What Is Prayer?

Our faith tradition has a unique way of praying—a technique born from the basic principles of our teachings. Learn what it is and why we do it. Join Michelle Medrano in prayer steps that are affirmative rather than petitionary, oneness rather than separateness, and techniques that are masterful are important elements of how we pray and use prayer.

Transcript

So,

In much of the world's traditions,

There is a fervent belief that that which is the creator or God or by whatever name they call it,

Exists out somewhere in the cosmos.

By and large,

Although this wasn't always so,

We have evolved this concept in the current culture of planet Earth to largely be a guy in the sky,

Often resembling Santa Claus with a white long beard,

Who doles out blessings and curses to those he likes and those he doesn't.

And our Judeo-Christian Bible that a lot of the Western world who aligns themselves with Christianity studies seems to support that notion,

Especially the Old Testament.

The books of the Old Testament are very difficult to read sometimes because that God seems like a pretty angry,

Judgmental dude who just throws curses out upon humanity every time he's upset with them.

And so that can seem really challenging for us.

And Jesus,

In the New Testament,

In the Gospels,

Came and his whole teaching was he literally said,

I'm setting aside the old Gospels,

That old notion,

Those old prophecies,

And telling you that God is love.

I'm telling you I'm bringing a new covenant to humanity that indicates that the God that exists is a loving God who loves all and actually is right within all of us,

Expressing through us and as us,

And said many times to those Gospels that this light,

This presence is not some far off being out there,

But indeed is something right here.

And in those 2,

000 plus years since he walked this earth,

And he certainly was not the first or the last prophet to suggest that this was the true place of the divine,

Humanity has often struggled with our relationship with this thing called God.

For if we believe that God is out there,

Then when we pray to it,

To him,

We have to convince him to do our bidding.

We have to somehow convince him that our cause for ourself or for another or for the world is worthy of him taking some time out and saying,

Okay,

You've been faithful enough,

Good enough.

I will grant your wish like the genie in the Aladdin's lamp or something like that.

And so that can seem so disempowering to us.

And therefore,

If we believe in that God out there,

We often practice what I call the three B's,

Begging,

Bargaining,

And beseeching.

We fall into a trap.

I feel like it's often when I've been there,

Because I certainly have,

It's the same feeling I used to get with my parents when I was young and I wanted something and I would either beg them,

Please,

I've been so good and I've been so wonderful,

Can't you just let me have this thing I want?

Or I'd bargain,

I'll do dishes for the whole rest of the year if you'll give me what I want.

Or I would beseech,

Which is the demanding,

Hey,

I want this,

You have to give this to me.

And sometimes we approach God in that way.

So when that is our worldview,

That becomes our approach to prayer.

And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that,

There's still many people who approach prayer that way.

And if it serves them and that's what feels best to them,

Then of course I bless that.

In our teaching,

However,

In The Science of Mind and Spirit,

We have a completely different notion of who and what God is and therefore that informs how we pray to that God.

We have this sense of not begging and bargaining and beseeching.

And in fact,

There's a story in the synoptic study of the teachings of unity that quotes an amusing article that appeared in the London Express where George Bernard Shaw says,

Lots of people pray for me and I have never been any worse for it.

The only valid argument against the practice is that God knows his own business without any prompting.

Obviously,

Shaw is alluding to the common type of prayer which occupies itself with praying for this and for that,

Intimating that God could not run its universe without our help.

Any prayer that beseeches and begs God to do a thing is an open acknowledgement that the creation is incomplete and that the creator has forgotten or overlooked something that is very necessary.

The more we beg God to be good,

The more we show forth our ignorance of its eternal nature.

So that's what we understand in our teaching and how we practice.

Because while I can say that that way of praying isn't wrong or bad,

It's not my way of praying anymore at all.

Because I have come to feel and experience and believe fervently that it's not the most effective way to pray.

It's just simply not the most effective way to be in that beautiful process of connecting with the divine.

So we believe in this teaching that the God that exists is not some far off guy in the sky but is a being that is transcendent of gender,

Is neither a he nor a she,

Is a presence that is infused within all of creation and is surrendering itself continuously to all beings everywhere.

And that's why we sing that beautiful song,

Use Me,

Oh God,

Because we use it and it uses us for expression and that we are always in the co-creative nature of the divine presence.

In fact,

Those of you who've heard me talk about prayer before,

You've probably heard me say that really in terms of the philosophy of prayer as we teach it,

We're always in a state of prayer.

