Hello,
This is Guy Finley and we're going to spend some time together studying something that is not just useful but important to all of us who want to have our own life.
We're going to talk about five prayers for self-transformation.
It wasn't that long ago that men and women understood that the purpose of prayer wasn't to bring things into their lives to make their lives better.
It was so that through prayer,
Which we're going to look at quite deeply together,
They could bring themselves into a completely different order of their own consciousness.
In other words,
Prayer as it was in the beginning and always should be,
Is about how a man or a woman,
How you and I,
Begin to understand not just our own lives but our relationship to the world around us as our lives are revealed to us through that relationship.
We all understand that prayer,
Its purpose is to help us relate to the world we see through another kind of eyes.
It shouldn't be confusing,
There's a very old expression in the Far East,
Birds fly,
Fish swim,
Men and women pray.
It alludes to the idea that our nature,
Like the bird is to fly through the sky and the fish to swim through the seas,
We have a nature that's actually meant to be in relationship with something sublime,
Something supernal,
Divine if you wish.
And that prayer is the path to awakening and maintaining that relationship with the most deep,
Profound parts of us that,
And to the point of this short introduction,
Let us understand that the world is going to do what the world does,
It's going to spin the way it spins.
And that whether it spins left or right,
Whether it goes the way we want it or not,
Should have nothing to do whatsoever with who and what we are in the moment of those revelations.
So that in the end,
And as we're going to discover,
Prayer brings us to a place inwardly where at last we can use and understand outwardly all that unfolds around us.
So with that short introduction in mind,
Let me add one last point because these five prayers for self-transformation are probably most likely different than what you've heard before about prayer.
I'm the first to tell you that meditation contemplation is invaluable.
To be passive,
Sit quietly,
Open yourself up as best you can to all the influences inward and outward so that in that kind of unity that meditation and contemplation is intended to produce,
We find a completely different kind of consolation within ourselves.
We don't need anyone or anything outside of us to confirm who we are.
Rather we are being sustained,
Really illuminated from the inside out.
And in that kind of relationship,
Find a peace that does pass all understanding.
But what about everyday life?
What about when we go to work,
When our husband or our wife is negative,
When our world seems to be falling apart as the world will so often do?
What about then?
So these five prayers for self-transformation are not about being passive.
They're not about asking for anything from the divine.
Rather they're how we can begin to be active in our moment-to-moment relationship with life and use everything that takes place to us as a form of prayer.
To use those problems,
The pain,
The suffering,
Whatever may cause it in the moment that we experience it,
To align us in a completely different way with our former experience,
Which is usually to resist or otherwise deny that which brings up in us what we don't want.
So let's get ready,
Take a nice deep breath,
And we'll begin to look at this new active kind of prayer.
One that doesn't just transform ourselves,
But everything about the way we see the world around us.
