend, I seemed to be at the receiving end of a handful of important, what?, revelations, realizations, epiphanies, whatever the best word is. Anyone who looks at a mystic and wonders why they don't seem to be doing anything doesn't realize that they are "doing" the most when their body is relatively still. It can be exhausting but, yes, invisible. It's like being a radio receiver. The music cannot be heard without it, but the actual plastic box isn't literally jumping around the room.
Yesterday morning, I caught the end of a Sunday morning TV preacher's sermon, which was about prayer. I had this interesting moment where I realized with clarity and a certain irony that I am not a pray-er. Outside of choral evensong ("O Lord, open Thou our lips" and "O God, make speed to save us" etc.) I really don't pray. Hmm. I suppose it would be easy to look at my life and say, "Well it's obvious that that is the case. If only she'd pray for a solid home and an easier life, maybe she would get it." in fact, for a moment, I did just that. Please, for goodness sake, please?
And yet I most closely associate prayers of supplication with an older, more dualistic religious model. I mean, you can only "ask" for things from a deity who you picture to be outside yourself, separate. When I transfer the model over to a divine feminine, it no longer seems to work. I've had this little thing for years that the Goddess really doesn't want prayers or worship, but for us to spend that time being humane and becoming our true authentic selves. It's less about her "giving" things to us, and more about us aligning with her values, which is challenging enough in the modern world.
I sometimes wonder if the emphasis on "manifestation" and "visualization" aren't sort of updated versions of supplicatory prayer. Attempting to manifest money or visualize prosperity hasn't worked for me, complicated, as it is, by my not believing in any of the duality-based institutions/paradigms that have created most of the objects and conditions people pray about. I could probably visualize a fancy car and house from now until the end of my life and still never "manifest" them, per se -- unless and until they serve a higher good regarding my purpose on the planet. But this apparent powerlessness to "create" or "receive" is further muddied by my being a woman, and by our historical outsider status. Where does one frustration end and another begin? And there is one more complication here, and that is the awareness that there is a much, much bigger picture going on than most of us can see, just as even astronomers cannot see to the far edges of the universe. Each individual's life is such a complex maze of decisions (made, I think, both before and after our earthly "birth") and outward events. We are all part of a powerful momentum toward human spiritual growth, and we simply may not know how a current health, financial, or relationship situation is serving the higher good. A specific personal outcome might, in fact, fly in the face of that universal good.
Everyone has to walk their own prayer path. For me, right now, prayer "to" or "for" something outside myself isn't likely to be my focus. My variation on it is imagining the divine feminine and molding myself as best as I can to those values and qualities. It is, yes, beginning the day with the most beautiful music I know and trying to stay aligned to it. I've borne far more than I ever thought I was strong enough to bear, and I suspect that deep down, my prayer always was to become "me." My "prayer" has probably already been answered, in that I am the person I am, in this very instant.