We are always in a state of prayer because we are always launching forth our thoughts,

Our ideas,

Our energy,

Our attitudes,

Our emotions,

Our intentions.

We are constantly in the process of that energy of molding and fashioning and forming our consciousness ourselves to what we think about,

What we worry about,

What we affirm about,

What we get positive about,

To what we are upset about.

We are constantly allowing this source to pour through us in that creative nature.

So prayer for us is an ongoing practice.

However,

There are times like with practitioners and ministers and people who practice this teaching when we stop and we enter the prayer process formally.

As a methodology to form and fashion and align in a way that works for us to the good that we seek and that we desire so that we use that energy that's already pouring through us consciously.

We use it consciously.

We wake up to it and we say,

Well gosh,

If it's pouring through me and creating through me all the time,

Then how about if I stop and take a moment to get into connection,

Conscious connection with it and consciously allow it to form and fashion itself in some direction or another.

This is our form of prayer,

Commonly called treatment or spiritual mind treatment because we recognize what has been said for ages that when we pray,

We don't do anything to God.

We don't change God.

We don't convince God.

We don't somehow magically cause God to go,

Oh,

Okay,

I get it now.

She wants that.

Okay.

But we do change ourselves.

And by changing ourselves,

By changing and shifting and molding and moving and healing and allowing ourselves to be in that beautiful surrendered place,

We become then an instrument through which God,

The creative source and force of this universe can express itself maybe in a new way that it never has.

And we see the results of that in our world as we do every day of our lives,

Whether we ever pray formally or not.

But if we want to be consciously a part of that co-creative nature,

We allow ourselves to step into it in that way.

So to talk about prayer,

Give it a context today,

I have taken a page out of the Dr.

Roger Teal acronym universe.

I worked hard on this acronym,

Weeks on this acronym,

Looking at the many,

Many words that could go along with my acronym.

My acronym is P-R-A-Y today.

P-R-A-Y,

As a way to help us and maybe to help those who are seeking to continue to evolve their prayer practice,

To remember what prayer does,

What it is.

And so the first word of prayer is powerfully.

Powerfully.

I want to talk about our power.

So if this is our methodology of praying and this is our belief about the nature of the universe,

Then what we have to accept is that our true power is something possibly different than many of us were taught and then many of us practice more often sometimes than not.

See,

We've been told that our truest power,

And we may have come to believe that our truest power is our ability to manipulate matter,

To get things and people and conditions to change because we talk to them,

We move them around,

We put them back where we want them or we force them or we push them or we get them or we do whatever we think we need to do that makes us feel power because it's very easy to see that if I want to move this stand,

I have the ability to fire off the synapses in my brain that fires off the muscles that cause me to be able to move it.

It may take me years to be able to look at it and make it move.

I get it.

I believe that that's possible.

I will say that's my woo-woo-ness.

I do believe someday that may be possible for humanity.

But that's a whole other talk altogether.

Right now,

What we're talking about is our truest power really lives within our ability to sense the divine power that is the truth of us,

To sense that activity that is within us at the depth of our being that is constantly moving through us,

To sense the highest aspect of ourselves,

To sense the power and the presence of God as us.

Therefore,

We teach people how to not only pray but to meditate on an ongoing basis to re-attune ourselves to that true power.

Otherwise,

We're constantly being seduced by the world of form.

We're constantly being pulled around by the nose by the world of form.

We're constantly believing that what's possible or not possible is all about what we're seeing out there rather than allowing ourselves to have a relationship that is just as if not more profoundly attuned to this inner realm such that we know that from this place,

Anything is possible.

From this place,

True power,

The power that is not aggressive and forceful but the power that is filled with the grace that God is,

The power that is filled with the light and the love and the wholeness is our truest power.

And the more we begin to attune to that and trust in that,

The more we feel empowered to move through our life and to use the power of prayer for ourselves,

For each other,

And for our world.

And the more we begin to trust that true power.

So it's powerfully allowing ourselves to own that.

Our founder,

Ernest Holmes,

Says,

The spirit responds to us by corresponding to our states of thought.

We enter into it in such degree as we comprehend it.

It enters into us through correspondence in such degree as we comprehend it.

Prayer,

Communion with the spirit,

Meditation or contemplation is for the purpose of unifying our minds with the universal mind,

Opening up the avenues of our thought to a greater influx.

So this willingness to surrender into our true power allows us to feel a greater alignment and leads us into the next part of our acronym,

The R.

It reconnects us.

It reconnects us to our true power.

And so praying invites us to be faithful to the use of it,

Even when it's hard or it doesn't make sense.

