This past weekend, Emissaries of Divine Light, British Columbia, held an Annual General Meeting and other events surrounding it. Saturday evening, Darla Rasmussen led people gathered at the Edenvale barn in a First Nations drum circle. Darla is from the Siksika Nation in Alberta, who we might speak of in English as the Blackfeet Nation. She now lives at Edenvale in British Columbia.

About 15 of us gathered around Darla’s big drum. She led us in songs of her people and invited us to beat the drum.

There are some words we might think to ourselves that we might not speak in the social context of the world in which we live. Are there things you think that are like that? They could be very loving things. For instance, do you ever think to yourself as you look at someone, I love you to bits?

 Darla brought us the prayer work of First Nations people. The songs were prayers to Spirit and prayers for people in our world. The beat of the big drum reverberated in our chests and in our hearts.

Earlier in the day, we held an Attunement session. The topic was Attunement Prayer.

George Shears was an early pioneer of Attunement practice. George lived a colorful life. In 1912, he pitched for the New York Yankees. Later, he became a chiropractor and led the G.P.C. chiropractic movement. He was instrumental in bringing chiropractors to Sunrise Ranch in the early 1950s for the first six-month Attunement practitioner training taught by Lloyd Arthur Meeker.

In our Attunement session at Edenvale, we recalled how George would speak a prayer at the beginning of the Attunements he offered. He would address the Divine Source of Life and include the person with him in the prayer. It was a memorable experience for those who shared it with him.

In the early years of Attunement, prayers were often spoken during a session, sometimes at the beginning and sometimes at the end. Today, it is less frequent, perhaps due to a trend toward secularism in our culture at large and among Attunement practitioners.

Any of us who have offered a spoken prayer during an Attunement can likely report an intensification of healing current during the prayer. You can feel it in your chest, flowing out through 

your arms and hands. You can feel a rise in the energy level within the vibrational bubble you share with the other person. 

In some facets of Western culture, prayer is familiar. And in some religious traditions, the words of the prayer are precisely prescribed. The same words are spoken over and over again. That can become powerful for practitioners. That power is readily apparent at a Sufi Zikr, for instance.

Other prayer practices may follow certain guidelines or doctrines but leave the words of the prayer to the person speaking it.

How is it for you? How are you doing in the prayer department?

Lloyd Arthur Meeker, who founded the practice of Attunement, spoke about being of service to another person as a vibrational conversation. We could expand that and say life is a vibrational conversation. While we interact with other people in whatever way we do from an outer standpoint, there is an energetic exchange. We are in the middle of that right now, as I write these words and as you read them. Beyond the plain meaning of the words, there is a vibrational conversation. I am saying something to you in these words themselves, but I am saying something to you that is beyond the words I am writing. And actually, I want you to hear that more than I want you to understand the words on the page.

So what are we saying behind our words in everyday life? And what are the words we say to ourselves in the vibrational conversation? Do we dare say them out loud? Or even entertain them in our own thoughts?

In a social situation, that could be highly misinterpreted, depending upon the circumstance. So it is not always proper to give voice to the vibrational conversation we are having. But we can participate powerfully in that conversation, nonetheless.

Sharing Attunement is like that. What comes up for us consciously when we share Attunement? What are the prayers of our heart for that person?

I say, No prayer, no Attunement. I am not now referring particularly to spoken prayer. I am speaking of the prayers of the heart and of the spirit. No prayer, and, as someone put it, you have an exchange of body heat and not much more.

The power of prayer is behind the Attunement. And what is the power of prayer?

It may be an oversimplification, but I see prayer going in two directions. There is a prayer upward to the reality that transcends our immediate human experience. We are not only connected to all that, we are part of it. And still, from the standpoint of each of us as a human being, there is an opening to that larger dimension of reality. So, there is a prayer that opens us as a portal of heaven. Heaven is the home for Divine Being. A prayer upward is a prayer to Divine Being.

Then there is the dimension of prayer that is praying over what is in our world. In the drumming we did, Darla asked us to have compassion for ourselves. That is a good starting point in our prayer for the world. And then, there are our prayers for people in our life. I think of these words from the popular song “The Prayer,” by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa, and Tony Renis: 

I pray you’ll be our eyes,
And watch us where we go,
And help us to be wise
In times when we don’t know.
Let this be our prayer when we lose our way,

Lead us to a place,
Guide us with your grace,
To a place where we’ll be safe.

There are many prayers I say to myself that I do not speak out loud. In many cases, those prayers could be highly misinterpreted. A prayer can be a deep-felt invitation. Such things can be taken personally as if they were a judgment.

Come home. 

If you said it out loud, a person might say to themselves, What do you think? I’m homeless? I’m just wandering around?

Come to this place of peace.

And a person might think, Are you telling me I’m overstressed?

That is part of what we deal with in the social world in which we live. We sometimes dance around each other because we do not want to say anything that could be taken the wrong way. We are polite with each other, and the powerful things that should be said aren’t for fear of coming off as socially awkward or being misunderstood.

There is a place for social graces, so I am not putting that down. But still, when do we get to say what we really mean and what we really feel? What we really want for other people? We could at least say it to ourselves, couldn’t we? I want the best for you. I want you to flourish in your life.

I think of Jesus’ prayer:

I pray…that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

You could interpret that in all kinds of ways. If you are superstitious, you could interpret it as saving people from the devil. Some people think of it that way. I do not. But I do pray that people don’t lose their way or get mixed up in things they have no business getting mixed up in. I pray they don’t walk down paths that are no good for them.

Do you pray for that for people sometimes, in your heart?

Please do not go there. Please, please, come back to who you are. Come home. Be yourself. Be in the place where you know health and vitality. Be in a place in yourself where you flourish. Please, come home.

If you say out loud to someone, “You are going down a wrong path,” you are very apt to be misunderstood or rejected. And sometimes you just have to say it. It can be a statement of love. You do not know where it will go for the person. Possibly, they are not going to like you very much for a while after you say it.

I had an experience like that with someone I love very much. It took fifteen years before they stopped smarting from what I said. At some point during the fifteen years, I realized what was happening. I realized that what I had said was working in them. And I could be at peace with what it created socially between us, as much as it hurt. I cared more about them than I did about my relationship with them. And after fifteen years, the relationship came around right.

Whatever we do or don’t say aloud, we can bring the power of Attunement that says Come home. Be yourself. Come to heaven’s portal, that place where you can receive love and have it come into you, where you have love to give. Come into that place where your wisdom is at work through you, and you have wisdom to share. Come into the place of life. Come to life.

There are those powerful things that are part of the vibrational conversation we have with other people, most of which we probably should not say. But still, there is that which we can say. And that is something to be cultivated with another person or a community. I would love for us to cultivate the practice of being prayerful with each other. I do not think it will happen all at once, but we can develop it over time. We can experiment with how we can give voice to the vibrational conversation we are having with each other. We can deepen our Attunement prayer.

Here are some expressions of prayer we shared at Edenvale this past weekend:

Know this love. Know deeply and fully that you are love. Abide in this peace. 

May you feel it in the chirping of the birds. May you feel it in the sun on your skin. May you breathe it in, in this breath. 

May peace be with you. May your heart be comforted by the gentle energy of peace. 

May you feel the heavenly Father’s love through me. 

All is well in this journey. 

May we provide a home for God, the Divine, here on earth. 

Please accept the divine Spirit that is within you and within me, and let it bless the world.

I honor you. Thank you for being who you are. 

May the joy of Spirit be with you. 

Know that the power of this peace, descending deeper and deeper into your soul, is born in and through you for the world. 

I am with you deeply. 

Step into the light where I am. Come to the light.