Day 20: Are Desires Forms Of Prayer Also?

What's the difference between desires and prayers? Or, what's the difference between consciously intending to achieve a specific outcome--i.e., setting a goal and working towards it--and praying for much the same to happen? Are they tied into the same psycho-mechanics, the same process, the same universal mechanism whereby our wishes and wantings become real?

Or is there a difference? Is prayer some elevated, exalted form of desire: not quite, say, the same as an adolescent male desiring the latest calendar girl as he goes to sleep at night.

But don't we pray for what we want? Don't we pray for health? Am I not praying for the safe return of my parents as they leave Florida and head back to Michigan today? Is that not a desire of mine? Am I not stating a wish to the Cosmos: please allow for the safe return of my parents? Aren't desires and prayers possibly tied into some similar mechanism through which intentions we express are manifested?

Larry Dossey, in his several books on the subject of prayer contends that the power of our intentions are themselves prayers. He intimates that the power apparent in Voodoo and Black Witchcraft is the forceful intention to bring harm to another is the same power apparent in miraculous healings and spiritual transformations. What we hold in our mind and express with the depths of being--what we put our heart into, what we feel most passionately (which can be love or hate) will tend to manifest in some way, at some time.

This all makes sense to me. After all, if consciousness has an energetic compenent to it, then whatever we hold to in our consciousness--be it light and love, or death and destruction--will be empowered by the energy supplied through our continued attention. It is as if we feed our prayers/desires through our attention. Attention is the hose through which the Garden is watered... or, uhm... poisoned!

Just A Hunch

My own gut feeling is that there is one mechanism by which desires seems to manifest, our intentions lead to results, and our prayers seem to be answered. It may be that there have evolved these different ways of speaking about a single phenomena. Even consciously setting goals and working to achieve them may have more in common with the fact that certain of our prayers are answered than anyone has previously thought. It could be that prayer is a form of desiring. Even a simple prayer such as 'Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven' has behind it the desire that God's Will (provided you believe in such a celestial deity) be made manifest here on Earth. Perhaps that's why I personally think that when we are desiring we are praying.
 
If that is true, and my hunch is correct, then we are literally praying all the time. We just don't realize it (or, I should say, many of us don't realize it). And the fact that we seem to get mixed results in terms of our desires/prayers may have more to do with our not being familiar with the contents of our own consciousness. Honestly, few are those who take the time to sit and be with their own awareness long enough to see just how much conflicted material arises in human consciousness. I mean, 'know thyself' is not a very popular human pasttime, is it? Clearly not for most. We have other stuff to do. Necessary stuff. Vital stuff. Stuff that needs to get done, and fast. That's why we find so many who grow old and come to face the fact that they never really took a day off to just be with themselves in a way that would reveal to them something precious and rare: self-awareness.

But if we do take the time. If we are so blessed as to be able to be with ourselves for even a few moments, then we stand to benefit so much by becoming aware of the predominant nature of our own consciousness. We can better understand how and where and why we are conflicted within. We can see how we want to be free, yet also want to be in a relationship. We can see how we desire to have our own way, and yet long to be intimate with others. We can see how we long to connect, and yet fear becoming lost in those connections. We can see how slender is that razor's edge some call the Buddha's Middle Way... where life's contradictions and paradoxes become points of balance that constantly measure our ability to hold opposites while not becoming polarized to the extreme: a creature of skillful means.


Experimental Reflections: Balance. What if life hangs in the balance.... literally? What if life emerges most exquisitely in balance. Too much chaos, no order: nothing is formed. Too much order, no chaos: nothing new and novel emerges, life becomes stale.

And yet, for me, balance can be hard to achieve sometimes. I feel in my own awareness a compulsion to have certain matters judged once and for all. Life would be easy then. I would know where my allegiance lay, and with whom. I could just choose sides and all would be well. Or would it? How can you choose light over dark or day over night? How can you choose male or female or chicken over egg? How can you choose up over down or happy over sad? How can you ever really choose a side in life? I mean, isn't life made up of more than just one-side? Isn't there more than one-side to the Cosmic Story? Maybe it is many-sided and a mark of our skillfulness and artistry in living is to approximate in our own lives that multi-dimensional skillfulness in being able to shift perspectives and sides as needed. Meaning, to constantly balance and re-balance... as we pray through movement and readjustment that we don't become too one-sided.

Yeah, I think life does hang in the balance. Always.