We become faithful to prayer.

We become some of those people who are faithful prayers.

Some of us struggle because we have more faith in what we see in the world of form than this right here and our teaching.

And I believe that spirituality at its core across the board and every faith tradition is an invitation to say,

What will you have faith in?

Will you have faith in all that or will you have faith in this?

And sometimes it's hard because we just want what we want when we want it.

So I invite us to think about where is it that we're pounding on life?

I want what I want when I want it.

And not surrendering into that deeper place to reconnect.

Once we reconnect,

The A word in our prayer acronym is amplifies.

Because the more we reconnect,

The more our beliefs and our thoughts and our consciousness and our energy is amplified in our lives.

The way we practice prayer is this organic process.

It's this organic allowing that which is already here to become amplified.

And the more we know about it,

The more it expresses through us.

Ernest Holmes used to say that train thought is more powerful than untrained thought.

And by that he meant that those of us who go back to the well over and over and over and over and over and over and over again,

Amplify our conscious sense of that reconnection such that we use it.

That's what these practitioner prayer partners do.

That's what we're all charged as an ecclesiastical group,

As ministers and practitioners.

We are charged to more than anything in our lives,

Go back to that well and allow the amplification of that divine life to have its way through us so that we can be a beneficial prayer presence to others in our lives.

Holmes says then we allow our beliefs to become stronger and stronger.

And he says,

What is belief?

It's a mental state.

Therefore we are correct when we say that if we can change the mental state,

We can change the outward form.

That is where many people make a mistake.

Our philosophy is not one of denying the reality of the external,

But of affirming the reality of the invisible as the creator of the external.

It is the belief and not the prayer that permits the miracle.

But the belief could not permit the miracle unless there were an intelligence operating as law which reacts to that belief.

So we amplify our ability to manifest our beliefs.

And lastly,

The why?

Yours.

Powerfully reconnect and amplify what is yours.

What is ours?

What is mine?

I struggled with this one a bit because while I have this fervent belief in prayer,

Passionate belief in prayer if you can't tell,

I can acknowledge that in my life and in our life together,

Sometimes it appears as though what I think should be happening,

My prayers,

Don't get answered the way I would like them to be.

And in fact,

I think this is a lot of why in most faith traditions,

Any faith traditions,

People abandon prayer.

Because there's a persistent use of it that is about,

Well,

If I pray,

Then everything will change.

And if it didn't change,

Then I either must have done it wrong or there's something wrong with me.

My consciousness is flawed or God doesn't like me.

That seems to be the prevalent explanation we might have when we don't get what we want.

But in a recent meditation,

I was sensing very deeply how the part of me that thinks it knows what it wants is usually associated with the ego aspect of myself.

And that what I want with this small mind sometimes isn't able to take into account what's going on at the soul level,

Soul choices.

And then I had this vision of us like a bubble,

Like a little bubble that's the consciousness and the big bubble that's the bigger aspect of us with this filter in between that represents the unhealed past or the unconscious or the pain or the trauma or the some called the shadow side,

The aspects of us that have blocked out the truth of who we are.

So from the place of our ego,

We want what we want when we want it.

But all the while,

This higher aspect of us is attempting to chip away at that separation that we've placed between ourselves and our highest aspect.

And if we're doing our healing work in the realm of our humanity,

We're chipping away at it from that end too.

And when we're chipping away powerfully and profoundly and the light can get through,

Often that's when we see the most miraculous manifestations.

And if we're chipping away at it,

We can see that there are times when that which I think I want is not in alignment with my highest good and therefore it can't happen and won't happen because it's coming from this small aspect of myself.

And there are times when what I want to have happen from this higher realm which could also include my life purpose.

It could include my soul's journey in terms of the soul's desire,

What I intend to do with this lifetime.

And as it has its way through me,

This part of me might feel overwhelmed and scared but can say,

Oh gosh,

I'm getting kind of a vision of what I should be doing.

And there's a deep listening.

And so our work in prayer often begins at the level of chipping away at the pain and the suffering that we've experienced.

To do our work in prayer life and to our work in our classes and with our practitioner prayer partners and our therapists and everything that we utilize to heal that band of darkness that each one of us has from the challenges and the traumas and the perceptions and the disappointments and the betrayals and the hurt so that we can utilize the truth of our prayer power to contribute to our life in the world.

So that we can hear the highest ideals for ourselves in living out this life and stop resisting the truth of who we are so that we can be the fullness of ourselves in this lifetime.

