S2 EP287 – The Power of Prayer

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m speaking about prayer, and how you might want to consider praying so that your prayers have power.

Physician Larry Dossey, one of my favorite authors, wrote an incredible book called “Healing words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine.” In this book he gives many examples of the power of prayer to heal. And he wrote an equally compelling book called “One Mind,” which I also loved. He gives so many examples of people who tuned into loved ones who, for example, had just had an accident. The point is that we live in a universe that we are all connected with when we are open to this connection, and our prayers can have a powerful healing effect.

I belong to a group that meets weekly, led by my friend Lynne McTaggert, who has done many experiments with intention. This is a group of people who are all in The Transformational Leadership Council – a wonderful group of people. In this group, we focus for 10 minutes on healing a person who needs healing, and the results are often miraculous! I love being a part of this wonderful group of people and seeing first-hand the power of prayer when coupled with conscious intention.

The reason this works so well is because of the power of intention. As I’ve often said, our intention governs everything. And this is so important when it comes to prayer. 

Louisa asked the following question in Inner Bonding Village:

“I really want to feel the love coming from spirit, and I do believe there is a universal intelligence, but when I pray or meditate, I feel nothing. I don’t feel that deep peace and love within. Do I just keep doing it? Will I eventually feel something?” 

Louisa, I said when answered her, I pray and meditate for the peace, connection, and centeredness it gives me, but I still need to take loving action for myself and be grateful for what I have, and I also need to give to others, helping them from my heart and share love with loved ones, and I also need to be out in nature. I need to take loving care of myself, and stay open to learning about loving myself and others. Prayer and meditation, for me, are for peace and centeredness, while gratitude, loving myself, and sharing love are what give me the experience of feeling love from spirit. The love that is spirit fills me when I’m being loving to myself and with others.

A member of Inner Bonding Village also answered Louisa:

“I agree with Margaret. What has helped me connect to guidance is being empathic and being present and really looking at people who are with me and noticing their beauty or suffering. Life affects everyone and vulnerability is very moving. I find that when I do that even the people in the street who might scare me I feel compassion for. I am then open and very grateful. I feel then my connection to spirit. Walking in nature or the city opens me up too. It’s like my wounded thoughts dissipate and I am open. Spending time with kids and animals also opens me up.” 

It’s when we are open and offering our love and compassion – to ourselves, with others, and with spirit – that we feel love filling our heart and soul. This is about our intent. If your intent in prayer is to control and you attach your worth and wellbeing to the outcome, you won’t feel the fullness of love in your heart and your prayers won’t have power. If your intent is to offer love and gratitude, or to receive help in evolving as a loving human being, your prayers have power. Be aware that whether or not your prayers have power depends on your intent when you pray.

Prayer and meditation can open your heart and connect you with spirit, and then you need to take loving action. Another member also contributed to answering the question asked by Louisa:

“I feel peace when I am putting my faith and trust in God, who always guides me toward my highest good, instead of worrying and being fearful about my future or outcome.

“My heart fills with love when I focus on gratitude for all the many blessings I’m receiving in every moment, when I see and experience the loving Essence in me and others, when I notice the playfulness and happy sparks in a child’s eyes, when I notice the beauty around me – God or man-made, when I notice the good efforts and good intentions of people I interact with in any given moment. There is so much love around me which fills me with love when I just become aware of my focus.”

Astrid asked:

“I suspect that meditation would help one feel more ‘full’. I have real resistance to meditation, but when I do it, it feels great. I wonder what I can do about that?”

Astrid, I said to her, some people can sit and meditate, enjoy it, and receive much benefit from it, but others don’t find it helpful or enjoyable. Your resistance is giving you important information about what is loving to you. You might want to try a walking meditation, such as doing Inner Bonding while walking in nature. Or your resistance may be telling you that you need to be taking a different kind of loving action to feel full, such as opening to gratitude, giving to others, and sharing love with others, or doing something creative. If you do an Inner Bonding process with your little girl, you might discover the loving actions that make her feel full.

Some of us were brought up with prayer and if you continue to pray, then praying might feel natural and easy for you. But many people who want to pray feel that they don’t know how, and that there is a right way to pray.

There is no right way to pray, other than being aware of your intention. All prayers prayed with the intent to learn and love will help you to heal your relationship with yourself and with your higher power, because they will eventually help you to have a direct experience of your higher guidance.

Prayers can be traditional and non-traditional. There are many different ways to pray and create your connection with spirit.

What kind of prayers are you drawn to? 

• Do you like formal, traditional prayers?
• Do you enjoy making up your own prayers?
• Do you like just talking with your higher guidance?
• Is meditation your form of prayer?
• Do you like just listening to your higher guidance?
• Do you like talking and listening to your higher guidance as you would a friend, in an informal way?
• Do you like contemplative prayer, asking for help with being loving and then listening for the answers?

All these forms of prayer will help you connect with spirit and all have power.

