Whether you are someone who never skips prayer time, a ‘once in a blue moon’ beseecher or an affirmation junkie — there’s something you need to know about the different modalities of prayer and the one action that actually makes it work…

A Wooly Topic

I was watching Gregg Braden’s, ‘The Science of Miracles’(if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you do), and a couple of pennies dropped. The revelation had to do with the way we — in the western world — are taught or believe we should pray. It’s all wrong!

“The feeling IS the prayer, not anything you incant on a loop.”

I was raised a Roman Catholic and, at an early age, already developed a big problem with the system of ritualistic recitals of verses and prayer during mass. I would witness the older folk getting up to perform a stanza, then sit down…then get up to incant something else, then sit down, then kneel, then up again, kneel again, sit — rinse, wash and repeat. I was so confused!

In my experience, there was no feeling (and very little understanding) infused into what was being said. I would look at these grown-ups intoning the words from their handbooks and they reminded me of robots — or to coin a rather poignant modern phrase: sheeple (no wonder the congregation is referred to as ‘the flock’ and Jesus is ‘the Shepherd’).

The only feeling I ever got going to church was utter boredom — sorry, but it’s the truth. Suffice it to say, Roman Catholicism wasn’t my bag and the church and I parted ways — I’m the black sheep, baby!

Humour aside, I’m not out to bash religion nor to offend anyone — my philosophy is ‘each to their own’ — I just want to emphasize the importance of the feeling part of prayer which is the true essence of the motion.

Feel it to Reel it

In ‘The Science of Miracles’, Gregg Braden says that when we pray in western culture, we are usually asking for something — ‘let there be peace in the world’, ‘I’m begging you to let me make my bills this month!’, ‘please heal my sick mother and I promise I’ll visit her more often’. The very asking or praying for something implies that you do not have it. Ping! Praying for something that is not in your life is sending out feelings of lack. I often hear questions like this: ‘But I don’t have it in my life, how can I lie and make believe it is there?’

It’s really quite simple. This cause and effect universe works on vibration, energy and frequency — so what you put out is what you’ll get back. Feel lack and you’ll bring in more lack. Pray for something that you clearly see you are not experiencing and more ‘not experiencing it’ will be yours. With all the Law of Attraction teachings, we are told that we need to feel as if what we want is already ours. You’re not kidding yourself, or ‘lying’ to yourself when you change your frequency to feeling the said manifestation. You are merely aligning to the assigned emotion to bring it in.

All it takes is a tweak. Tweak your emotional dial to feeling that what you ask for is already present in your NOW moment and you’re feeling will be reeling it in. In fact, you won’t even need to bring it from the ‘outside’ to your ‘inside’. If you can feel it on the inside, it is yours — you may only need a couple of dimension shifts to actually see it in your reality but know it’s there and those preferred dimensions will be aligning themselves to you pronto! Patience, in this case, is certainly a virtue worth practicing.

Gregg Braden recounts a story of a friend who wanted to pray for rain in his village. He didn’t recite any drawn out invocations — he simply felt the feeling of what it was like to have squishy mud between his toes and the smell of the village after a heavy rainfall. And, voila, the rains came down and the floods came up only a few days later.

Come on Capetonians, get your Noah on!

Oh, What a Feeling!

The feeling IS the prayer, not anything you say on a loop. If repetition gets you to the feeling, then great — but always remember it’s the feeling of having what you want and not how many mindless ‘hail Mary’s’ you do (*confession flashback*).

Want peace in the world? See soldiers putting their weapons down, children safely playing in the street, people shaking hands and hugging each other, smell the fragrance of flowers being passed about and feel the dust being kicked up as the masses dance for joy. Feel the relief, feel the love, feel the celebration.

Want more money? See the cheque deposit in your bank, smell the grotty but welcome odour of the notes — fan yourself with those wads of cash, see what you’re going to do with all that money: see yourself boarding that plane or buying all those beautiful plants for your garden, smell the roses (yes, literally!). Feel the freedom, feel the contentment, feel the gratitude.

The simplicity of pray is to invoke a feeling — to feel its existence already clear and present in your life. It’s fun, especially if you can turn it into a game that you play daily. If you can brush your teeth twice a day, you can take time out to pray once a day.

Hang Ten

Here’s how I pray: I get comfortable on my couch and put my feet up. I take three deep breaths. I set my phone timer for 10 minutes and I go into a deep meditation. I get utterly absorbed in a daydream about what I want and how it feels to have it (let your imagination run riot!). I give oodles of gratitude throughout.

You won’t believe how quickly those 10 minutes fly by and it always ends with me having a massive, beaming smile on my face coupled with feelings of blissful elation that last well into the day.

No-one likes boring ritual or any kind of rigid task, so make your daily prayer/visualization time pleasurable — something to look forward to. There’s nothing more important than making time for this, it’s your future investment.

Are you feeling it?

This was my latest article for Odyssey. You can read the latest edition of Odyssey magazine for FREE by clicking HERE or click on the picture to your left.

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Cherie Roe Dirksen is a self-empowerment author, multi-media artist and musician from South Africa.

She has published 3 self-help and motivational books and brings out weekly inspirational blogs at her site www.cherieroedirksen.com. Get stuck into finding your passion, purpose and joy by downloading some of those books gratis when you click HERE.