And so our prayer life,

While it might start out as we begin to use it with what we joke about principles,

Parking spots and palaces,

Might ultimately become,

I'm seeking to be the highest version of myself today.

I'm seeking to surrender my perceptions about the drama and trauma in my life.

I'm seeking to be a beneficial presence for the good of humanity because I recognize that as I look out into the world,

Sometimes what I see that I think is wrong with the world has a greater purpose that I just can't see.

Because I've experienced in my life so many times as I fervently prayed and prayed and prayed and then went,

Oh,

Okay,

I'm glad that didn't happen that way because what happened was even better.

So we take prayer out of the realm of our small mindedness,

The little one in us that wants what it wants when it wants it.

And we allow ourselves to anchor into,

I can create the life that I want to create in concert with the wholeness of who and what I am.

The big us versus the little us.

Dr.

Roger talked about that a couple weeks ago.

We surrender into the bigger us as we endeavor to live out our greatest intentions and dreams and as we pray,

As we pray.

Little Nun's sister Joyce Rupp says about prayer in one of her books,

The paradox of prayer is that it strengthens us inwardly.

As it strengthens us inwardly,

It also strengthens us outwardly.

As we grow spiritually,

We become ever more effective catalysts of love in the marketplace.

We discover the Holy One within us and the Holy One around us.

I have been fascinated in reading recently the great works of Sister Joan Chittister.

She is a teacher,

A Benedictine nun.

I heard her for the first time at one of the parliaments of the world's religions that I was able to attend.

And she spoke then very powerfully about the role of women in spirituality.

This was a big risk for her to do because at that time,

This was in the 90s that I heard her for the first time.

There was a lot of controversy at the parliament because so many different religions from around the world were invited and many of those religions still believed that women had no place in the leadership of spirituality or religion.

And so for a nun to get up at the parliament and talk about the power and the presence of women in the church and in the spiritual world was just very controversial and shocked people.

And so she's gone on since then to continue her stands and her powerful presence to talk about many of the social issues that we're facing on our planet and talks about how powerful it would be if Jesus were alive right now and how he might be living out his life and dealing with some of these challenges as well as challenges each one of us to understand that we have a powerful place in our role in the world in how we treat each other and how we treat our fellow brothers and sisters and all beings on this planet and how we treat our environment and how we live out our lives as a spiritual giant.

And I'm doing a workshop on one of her books about the 12 laws of humility out of the Benedictine tradition and from that book,

She says to us,

The truth is that no one can merit God.

And that was really meaningful to me.

When we are praying,

A lot of times we're trying to get God's favor,

Get God's merit,

His favor.

We don't earn God a prayer,

A legalistic hurdle,

A devotion at a time.

We don't earn God,

She's saying.

We don't need to earn God because the basic life giving truth is that we already have God.

God is here with us in this forever.

And she goes on to say,

Trying to earn God only keeps us rule centered failures because no one can do it perfectly.

And that really resonates for me and having had some time in my youth in the Catholic Church to hear those words from a nun is like opening.

Wow.

Powerful.

Because I resonate with that and I think that this is part of when we start to take our power not only in prayer but in our life as a co-creative being.

When we understand that our role is not to earn God's favor,

To get God's approval,

To get God to say yes to us but rather to become aligned with God and to know that when we begin to do that,

That we can be more effective in our prayers.

I also said last week and I stand on this that I don't believe that there's a wrong way to pray necessarily.

So praying in that way that might be somewhat born of separation isn't that it's bad or wrong or it's a sin or it doesn't work.

I just feel like praying from that place of alignment is what is more effective for us.

I heard a cute story of us teaching a class in the ministerial school for the San Diego students and one of the students,

Marcus,

Told a story about a man and his two birds.

This man Bob had two macaws that he really,

Really loved whose names were Jack and Joe and they're beautiful birds and they were very able to talk a lot.

And Bob was a very spiritual,

Religious guy and so he decided that it would be cool to teach these macaws how to pray.

And so he taught them chants and he taught them the Lord's Prayer and he taught them how to pray the rosary and he taught them all sorts of different prayers and he taught them how to take the beads and to pass them through their mouth and to pray and this was pretty powerful and people just loved it.

So he started taking these two birds,

Jack and Joe,

To schools and to churches and to fairs and show people how these beautiful birds had learned to pray in all these different ways and he was pretty proud of it.

He thought,

Gosh,

You know,

If two birds is good,

Three birds might be even better.

So he went and got a female macaw to add to these birds and as he was bringing the female home and walking up to the house,

He heard Jack,

The bird inside the house,

Say,

Okay,

Joe,

Put the beads down.

