Today's post is an excerpt from this morning's Zoom talk: Prayer as Creation. ( In a week or two the talk will be on the website hillsidesource.com audio files, found in the Resources section.)
This morning we are looking at Prayer as Creation. A few weeks ago, I felt I wanted to bring us back to prayer, as a response to the summer's heat crises and the flooding, along with the recent huge cultural shift to rapid escalation of AI development and use. What finally settled in me, is an awareness of prayer as Creation. As there are many forms of religion and spiritual practices; prayer is defined and practiced in many different forms... The simplest common definition is addressing God, asking for what you feel you need. A more expansive definition is communication with God, an exchange--question/answer, perhaps discussion or imagined discussion. The 17th century mystic, St. Theresa of Avila defined it as “an intimate friendship, a frequent conversation held alone with the Beloved”. But in the context of this talk--Prayer as Creation--although our prayer life may involve either or all of these, I am getting at something more. And though affirmative prayer, practiced in New Thought, aims to create one's own solution to a need or circumstance, it often falls short of Prayer as Creation Itself, missing our depth of participation in Spiritual Creation, the ongoing activity that sustains life by bringing new and renewed forms and situations into manifestation.
To get a handle on this we can look at ideas about the movement of prayer... a more overarching idea of prayer that circles from God to humans, and humans back to God. Prayer originates with God who "implants" the desire within the person for the object of prayer, for the reason to pray, and the need, the longing, the want, leads to prayer, ignites the prayer. Unexpected agitation (the movement of the waters of the unconscious) can provoke the need for prayer. Even in Liturgical prayer, the origin is perceived as coming through Divine revelation. In Indigenous cultures, some Being brought the prayer or the chant or it was given through visions or dreams. The Divine brings the way of prayer, but also creates the need. The need forms the prayer that reaches for connection and healing or fulfillment.
Are all prayers from God, or just some? In other words, an idea arises in you, wanting something other than what is Divine will. Having learned to ask or petition, or having learned affirmative prayer, you pray for, beg for, or claim over and over that which is not given. Or maybe you do bring it forth, but it backfires. One can argue that these are refining experiences.
Someone who is sincere in their attempt at surrender to a larger Good, learns from failed prayer. It is a process. If spiritually you are in surrender mode, the essence of difficulty leads to deeper understanding. You go deeper for solutions, and begin to change your course. There are further depths to this--prayer and stillness (receiving the call to prayer is not necessarily conscious, rather it is absorption.) Surrender can mean not consciously knowing. So there is a point where you trust communion and exchange beyond words.
Can we make a mistake? Emmett Fox wrote, that sincerity and the will to good count. Even if you misinterpreted or get the inner pull muddled, you will be ok.
For some of this mornings poetry follow the links: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.../the-work-of-happiness