Here is an attitude people sometimes bring to prayer:
I do not like what is happening, I object to it, and I really want it to be different.
If a person is praying to God, they are attempting to get God on their side in an effort to make things different than they are. And, of course, They should be different! The person often has all kinds of reasons why it would be better if they were. They have made that determination, and so they are trying to get God to help.
There is futility built into this approach, and often disappointment and lack of faith. Why isn’t God cooperating? I am not being listened to.
The same dynamic can go on with a person who doesn’t consider themselves religious or spiritual. Only they pray to the people and the world around them, hoping they change.
There is another option. It is characterized by this attitude:
I celebrate what is. I am an instrument of Creation. The Creator has a voice through me.
This is an experience of letting the Creator speak through us, as us. And when that happens, we know ourselves as the Creator in the field where we find ourselves—not a solo human-styled creator but someone with the specific authority, responsibilities, and capabilities of creatorship in the sphere of life in which they find themselves. We know our harmony with all creatorship everywhere—not self-invented but part of the larger reality of Being. We are one of and one with that larger reality.
Is that not the truth of calling upon God, by whatever name? We are calling upon the one reality, the reality that we are one with. Yes, we are here in our creatorship in our field, with those closest to us, and in the spheres of influence, responsibility, and authority that center in us individually. And yet we are not called upon to bring creatorship to that field all by our lonesome.
As human beings, all of us are called upon to give it a go, right? To employ our humanity—our thoughts, our feelings, our human strength, in service to the world in which we live. Being blasé or passive about all that doesn’t work. So we give it a go. Without that, nothing much happens. But very quickly we find that in human strength, human intelligence, and human love all by itself, we are inadequate as we attempt to live abundantly. We are unable to bring the authority of love into the world in which we live. So, prayer is opening to the larger reality of Being so that we no longer attempt to act as if we are all alone in our creatorship.
Implicit in prayer is an acknowledgment of our smallness. I am not referring just to the smallness of our human capacity. I’m not saying that we are “merely human”—which we are not—or that we are full of human frailty and failure. Those things may be present, but I am not speaking to that alone.
As an individual Being, we are here, alive, in this space within the vast reality of God. As an individual, we are a minute aspect of the totality of Being.
In prayer, we open up to the vastness. We open to the larger constellation of Being that we are a part of here on Planet Earth, acknowledging the One Spirit of all of humanity and how that Spirit constellates in Being. This is not just Being everywhere throughout the cosmos, but Being here, for this Project Earth, and for all of us as humankind. And here for each of us.
How would you name the Spirit of humankind? The Christ Spirit? That is a lot different than the spirit of Christianity, which is not what I am speaking of.
There is the entire pattern of Being for this world. There is the not-quite-physically-here part that is nonetheless present with us. In prayer, we are getting in touch with the invisible reality of Being that is there for us.
Perhaps, someplace on the other side of the universe, there is a reality of Being with whom we have a distant relationship. But there is the family of God that is here for us specifically, that we are a part of as a participant in Project Earth. The focus of Love is in the pattern of Being that is there for us.
In prayer, we are leaning into the knowing of this. We are not objecting to what is and wanting it to be different. We are not protesting a lack of support from the universe. That sounds like human whingeing to me. We are celebrating what is and becoming an instrument of Creation. We are letting what is invisible have a voice through us—not because we have somehow abdicated, as a hollow reed. We are present; we give it a go, realizing that, in truth, the Invisible Reality of Being has our back.
We know the truth is that when we are here for the invisible reality of love, we become love in action on earth. When we have committed ourselves to that, the Invisible has our back, which is exactly the way it should be. It doesn’t support us in objecting to what is and trying to make it different. It is behind us as we create a beautiful manifestation of invisible love in form.
Biblically, it is put this way: Walk before God. Walk before the Invisible. When we do that, what is in back of us? What has our back in that way? The invisible constellation of Being.
Walking before the invisible constellation of Being through the land of the living, we realize that we came for them, the family of Being. If somebody went to do something for you, to accomplish something in your name, for your purposes, wouldn’t you be appreciative? Would you love that person and hold them close for doing what they were doing? That is how it is when we walk before the Invisible. We are precious to them.
In prayer, we know that love. We receive that love. We are empowered, we are uplifted, we are held and embraced. We are cherished. We are given love to express and embody ourselves. Walking before the Invisible, we have something to say and something to bring. We have a higher wisdom to convey, perhaps talk about, describe, and maybe even teach. But more than that, we have things to communicate so that people can hear what we are saying that is behind the words we speak.
Prayer is our opening to the invisible family of God. It is remembering what is behind us. And if we have been running out ahead of it, prayer is being still long enough that we allow it to catch up with us so it can overtake and enter us. It is also allowing that larger reality to speak through us, as us—to speak into the world, to be the prayer of the Creator in the world.
What is the prayer of the Creator? What is your prayer as a creator? It is the prayer of life, is it not? A prayer of life for the people in your world, the world itself, and the earth. We pray that we might truly live, all of us, that we might thrive and allow what is created through us to be prolific, for life to be abundant. We pray for beauty to proliferate in this world.
The Invisible is beautiful. The essence of Creation—its possibility and potential—is gorgeous. The invisible seeds of life are precious.
We touch those seeds of possibility, and they inspire us. We could call it God the Possible.
We touch the wonder of God the Possible. But God the Possible put us here for a reason: to be God the Means. We are the means at this level of Creation for God the Possible to appear in the world and become God the Manifest.
There are times when God the Manifest puts in an appearance so vividly that you have to stop and acknowledge it. Wow, there it is! A manifestation of life, beauty, love, and heaven in form—God the Manifest!
We are here for that as the human family. That was what was biblically told, was it not? Be fruitful and multiply. Not just have kids, although that is part of it, but be fruitful and multiply. Bring forth God the Manifest, the abundance of life on this planet.
The invisible family of Being is behind us, behind we who are incarnate in human form. For us to create abundantly, it takes us all, as the human family, knowing itself as an expression of the God family. We are the part of the God family that is here in human form. You do not have to give it very much thought to realize that there is hardly a single thing you can do all by yourself to bring forth God the Manifest on earth. It takes the God family incarnate to do that.
We pray to the Invisible Reality of Being, and we pray to each other as the God family incarnate. Prayer is an expression of desire, of divine urge, which is love’s urge. What is our prayer to one another?
Here is my prayer: that we know ourselves as the God family—the part of the God family that chose to incarnate in human form; that we know ourselves as that individually and we come into a conscious awareness of each other as that, and together share the prayer of the Creator for abundant life in the field for which we have collective responsibility.