We finally got what we've been praying for.

And I like that story because,

You know,

We sometimes just want what we want and so we might be tempted,

Even those of us who are the most powerful practicing religious scientists might find ourselves in a moment of exasperation because life can be pretty exasperating at times and we might find ourselves in one of those prayers.

There's a wonderful teacher named Nona Brooks who was one of the founders of another tradition that's very close to ours called divine science.

In fact,

Our founder,

Ernest Holmes,

Was ordained as a divine scientist before he ever started our teaching.

And Nona says,

Sometimes one longs to pray the old prayer,

To ask the father for something very near to the deepest desires and aspirations of the heart.

I have felt this and I have known that God has understood.

Even though we do not consider that the prayer of supplication is that of the highest vision,

Still,

We know it has brought satisfaction to the lives of many men.

Sometimes a few words like these spoken from the heart bring comfort and rest.

Dear father,

You know for what I am praying and I trust you to help me to realize that which is best about it.

So sometimes that helps.

But if we're going to want to practice the prayer that we teach here in Science of Mind,

Then we would possibly begin to learn to do the affirmative prayer.

That's what we call it.

Praying from the affirmative.

We call it spiritual mind treatment or treatment specifically at times.

Or prayer treatment.

Might hear people talk about that.

When we say prayer here in our teaching,

That's mostly what we mean.

That kind of prayer.

An affirmative prayer.

A prayer of alignment.

A prayer of recognizing our co-creative nature.

And one of the first hurdles we get to is that people ask in classes and in talking with them,

How do I pray affirmatively for something that I want that's not here already?

Am I lying to myself when I do that?

And I think that it's very powerful to realize that we have a powerful imagination.

Our minds right now can go back in time if we want and imagine and remember our life yesterday or 10 days ago.

We can remember a condition.

We can remember before such and such happened.

We have a powerful imagination.

We have a powerful imagination to imagine forward,

Don't we?

We can imagine what it might be like to have that which we would like to experience in our life.

We can imagine what it might be to have greater health or more financial abundance or a relationship or a greater,

Deeper experience with the divine.

We can imagine what it might be like to be working in the role that we'd like to work in in our careers.

We can't imagine forward and so we forget that we have that power of imagination to consider even things which at first may seem almost impossible to us.

I love from Alice in Wonderland when Alice is having that conversation with the queen and Alice laughs and says to the queen,

There's no use trying,

She said.

Everyone can't believe impossible things and the queen kind of snuffles and says,

I dare say you haven't had much practice.

When I was younger,

I always did it for half an hour a day.

Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast and that's what it's about,

Isn't it?

It's about literally standing in this now moment and saying,

Okay,

I can acknowledge and see what's here now.

It's not like I'm in denial about what's here now,

But I use the power of my imaginational skills to project myself into the future of that which I would prefer to be going on and I see myself almost like a time machine going forward in time and standing in the midst of the good that I desire and it's from that place that I look around and I say,

Yes,

I am healthy and strong and vibrant.

I am stronger and wiser.

I am,

And whatever it is that we're seeking to affirm,

We do it from there.

That's what it means when it's affirmative.

We don't do it from the past of,

Well,

I wish I was,

But I'm not.

Or we don't even do it from the now,

Like wouldn't it be nice?

We do it from that imaginal place that says,

I'm here.

This is my reality.

I claim it.

So that's why when we pray,

People hear us speaking words as though it's already so because that's the place that we're putting ourselves in,

In that prayer consciousness,

In that prayer consciousness.

And there's a technology of prayer that I want to talk about briefly.

The technology of prayer.

There are literal steps and the steps are helpful just to keep us organized really.

The steps are helpful to keep us on track because I know for myself when I attempt to focus on something,

I can do it for so long and then eventually my mind wants to wander.

So in our teaching years ago,

We developed this methodology,

This technology to say,

Okay,

If I'm going to project myself into the future of that which I desire,

Let me stand in the midst of that and have a technique for which I can claim that truth and have that truth begin to become a part of the consciousness of who I am.

And the belief of course is whether it's an affirmation statement that we make or an affirmative prayer we do.

The more often that we do it,

The more often we feel it because we want to have conviction about it.

We want to imagine it as clearly as we can.

We want to be as feeling nature as we possibly can,

Feeling the good feelings of that good that we're claiming for ourselves and then speaking either aloud or silently.

Ernest Holmes prayed silently for the people he prayed for,

But we pray here mostly aloud with each other and we do so in these very quick five steps that I'll go over.

