With the heightened tensions currently in play across the world, I was reminded of the wisdom from Gregg Braden about the power of prayer.
Praying for and Prayer
In his book ‘The Isaiah Effect’, 2001, Gregg has the opportunity to witness a traditional Native American ceremony being performed to alleviate a three year drought. Upon completion of the ceremony, Gregg asked what David was doing as he was praying for rain. David replied I was not praying ‘for rain’. I was ‘praying rain’. I was feeling the earth wet beneath my feet. I was feeling the rain fall upon my face…
Everything is energy
Everything is energy – our words, our thoughts, our actions. While I have written many posts about the ‘energetic soup’ we live in over the years (including Stirring the Energetic Cauldron), today my attention is on how we use our prayers – our intentions, for ourselves, others and the world at this time is our history.
We need more peace.
When we pray for something, we are assuming it is lost – that it is not part of the picture or circumstance. Yet, there is no separation, no isolation. Everything is part of the whole. Peace exists within turmoil and our role can be, if we choose, to increase the peace and reduce the turmoil.
Hot-headed mediators?
Think in the past how you may have de-escalated a tense or heated situation not by meeting anger with anger, but by embodying calm and peace. By being peace, you created peace. Hot-headed mediators are not used to negotiate treaties or agreements!
True equitable resolution does not come from finger pointing, it comes from planting and nurturing the seeds of peace.
This is, I believe the opportunity and responsibility for us all as we navigate these winds of change personally and collectively. To move beyond the positions of hardened right and wrong and weave the threads of peace in the world.
Old paradigm of power
Don’t get me wrong, I can be sharp, pointed, judgemental and opinionated especially when I believe someone has been treated unjustly or someone has acted unjustly. But I know that this heightened emotion and sacrally based indignation is simply an outworking of an old paradigm of power. Where power equates to over-powering or diminishing something or someone else to gain the upper hand or control and shows a lack of self mastery. A smaller and more personal outworking of bullying that is currently prevalent in our world today, in a myriad of ways.
We are the world, the world is us
The tradition I have been trained in allows 20seconds for the untransmuted personality to stamp its feet and then get back to the job at hand. For we are both the macrocosm and the microcosm – we are the world, the world is us. If we are overbearing, controlling, and dogmatic or being a bully then that is the world we are creating and contributing to.
When I see the outworkings of hatred, lack of tolerance, tyranny, abuse and inhumanity, I look to see what shadow aspects are playing out in me. Where am I lacking tolerance, where am I tyrannical, abusive? It maybe to myself, my family, to someone on a help desk…
Once this is conscious, I can then make the appropriate changes.
Let us all take the high road of compassion and tolerance as we pray peace for ourselves, our families, our communities and the world.
Beyond right and wrong, I will meet you there.
With much love
