I grew up Jewish, attending a reform temple and saying formal prayers there, but not doing much spontaneous praying from my heart. I've always been curious about other religions and sometimes attended church with my friends or meditated on passages from the Tao Te Ching but never really thought much about prayer until I needed something - anything - to support me as I worked through the darkest times of anxiety. So I'm wondering...
Do you pray to worship? To ask for guidance? That you'll find the path God intends for you? To ask for favors or blessings for yourself or others? To say thanks? As a way of feeling connected to a sense of 'oneness'?
And...when you pray....Is it more 'formal' as in through traditional psalms, biblical words or other kinds of prewritten verses? Is it using words or phrases you've created personally? Is it spontaneous or constantly changing? Is it a meditative tool? Or is it something you do in a less defined/explicit way and more through feelings and images?
Personally, since I didn't grow up praying, I don't really have one practice or method that feels most right to me - and I often find it hard to focus during emotionally trying times, so I feel that repetitive words, images or breathing exercises are helpful.
Most teachers believe that 'picturing' or creating mental images to go along with words is an essential part of reading comprehension. I wonder if the same is true for prayer. Without visualization, do words lose some meaning? I take a cue from yoga and try to visualize myself connecting deeper and deeper with the earth and then with the people and world around me as I pray. I try to draw on and give back to the energy force I feel from my environment and the people in it. I do this to focus my intentions, ask for guidance and clarity and to feel more at peace with the moment.
This is a verse from the Tao Te Ching that I've been thinking about this morning from a translation by Ralph Alan Dale.
#63 - The Secrets of Getting Things Done
Act without acting on.
Work without working at.
Enter bountifulness when it is still insufficiency.
Answer with kindness when faced with hostility.
Begin a difficult task in its easy stage
because large problems grow from small ones.
Begin a large task in its formative state
because complex issues originate from simple ones.
But beware of those who promise quick and easy solutions!
Accept problems as challenges.
In this way, the sage accomplishes great tasks
without ever having to struggle with them.
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2 comments:
Very interesting blog. Something that has been on my mind for the last year. I was never raised in a religious family, so I have so many questions...and want to explore so many things...
I'm a Jew also--although I go to a Conservative shul. We're very liberal in some ways (we have gay marriage; we have women clergy) and very traditional in others (our services lean toward Orthodox.)
Although in my head I'm agnostic, that doesn't stop me from talking to God--and bitching, moaning and kvetching to God--throughout any given day. I'm silently saying things like, "HaShem, why are you doing this to me? Are you determined to make my life miserable?"
Other times, though, I'm just grateful for the fact that I'm alive and breathing. And that I have a wonderful, loving family and kind, supportive friends. So then I say "Baruch HaShem," which translates to something like 'Thank God,' 'Bless God,' or maybe even 'Bless us, God.'
I also like using traditional brachas. We have these blessings for just about every occassion: for lighting the Shabbat candles, for drinking wine, for breaking bread, for seeing a rainbow, for the fact that our bodies function properly, for the fact that there are so many different types of people in the world, etc. I find these brachas help me be more mindful, minute-to-minute. (So yeah, I guess I think of them as kind of Buddhist, lol. Maybe there's a reason so many Jews are also Buddhists . . .)
And there's a wonderful line from our prayerbook I like to meditate with--in fact, my synagogue uses it as a chant. I won't try to transliterate the Hebrew, but in English it means something like, "God, the soul You have created in me is pure."
I chant that every morning, as an appeal to my better self. ;)
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