If you take classes with us,

This is a foundational part of what we teach people in our classes,

How to use this technology in their life because it's a powerful tool.

So we start with recognition where we recognize the power and presence of this universe that is everywhere and everything and that great feeling of expansiveness might begin to take us over as we stand in the awareness of that place in the future,

The future good that we're claiming for ourselves.

We imagine and remember that God is all there is.

And then we go into a stage called unification.

We remember because it's all that there is,

It's right here where I am.

I am that which it is also.

I am that co-creative nature.

It's always flowing through me.

It's always flowing through me,

In me and as me.

And then we move into realization where we literally then affirm the good that we are seeking to express through our lives.

I am healthy.

I am strong.

I am financially abundant.

I am partnered in a beautiful,

Loving relationship.

I am moving forward in the career path that I choose.

I am feeling a greater presence of God.

I am.

We literally allow ourselves to claim and own those truths as though they were so.

We don't futurize.

We don't hold back.

We aren't weak about this like,

Well,

I will have that someday.

This will be good someday or it's going to be fine.

We don't do that.

We stay away from that concept.

We stand firmly in the now moment and claim that truth as though it were so.

The universe that is pouring through us,

The God life that is pouring through us,

It doesn't know any difference.

It doesn't know at what place in the time,

Space,

Continuum we are residing and resounding.

All that matters for this co-creative process is that we are consciously utilizing it to claim our good,

To claim the desire we want.

Now we don't get into the hows.

We don't need to say I'm financially abundant because I've won the lottery.

We don't need to do that because the universe knows how.

We simply need to align ourselves with that good.

Then we give thanks,

Thanksgiving,

And we give thanks that it's so already.

We act as though it's so.

Our thanksgiving is affirmative.

It's done and we release it.

We release and let go just like Tom was singing about.

Release it and let it go and move on.

So those are the five stages.

And prayer,

How to use it,

Involves those stages,

Learning them,

Those steps,

Learning those steps and utilizing them in our lives.

And then we begin to understand that when it comes to prayer,

We then,

From that place of connectedness,

Can pray powerfully and effectively for ourselves.

I find that prayer in my life does a number of things besides help me create the life that I would like to live.

It helps calm me down.

It helps calm me from those places of doubt,

Faithlessness,

Confusion,

Stress.

Because those experiences,

While very valid in our lives and needed to be expressed,

If they become the most of the time reality of our being,

Then our reality and our world will begin to match those.

Those are places that we might walk through in our human experience.

Of course we might.

But it comes to that moment where we want to create the life we want to create,

Where we get to stop and say,

Okay,

Do I really want to continue to create a life that is based on fear,

That is based on constant anxiety,

That is based on constant worry,

That is based on constantly looking at the lack and limitation in what I don't have and what's not working?

Or do I want to create another life?

And if I want to begin to create differently in other places,

I find that doing this process literally calms everything within me.

It calms down those thoughts that want to have their way with me sometimes.

It calms down my nervous system that wants to be in flight or fight.

It calms down the very presence that I am.

And I go there so regularly,

As do all of our ministers and our practitioner prayer partners,

That I immediately feel that ease and grace of that calmness of prayer.

I also find that when I pray,

I don't feel so alone.

Sometimes in my personal challenges,

I might be tempted to think no one understands.

No one has it as bad as me.

No one can begin to imagine how it must feel to be me right now.

But when I pray,

I feel myself partnered with the highest aspect of myself.

I feel myself partnered with the divine nature,

The limitless divine nature.

And there's something more and something greater that can happen through me.

And having now been in this teaching since I was a teenager,

I find that I can count limitless number of times that prayer has supported me in my most desperate moments and has helped not only calm me down but helped me create what I want.

As I was thinking about this,

I was thinking about a time when it was very profoundly true that I utilized prayer.

I had been not only studying here at Mile High Church,

But I'd been studying with a man named Stuart Wilde,

Been staffing his workshops here in town.

And he made a suggestion for a month-long vision quest for the participants of his studies,

And I decided to try it.

It was in the middle 80s.

I was a young woman working here on the staff of Mile High Church.

And so I took four weeks to do this program,

He suggested.

I literally withdrew from the world.

I was in practitioner training,

So I would go to my practitioner classes.

I would come to work,

But I didn't spend any time with friends or family.

And each week had a different theme that I was working on in my life.

One was health and emotional well-being.

And the last week was meant to be a vision quest where one goes off by themselves someplace.

And so at the time,

Kent Rautenstrauss was my travel agent,

And he had begun working with a new tour company.