Or…

• Are your prayers coming from your wounded self, pleading and attempting to control the outcome?

This is the form of prayer that lacks power.

Whatever you are drawn to is fine, but if your intent is to control outcomes, it’s not likely that your prayers will be answered. Our guidance is here to help us evolve in our ability to love, so prayers with an intent to learn are the prayers that are answered, although not always in the way you imagined. But the answers will always be in the highest good of your soul’s journey toward evolving in your ability to love.

When you pray, what are you praying for? What you pray for depends on your intent – to control or to learn about love.

You are praying to learn about love: 

• When you pray for yourself to be a more loving person, or
• When you pray for others’ highest good, or
• When you pray with an acceptance of higher will

You are praying to control:

• When your prayers are about getting what you want, trying to control the outcome, or
• When you pray for others to control them, or
• When you pray from your own will, your wounded self, rather than from your loving adult.

What happens when you pray and you don’t get what you want? When you don’t get what you pray for, what do you feel or do? 

• Do you get angry? 
• Do you lose faith?

Or…

• Do you stay in faith and accept that your higher power has a better plan for you, for the evolution of your soul?

If you get angry or lose faith, what do you feel? 

• Do you feel frightened, alone, abandoned, hopeless, or helpless?

When you stay in faith, what do you feel? 

• Do you feel love in your heart, centered and peaceful, even when you don’t get what you want?

It’s not always easy to stay in faith when things are going wrong. The wounded self wants you to believe that you are alone, that a higher power doesn’t exist or that it doesn’t exist for you because you are not good enough or lovable enough. But this is impossible for a number of reasons:

• Your soul is a unique expression of the Divine, and therefore perfect.
• God is love, so therefore your soul is love.
• Our creator doesn’t make mistakes.
• The love, peace, wisdom, joy, and truth that is God is always here, just as the air we breathe is always here. We can tap into this love and wisdom when we are open to learning and we are taking loving care of our body by limiting the toxicity we put into our body.

Try having a conversation with your guidance out in a beautiful place in nature and see what happens. You might be surprised!

An anonymous person submitted the following prayer in Inner Bonding Village, and I love this prayer. It always opens my heart and brings me to tears.

Heavenly Father, 

Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night, is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children. 

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can’t make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester. 

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares. 

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together. 

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

I’m wondering if reading this pray each day can help keep our hearts open. 

Here is a short prayer by Mother Teresa, which I find inspiring:

The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace. 

This about sums up what I’ve been talking about!

I’d like to share some other prayers that have power. Many of you might know Ho’oponopono, which is a Huna Prayer. This powerful prayer is about talking full responsibility for everything:

“Divine creator, father, mother, son as one. If I, my family, relatives and ancestors have offended you, your family, relatives and ancestors in thoughts, words, deeds and actions from the beginning of our creation to the present, we ask your forgiveness. Let this cleanse, purify, release, cut all the negative memories, blocks, energies and vibrations and transmute these unwanted energies to pure light. And it is done.”

And a shorter, different version of this prayer is:

I’m sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I love you. 

This short prayer is often helpful in healing rifts with people you are close to.

Many people know the traditional Our Father Prayer:

There is another version of this prayer, which is a direct translation from the Aramaic into English, rather than from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English. It’s quite different than the traditional one.  

O cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration! Soften the ground of our being and carve out a space within us where your Presence can abide. 

Fill us with your creativity so that we may be empowered to bear the fruit of your mission. 

Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire. 

Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share what each being needs to grow and flourish. 

Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us, as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes. 

Do not let us be seduced by that which would divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate the opportunities of the present moment. 

For you are the ground and the fruitful vision, the birthpower and fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again. 

Wow, I was blown away when I read this prayer. I find this version far more powerful and inspiring than the version we received through the various language translations.

I’d like to end with a beautiful prayer by Dr. Erika Chopich, the co-creator of Inner Bonding and the author of her recent book, “Real Angels Don’t Have Wings.” This prayer is at the end of this book.

Oh, Great Spirit and the Spirits of my Ancestors,
Help me to transcend my physical being.
Help me to hear the rocks that I may learn patience.
Help me to feel the trees that I may know persistence,
And help me to hear the four-leggeds that I may know wonder.

I pray for the ancient winds to blow gentle openness into my heart,
And for the Light of Life to fill me with Your wisdom.
Let me see your vision that I may know my own,
And never let me forget your voices that I may hear my own calling.
Great Spirit, teach me to pray, that I may continue your prayers.

Ancient Teachers,
Feel my offer of love that I may know my own lovingness,
And in completion of the Sacred Circle,
Step into the Light and complete my mission as a Master.

All this I pray,
That I may become forever
Peace and Divine Love.
Amen. 

Whether you like to pray traditionally or make up your own prayers, remember to pray from your heart and soul – from your inner child and your loving adult, rather than from the controlling mind of your wounded self.

I hope you join me in learning to connect with your spiritual guidance with my 30-Day video home-study course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.