Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is almost upon us. Depending upon where you live, it might be less than 24 hours before you find yourself sitting in a synagogue somewhere thinking about the last year, the new year, what you need to repent for, who you need to go to and ask for forgiveness, and what you need to do to improve your behavior, actions, performance over the next 12 months. Very soon you’ll be wondering if you will be forgiven if you repent, if your prayers will be answered.
Yesterday I attended a very interesting seminar with Greg Braden and Bruce Lipton, called “Awakening the Power of Consciousness,” which I feel was pertinent to creating change in the coming year and praying effectively during the High Holy Days. Actually, I gained a ton of information – some of which I knew to and some of which was new to me that I hope to share in the next few blogs I write. I’ve been aware of Gregg’s work for some time now and have read a few of his books and listened to some of his tapes. I’ve been known to use a story of his related to affected prayer in a meditation and when teaching about how to pray. He knows a lot, has researched immensely and often draws on Judaism in his teachings.
Anyway, today, I just want to talk about prayer. I always teach that we have to fill our empty prayers with meaning and spirit, thereby making them meaning-full and spirit-full. (See my 7 Steps.) I also always stress that when we are trying to manifest our desires into physical form we have to combine our focused thought of what we want with a strong feeling of that desire already being manifest. (Well I stress some other steps, too, but we’ll stick with these two for the purposes of this blog.) Let’s combine these two concepts.
According to Braden, “Thought without the power of emotion is just a wish. Thought with feeling is a powerful prayer.” So, when we combine the same concept that we use with manifestation, or conscious creation, to prayer, we get a prayer packed with a lot of impact. When we pray not just with our thoughts but with our feelings as well, we send out a strong message to God. And if that feeling is one that comes out of a sense of our prayer already being answered, our prayer becomes stronger yet.
Braden asked Tibetan monks what all the incense and chants and other things they “do” had to do with their actual prayers, and they replied that all those things they “did” were just preparation. They were simply tools to help them get to a feeling place. The feeling itself represented the prayer they offered to their Creator.
The prayer wasn’t the words. It wasn’t the actions. It was the feeling.
The story I often relate is one Braden tells of a Native American Indian who doesn’t “pray for rain” but instead “prays rain” by remembering things related to rain. He then feels those things – being barefoot in the mud, running through a field of crops, the smell of rain on Adobe buildings.
Again, his prayer was the feeling.
And what is the feeling of prayer? Some might say reverence. Some might say a desire to cleave to God. Others says gratitude – gratitude for the prayer already answered.
It isn’t in the place of lack and need, of asking for what we want and feeling that we don’t have it.
In fact, studies show that appreciation actually attunes our body. It creates a state of “coherence.” States of high coherence can actually create real physical healing and peace in geographic areas. (For more information on how the heart and our emotions affect us and the world around us – there’s way too much for me to discuss here, check out The Institute of HeartMath.)
When we talk about prayers and answered prayers we have to ask ourselves about our level of belief – belief in God, belief that our prayers will, indeed, be answered. Do you believe? Braden defines belief as “the certainty of what we think is true in our minds coupled with what we feel is true in our hearts.” So, we are back to our hearts. Belief includes a strong feeling, he says, a feeling we emit from our hearts that send out an energy that can be measured.
There seems to be evidence that in situations where healing occurs in a nontraditional manner – using the mind and the heart to heal – that while people can heal themselves, its easier to create a healing when they are surrounded by people who believe as they do. The joining of similar beliefs seems to empower the person who wants to be healed to healing. The other people trying to help with the healing definitely do something as well. (I saw pictures of what happens in their brains when they focus on healing – and I saw the resultant healing.) However, while Braden mentioned a quote from Jesus – “Wherever two or more are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them,” (Matt. 18:20) I was struck by the fact that Jews have long believed it was most powerful to pray in a minyan. It was the firm belief of the Jewish sages that wherever ten are assembled, either for worship or for the study of the Law, the Divine Femine Presence, or Shechinah, joins them. Jesus, of course, was a Jew with a new way of thinking.
It seems to me that, in general, we are being told that something imporant happens when we pray in groups. When we are surrounded by people with similar beliefs, the feeling that we emit from our hearts extends outward.
This brings me back to Rosh Hashanah. While HeartMath says the energy of our hearts extends at least 8 feet, some say it extends miles. Imagine a synagogue full of people praying – all with similar beliefs, all with prayers filled with gratitude.
And the Jewish mystics, or Kabbalists, say “as above, so below.” And we can reverse this: as below, so above. When we pray with a strong feeling, and when we do this in a group, imagine the affect we have on the heavens. Might it not be possible then to actually have our prayers answered?
I’m going to try and keep this in mind this New Year. As I sit through services this Rosh Hashanah, I will focus my thoughts and my feelings on prayers of gratitude that radiate out through my heart. I’ll see them extending beyond the walls of the synagagogue out into the cosmos. And I’ll seem them being answered by a similar energy that travels back to me, like ripples in a pond. When I place my rock (prayer) into the water, the ripples go out to God, and when they reach God, an identical rock gets placed in the water and the ripples come back to me. A prayer sent, a prayer answered.
L’shanah tovah tikatevu. May you be inscribed for a good year.
