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PRAYER EVOLVING
Introduction
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Over the course of my lifetime, I have been moved by an intense spiritual restlessness to press forward into the unknown territory of new forms of prayer. This book is record of my explorations.
For many years I practiced rote forms of prayers, repeating many hours a day the words as they had been taught to me. But at some point in that process I had a crisis of faith. What need had God of a living tape recorder, playing, as it were, on an endless loop? How much real love was there in my prayers? What was my relationship with the Ground of Being with whom I was trying to have a conversation? What creative processes might allow me to be more fully present in that conversation? This book is the record of my searching inside of myself to find an answer.
In this first chapter on visual imagery and creativity in the life of prayer, I explore the theme of being
insideof the being of God from a variety of perspectives, sometimes as the infinitely beautiful, infinitely loving Heart of God, sometimes as the infinitely luminous Mind of God. (In theology this is called panentheism.) I also explore praying as if God really were love, which is to say, a transformational process in which we participate rather than a sublime person separate from us and other than us.
Fractal Painting by Vicky Brago-Mitchell
Our usual way of thinking about God, as a separate being, often implies the very separation we hope to overcome. While I still sometimes pray to God as a separate being, I have also, over the past ten years, begun to explore acknowledging God as the source of my being, life of my life and breath of my breath, and the source of all my experience of self-giving love. (...and thus, for me, often too near to be addressed as a separate person.) Through the visual prayers explored in Chapter One, and the radical perspectives explored in the later chapters,I seek to live in a closer communion with the inner presence of God, understood as Infinite Love, Energy, Awareness and Understanding.
In searching for ways to open myself more deeply to this Presence, I have incorporated into my life of prayer the most vivid and creative imagery I can possibly imagine. While some people might question the role of imagination in the life of prayer, I have become convinced over the course of years of meditation and prayer that creativity and imagination actually play a crucial role in both spiritual and everyday life. If I "can't imagine" something happening, I probably will not let it happen. It is by repeatedly imagining myself as an electrician or pilot or writer, that I mobilize my inner resources to become one. And, I believe, it is by repeatedly imagining my capacity to be filled with infinite love that I make a place for that beautiful energy to come into my heart. Imagination is not all that is required, just as one might say that the heart is not the only organ in the human body. But just as heart plays a central role in the functioning of the body, so I believe our capacity to imagine plays a central role in our spiritual lives. "Without a vision," the Soul of the Universe proclaims in the Hebrew Bible, "my people perish."
Having made this strong affirmation about imagery and imagination in the life of prayer, I would also like to affirm the place of silence, of quiet openness. I take the alternating of in-breath and out-breath, and the cycle of the seasons, as models for everything in life. In fact, I think the effortful practices that I describe in these essays are most fruitful when they are practiced in an alternating cycle with periods of deep, restful silence. When you plant a seed of something deep and beautiful in your mind, your mind needs time to grow a response to it.
I invite you to explore the creative prayers presented throughout this book and to adapt them to fit your own spiritual life and your own relationship to the Divine, be that through Jesus, Allah, Buddhamind, Krishna, YHWH, Mary, Milky Way, Infinite Mother, Spirits of the Grandfathers and Grandmothers, or through one of the many other Windows of the Divine (which, due to limits of space and the limits of my own knowledge, I do not list here.
May infinite kindness shine forth in each of our lives. And may we each find the strength to work for a world full kindness, forgiveness and cooperation.
Dennis Rivers, 2008
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