“Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home, the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. “ - Abraham Joshua Heschel
How do we lose our religion? How do we pray once we have lost Religion? Is silent meditation Prayer? Is focused creative process a type of prayer? For me it is.
I was a woman who was severely wounded by a religion. Long story short, I had been conditioned by a patriarchal religion and came to see God, as defined by them, as someone out to get human beings, especially women. I saw God, as defined by them, a cruel monster. To save my own soul, I had to shed all the religious conditioning. It took a long time, many tears, and great psychological struggling and sorrow, but I was eventually able to free my soul of the “Middle Man. I remember when it finally happened and it was one of the most freeing things I had ever done for myself. I gained a personal relationship between me and my Creator ( I no longer use God as the term for the Omnipresent Being). At this time, I also had gained a deep desire to know a Heavenly Mother (not Mary). I began to seek out all information I could find on The Divine Feminine. As I did so, I found what I sought, a loving, nurturing sense of care and compassion and guidance. It was a personal sense of being loved, being worthy, being grateful for my sense of a loving Grandmother.
I began to know the higher forms of kindness, of love, of the strength and dignity of the feminine within and above. I learned how to pray without rote mumbling of what was once called prayer. I learned to seek and find and communicate with a Higher Self and a Higher Being; a Mother who was not a ‘Middle Man’.
I came to sense storms, disasters, early deaths as being caused by the Masculine God, and the comfort and protection coming from the Divine Mother. It changed me. It empowered me. I felt a stronger and stronger connection to Divinity. I, also, came to find worship everywhere, things that were holy, everywhere, not in square boxes. I often said that my soul was the aura, the energy that surrounds us, and does not fit in this skin frame of my body. I was aware that we can feel our aura, as in when someone enters our space (that invisible boundary) that reacts when someone pushes into that space for a hug or, negatively, when someone might point a finger in our face. Or when someone sits too close to you ( that personal space of about 18").
**note, I know little about chakras and simply know a simpler way of understanding the energy field around each of us.
I sensed my aura was my soul, my part of divinity that all of us have. I saw it like a balloon that I had tried to shove into square boxes (religions), and each time it had popped out because it would not fit. What once caused me extreme sorrow and guilt that I could not simply believe like other parishioners did, and I felt even worse a being than ever. Once I begin to understand, was guided to know, that I was soul in a body, I felt beautiful peace and comfort and my prayers became soul thoughts, whether I was in the forest, the prairie, wherever I was, my intent thought towards The Divine Mother, was prayer. Being lost in the creation of art was a way to focus, to meditate, to pray. Intent compassion questing, intentional thoughts of needing comfort or others being in need of comforting, came to be found in the divine Feminine. Powerful thought became prayer. I found personal ways to express prayer. I have my own little rites and ceremonies that I have gathered along the way. I found things that fit my soul and used that and discarded what did not fit my soul.
I understand that we all have ways of prayer. Whatever thought brings peace right to our very bones, is prayer. Prayer can be a way to offer help and compassion for and to others. When life is out of control, there is deep comfort in being able to stop where we are and begin to meditate and think loving hopeful thoughts/prayer.
However we pray and we feel truly personally connected to any divinity, we are in the act of Prayer. I know I had to have a personal connection. It freed me, it developed a bond between me and divinity so that I was not group rote pleading and expressing gratitude. These thoughts/prayers came from my personal soul.
How do you pray? How do you find the deep personal connection
between you and the divine? Do you, have you, thought of such things?
©Carol Desjarlais 23.2.21
Abraham Joshua Heschel
https://opensiddur.org/miscellanea/pedagogy/on-prayer-by-abraham-joshua-heschel-1969/
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