And so he arranged for me to pay for a tour that included the airfare and the hotel transfers and a hotel.

And I went to this beautiful little town that was just getting started,

So it was quiet.

It was called San Jose del Cabo,

Right outside of Cabo San Lucas,

About 20 miles outside of Cabo.

And so I get there,

And I don't have a lot of money,

So I had just enough money to pay for the package.

I took protein shakes to drink and enough money for one meal a day.

And so I spent seven days in this beautiful place in San Jose del Cabo on the beach.

I sat on the beach.

I prayed.

I meditated.

I journaled.

I listened to music.

I prayed.

I meditated.

I listened to music.

I journaled.

I drank protein shakes.

And it was beautiful.

It was a beautiful week all by myself.

Needless to say,

My mother wasn't too thrilled about this,

But I had a great time.

At the end of the week,

I packed all my bags,

And I went to the front desk,

And I checked out,

And I was right there right on time to catch the shuttle to the airport.

And I waited.

And I waited.

And the shuttle wasn't coming.

So I went to the front desk,

And I talked to someone,

And I told them the name of the company,

And they called,

And they couldn't get hold of anybody,

And they said,

We're sorry.

You'll have to catch a cab.

Well,

I had $3 left.

I had no money.

I had no credit cards.

I had nothing.

And after this beautiful week of meditating and being still,

I would like to say that I was perfectly calm and dealt with it,

But that just would not be true.

I was a bit freaked out.

And so luckily,

That voice inside of me did win itself out and said,

Just sit down and pray.

So I sat down,

And I did a spiritual mind treatment.

And I envisioned myself at the airport in Cabo San Lucas getting on the plane.

And I envisioned that there was a way that life could get me there.

I did not know what it was.

I didn't know how I was going to get there.

I didn't even spend time worrying,

Well,

Maybe the bus will show up,

Or maybe someone will give me a ride.

I didn't know.

I just knew that I had to pray.

And it was a prayer of total surrender.

Total surrender.

It was a prayer also of I'm ready to go home.

I'm ready to step back into my life.

I'm ready to be this improved version of Michelle,

Whatever it was I had imagined it to be.

And as I ended the prayer and said,

And so it is,

I opened my eyes,

And I looked around,

And that inner voice said,

Go to the pool.

And I was like,

Come to the pool?

I don't want to go to the pool.

So I got up,

Because I've learned to be obedient to that voice.

And I went to the pool,

And I looked at all the people sitting around the pool.

And all of a sudden,

Over one lady,

There was like a little flicker of light.

And it kind of shocked me.

And so I walked over to her,

And I just started speaking.

And I just said,

Excuse me,

Ma'am.

And I told her the whole story.

And I said,

I need $10 to take a cab to get to the airport.

And she said,

Oh,

Honey,

Of course.

And she gave me the $10.

And I had the little pass from the shuttle.

So I said,

Would you please write your name and address on this piece of paper?

And I promise when I get home,

I'll send you a check for this $10.

And so she wrote her name and address,

And she handed it to me.

And I looked at it.

And she literally lived behind me in Denver here.

She was my neighbor,

And I didn't even know it.

And it was like one of those synchronistic moments.

I was so grateful to her.

I was so grateful to the universe.

I went and I got my money,

And I got a cab.

And I had that feeling when I got to the airport.

I remember sitting down and looking around with that feeling of relief and saying,

This is what I imagined when I prayed.

This feeling of,

I'm going home.

I know Kent's not here for me to blame him for that,

But I'll find a way somehow.

Just one of the ways that prayer supports and sustains us.

In one of my most desperate,

Scary moments as a young woman,

I felt it.

We can use prayer for ourselves.

We can use prayer for others.

Because we know that there is one life and one presence.

We know that we can pray for people in our lives.

Ernest Holmes says that worry is misplaced faith.

And that's sometimes what we do about others in our lives,

Don't we?

We worry so much.

We almost feel like it's a sign of love to say to each other,

Well,

I'm really worried about you.

And to those who love me,

I'll often say,

Please don't worry about me.

I'd really prefer if you prayed and saw me as triumphant over this challenge and saw me as strong and able to meet the things that I'm facing and not worry.

Because for,

We all have impact.

We all have an opportunity to stand in the field of each other's presence and know the best and know the truth and know the highest good for each other.

So we learn to pray on behalf of other people in a powerful way,

To see them as powerful and loved and strong and triumphant over their challenges,

To claim their good for them.

And that's what we ministers and practitioners do when we pray for other people.

