Non-dual prayer

I been fascinated by how to pray effectively. I spent last weekend with Uncle Dave, and he gave me some tips, about knowing that it is already done. Some friends suggested I explore Gregg Braden, and his teaching is that prayer is a feeling. One has to feel the end result.

Braden used a verse from the bible to illustrate his point. In the NIV version, John 16:23-24 is “I tell you the truth, my Father will give whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete”

When translated from the orginal Aramaic, the verse reads “Ask without hidden motive, and be surrounded by your answer. Be enveloped by what you desire, that your gladness may be full. So far, you have not done this, and your prayers have not been answered.”

What does this mean to be enveloped by your desire, to not be separate from it, even when its not yet tangibly real? And how do you do this without faking it, without ‘trying to believe’?

My question is how to pray effectively. The ability to effortlessly hold a vision (a mental visual) has been emerging strongly recently. I know prayers must be heart felt. The prayer must be in present tense. How do you pray knowing you have it, when you don’t have it yet? I have long struggled with this sense of separation from my vision, not knowing how to bridge the gap in an authentic way.

Today I rested in the feeling of the heart center, opening, feeling gratitude. As I stayed connected to the feeling, I allowed a visual of what I wanted in my life to form. Usually there would be a sense of ‘me doing it’, and that feeling of me doing it would be coming from my mind. The visual and I would appear separate in time and space, and appear held in place by my mind. Today I stayed with the heart feeling, and allowed that heart feeling to fill all of my experience. I imagined the visual of what I desired resting in my heart, made of heart energy, pulsing with heart energy. The vision was connected to the heart. I was the heart. I felt into the sensations of the vision being real. The mind dropped and the vision and the heart and I were one. It seemed obvious. The future and the present were one experience. In the non-dual state of all embracing love and unity, the vision was embraced and felt, and experienced as real and part of me.

The key is to ask “Are you praying from the heart or the head”? Prayers from a mind locked in duality will continue to entrench the divide between current and desired reality. The mind can’t pretend or fake non-duality; its very nature is separation and division.

Prayers from the heart are feeling based. Feeling is a non-dual experience. You simply feel before the mind judges. Feeling is immediate knowing, without an opposite. So the trick is to feel the prayer and the vision, born of love. In this prayer there is no division between you and your desire. Feeling into the prayer as though its already answered, is what it means to be 'surrounded by your answer, and enveloped by what you desire.

love

Bruce