How to Pray

I’ve been praying for a long time. Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church taught me about prayer, but it always felt as if there was no energy in the stream of words being thrown from the pulpit. They were filled with anger and repentance, and there was nothing about joy or abundance. No wonder I spent most of my time back in my pew inventing machines in my head that would carry the preacher away to another place. He wouldn’t be hurt, no, just whisked into a chamber by a special broom-like device and from there be transported to the local Kmart or Long John Silvers. Just far enough away that an uncomfortable silence would descend, then we would all file out and I could go on home to watch Walt Disney.

I stopped praying for an episode in my life when I lost touch with the Divine. What I didn’t understand during that time was that God hadn’t let go of me. Thinking back over the many times I put myself in danger and walked out unscathed, I see that I was divinely protected. I have been led to people and situations through signs and symbols or various other means; God was working in my life. Through a film I was brought to Damien. Coincidences don’t exist, but when one is careening through life, there is the possibility of missing great moments. Prayer to me is essential in creating my life through God.

I heard bestselling author and geologist Gregg Braden give a talk about prayer that changed my life. He explained how a very effective means of prayer is to feel what it’s like to have a prayer answered. His advice to a community praying for rain in a devastating drought was to experience prayer through all of the senses. First, he said, think of wanting the rain, then actually feel the excitement of storm clouds gathering—see in your mind’s eye the dark gray clouds, the lightning flashing. Then feel the wind pick up and the sense of coolness that comes with impending rain, a shift in the atmosphere. Actually imagine the first drops landing on the parched earth, on your skin. Taste the raindrops on your tongue. Finally, feel the downpour, the rain driving hard on the landscape, the relief coming from the trees, the joy at finally having everything become new in the cleansing, nourishing, abundant rain.

The whole time he was talking, I could feel it!

I’ve done visualizing for a while now. Damien laughed when I told him I had often visualized him sitting beside me on a plane when he was in prison. I did it so many times, which is why he figures we’ve traveled so often! But to condense a prayer into a feeling, and then to imagine all of the components of what make up the experience of that, through all of our senses—that was new to me, and very exciting.

In every moment of our lives we are feeling. Whatever we feel becomes our prayer, and it signals what we want in our lives. If we’re feeling fear, anger, joy, or overwhelming gratitude—these are the things that will be mirrored back to us. Our very lives are in prayer all of the time.

Visualization and prayer therefore work best when you draw on your own lived experiences. You can use your own positive memories to create a ritual for joy or any other desired experience.

For example, I grew up swimming and most of my happiest memories and moments of clarity have come while in water. As a child I would launch off the bottom of the pool, my toes pushing into the slightly rough surface, propelling myself up out of the water while in my head singing a very corny country song about being the happiest girl in the world. The water droplets reflecting the sun in a spray of golden light, the brilliance of bursting into that world of blue and yellow light was exhilarating.

Swimming is like seeing a movie to me. There is something about being immersed in light and movement. Afterward I feel something has shifted. The difference is the way I feel—elated, light, and inspired. Give this a try, or make your own ritual based on a memory:

If you practice this over and over, you will feel a sense of elation and a natural feeling of being energized by the water, movement, and the bright light of the sun.