We have spent times soaking in this divine presence and standing in our divine presence.

In fact,

I will say sometimes it's so much easier to see the good for someone else than it is even for myself.

And sometimes for myself,

I can't see the good.

I'm too caught up in it.

And that's when I will reach out and ask one of those wonderful practitioners to pray for me.

And I have a prayer partner that prays for me every week.

And I pray for her because I believe so much in the power of this prayer,

This art of prayer.

And so we can pray for others and allow others to pray for us in this affirmative way to stand as witness to the truth of us.

And we can pray for the world.

We can pray for the state of the world for things to get better.

Now I know that's sometimes where it can become the most exasperating.

When I was working on this message,

I did some research on praying for the world and saw all sorts of things all over the internet about people saying,

I've been praying for world peace for 25 years and still it's not working.

And many people saying,

I've been praying for this COVID virus to go away and it's still persisting.

I've been praying for everybody to wear masks or I've been praying for everybody to take their masks off or I've been praying for,

I've been praying for,

I prayed for no snow.

I know there's not going to be any snow in Denver.

And feeling like,

But I prayed and it didn't happen.

And I think sometimes that's where we miss the mark when it comes to prayer for ourselves,

For others and for the world.

Because there's always something more going on than we can sometimes see.

There's always more happening in people's lives and in the life we share.

But what we get to know is that when we pray,

The prayer we utter for the world or for other people enlightens us,

Allows us to have another moment of grace,

The grace that God is and allows us to express and feel that and be a contribution to world peace and be a contribution to the health and wellbeing of others.

And I for one would much rather for my sake and the sake of the world and the sake of all of the beings in this world be a contribution of light and love than continue to be a contribution of negativity and doubt and lack.

So prayer in this way serves us.

It serves our soul as well as it serves the world.

We can use it for the benefit of all.

Our Ernest Holmes says in Living the Science of Mind,

One of his great books,

The thing that happens when we pray or write is simple.

We create an attitude of complete acceptance in our own minds.

When we do this,

The law of good,

Which is all powerful,

Begins to operate on this acceptance and begins to rearrange all the facts and activities of our lives in such a way that we have accepted,

That what we have accepted will actually transpire in our experience.

We may pray for world peace and we may not see it across the entire globe,

But our prayer impacts something we can't even see the results of.

So prayer in this way is truly an act of faith.

It's an act of faith,

An act of goodwill to stand for good in our life and in the lives of those we share this planet with.

So as we close today,

I'd like to close with a prayer.

And today I'm going to do a traditional five step treatment.

I did 10,

But five step treatment.

And I'm going to invite anybody who's listening to consider thinking about something that you would like prayer for today.

Whether it's something in your own life that you would like to see happen or something in the life that we share for the world or for someone in your life that you want to see.

Someone be healthier or happier and just imagine as we close our eyes,

If you'd like to close your eyes with me to pray,

That's fine.

No need to.

But as we go within,

Imagine that desire of the heart right now.

Just one,

One desire.

And I begin by knowing there is one life.

That life is God.

That life is everywhere present in through and as all creation.

That life is the all that is.

That life is whole,

Perfect and complete.

It is love.

It is joy.

It is power.

It is all abundance.

It is harmony.

It is peace.

That life is expressing fully and completely as all of this good everywhere present.

And I accept and affirm that that life is my life right now.

It's the life that is pouring through me as I speak this word.

I accept my oneness in it.

I know that it is the truth of me and I know that it is the truth of every person who hears my voice right now.

We are one.

We are one in the God life and that God is just as powerfully present in every one of us as in all of us.

It is present,

Available,

Pouring through us that co-creative nature.

We are attuned to it now.

We are open to it now.

And I accept and affirm that each one of us allows the floodgates of that divine creative energy to pour through us.

And I affirm and accept on behalf of each one of us that the desire that lives in our heart for ourselves,

For another or for our world is now amplified and met by this co-creative nature and is made visible and made manifest in the world.

I accept that our prayers are answered right now,

That they come forth in power and joy and love and grace and ease,

That our prayers are so and the good that we desire is now made manifest for us to see and experience and witness and to be a part of bringing forth.

I know that this is the truth of each one of us now and I give thanks.

I give thanks that this is so,

That this manifestation is so clearly made available,

That this seed of the word has been planted in the soil of creation and I'm so grateful that it is bursting forth.

And from this place of gratitude,

I release this prayer.

I let it be in faith and trust for I know that it is done as it has been spoken and so it is.

Amen.

Reviews

Wonderful! Everything she said rings of the truth for me.