Transcendent Experiences
True Prayer
With as much sincerity as I can communicate across this impersonal medium I want to thank you for joining me on this journey. From the profane to the sacred, from the one to the many to the One.And with all the visions and glories and mysterious gongs, it's quite a trip.
But this cannot be accomplished in isolation. Community is the essence of the call. Community and responsibility to those around us. Never forget that.
If I was to pick just one primary theme for what I have learned it is the symbiotic relationship between God and Man. So often the vested interests of organized religion seek to maintain an unbridgeable gulf between us and The Divine, a gulf which I am convinced, and the Great Cloud of Witnesses testifies, does not exist.
 | The primary paradigm the Bible presents us is God the Father. Maker and creator, yes, but in an organic way, as a mother makes her child. |
| We are fashioned in Yhwh's image. From Genesis through Revelations through the very calligraphy of The Name itself we are told this over and over and over. |
| God in the flesh, True God and True Man, Jesus. Who called us Brothers and Sisters. Who said He ascends to His Father and Our Father, to His God and Our God. |
| From Yhwh's Name as the consummate prayer to the Ani Ain revelation, and so many points in between, God seeks to break-down the barriers between Our consciousness and His. |
| Jesus' entire life, ministry, miracles, death and resurrection are revelations of The Name, calling us to take up our own cross (the vehicle upon which our egos will be slain) and ascend with Him to the Father. That we might be one, as they are one. (A potter might be able to "become one" with his pot, but I'm not sure I want to think about it.) |
| Father, Son, Spirit. Three in one. All in Us. The Lover and Beloved are One in Love. The Speaker and Listener are One in Speech. Giver and Recipient are One if the Gift. |
With each blessing comes responsibility. To care about others. To share with them what we have been given.
For a year I opened my home to a family of 3, including their possessions and 4 dogs. That does not make me a saint. But if you are living in isolation, caring only for your own "blessings," then your life is not real, and you will not be able to progress along the Spiritual Path.
The husband got seriously injured in a fall during their honeymoon. They rented-out their house and stayed with me in a (successful) attempt to save their house.
One night, I came downstairs from the office. My friends were asleep. The husband was on his hospital bed. The wife was dealing with a horrid headache, not to mention the stress of trying to keep the family together. And the son was dealing with his dad's injury, as well as being the center of a very bitter custody dispute.
Previously I wrote
With time the Transcendent, Phase 5 Prayer that I found so incapacitating would become the ground of being that I have constant access to, as simply as deciding to blink.
Those weren't just words. The entire "I-and-Thou" duality between "Me" and "God" phases in and out of consciousness regularly.
It has been happening for decades.
Yet I was not entirely prepared for the overwhelming power of the experience I gained as I stood at the foot of my stairs praying for my friends.
"Dear Yhwh. Please help these people. They are under such pressure and pain..."
When my entire perspective snapped, like when I realized I was The Tree Of Life, looking at myself.
And "I" was not "ahyh" (little me, myself and I) praying to AHYH (God) to help these people. "I" was AHYH praying to ahyh, asking him (me) to help them. My prayer was actually God within Me asking Me to help them.
I wasn't talking to God. As I prayed, He was talking to me.
That was the experience. It lasted maybe 10 seconds. Then I was "me" again. Whoever that is.
And as I contemplated this, it seemed to be astoundingly true, and consistent with the rest of the Story.
If we have the ability to help someone, yet refuse to do so, prayer becomes an evil. Of course you need discernment, because you simply cannot find every battle that comes your way. But if a person has been placed in your life, and you have both the time and capacity to help them, but refuse to do so, your prayer becomes a blasphemy.
Jesus says the most amazing thing in Matthew 16:19. "Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven." Will have been, as in past tense. And as I prayed for my friends I realized that this had already been established; I was praying for God to help them, and God, through me, had already been helping them through me.
I began to reexamine the whole issue of prayer. From high to low, large to small, I realize that all true prayer bridges the gap between God and Us. Petitioner and Listener are One in Prayer.
The Subject-Object-Relationship is condensed to Unity.
Every genuine prayer.
In fact, that is the measure of whether that prayer is genuine: does it honestly bridge the gap? Which also means that genuine prayer must be coincident with a devout, loving life.
"Give us this day our daily bread..." From the limited space-time-ego, this means "God feed me." But on the Other Side of The Gong it means "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers you do to me...Feed the hungry, My Children."
Then, and only then, can God answer the prayer, when we begin to feed those around us. We are, indeed, the only mechanism He has in this world to affect such a miracle.
"I and The Father are One."
You are Yhwh's Living Prayer to the World.
