Thoughts of prayer is not enough.
Read that again.
Thoughts OF prayer is most certainly not enough.
From so many directions these days we hear the anger-laced cry that thoughts and prayers are not enough. This is coming from politicians, celebrities, social media, and even clergy. The implication is that rather than think and pray, we must do something. Do something, anything. In an over-masculinized society, the emphasis is always on doing. And perhaps the only thing more impotent in our culture than thought is prayer.
I have yet to hear this cry from someone who I felt had really spent any deep and qualitative time in prayer.
I would be the first to agree that indeed thought is not enough. The constant mind-spin of thinking, commentary, and narrative has little potential or power. While a vast majority of the world’s population thinks its way through prayer, I would offer that the equation robs prayer of its transformative power.
Prayer is not thought. Praying is not thinking.
Deep, progressive levels of prayer originate in and then from the heart-center. It is vibrational, not conceptual. It is a quality of attention that then transforms energy via consciousness. It is felt, not thought. It is not so much something that we do. It is something that happens within us when we so allow.
We pray when we realize we are being prayer.
To put enormous amounts of time and energy into thinking about problems, and then outlining how we think an outer god should fix things, is certainly futile. From that perspective I agree that thoughts and prayers are not enough. The thought stream energizes the problem and the “prayer” misuses the laws of consciousness. If that is the prescription for solution, we had better indeed get busy. The innate problem with said busyness is that it is imbued with problem-energy. It escalates what we seek to be rid of.
Deep levels of prayer do not directly deal with “the problem.” Praying is opening to allow the Presence that is God to shine forth from our receptive and spacious hearts. This type of prayer does not frame things as problems, rather it sees unutilized potential. It does not set out to fix anything. It simply shines forth as a higher reality. It does not devolve into mind spin. It aligns within the Presence and then it holds presence. It is a soft and compassionate gaze. And in its softness, it is unstoppable.
Thoughts of prayer is not enough.
Felt-sense, heart-centered, embodied prayer is enough, and it is more. It is action. It is inner action becoming interaction. It is Divine Activity. It is Presence which is all Power.
Don’t think about it. Be it. Be prayer this day and then do what you feel called to do.
It is collective prayer and the resulting transformed consciousness that will change this world.
I’m in. Are you?
