In Eternal Echoes the poet and scholar John O’Donohue writes:-

“To pray is to develop and refine the light of your life.  It smoothes the courseness of your vision.  It brings you closer to the homeland of your heart.”  There are many wonderful ancient and classical prayers from tradition.  Yet there is something irrevocably unique and intimate about your own individual prayer.  It would be wonderful to create your own prayer.”

I sometimes have an ambivalent toward the practice of prayer.  There are times when I love it for the sense of connectedness it gives me. There are times when I think it is simply more of me, myself, I when there is the engagement with an idea of someone separate asking for something from that which does not know the idea of separation.  Even from a purely logical point of view there is no meeting of minds.  From a mystic point of view there is only ever the one mind so you can`t pray to something or someone.

Yet I value prayer as an act of co-creation.  This is not simply the action of getting what I want because I am told I should want it or to avoid something I do not want.  John O’Donohue says that to pray is to develop and refine the light of your life. 

In this presentation I am simply going to share with you thoughts and ideas that come immediately to mind as I play with the idea of writing my own prayer.  I am not going to censor these thoughts in anyway but simply run with them as they arise.  I do not claim any expertise in relation to the practice of prayer but I do claim an interest in prayer at my deep hearts core.  The authority for communion with the Divine I claim as my own and it is in no way dictated by allegiance to any outside body or any outside authority.

So let me simply run with this invitation to writing ones own prayer that, personally speaking, I think is a great invitation.  Immediately the image I get around this idea of writing my own prayer is that of a block of marble.  Out of this block of marble I intend, metaphorically speaking, to carve my personal statement of Love.  I am going to engage with the wisdom within me that can create the beauty in the form that best expresses  Divine nature as it moves through this form in time and space.  

This, as John O’Donohue says, begins to refine your vision except that is isn’t really your vision but the blessing of being able to see beyond the limitation of the suffering of the separate sense of Self.  This is the vision of at one ment.  Out of this vision you are able to be a seer of what action needs to be taken.  You become a vehicle for Love in action.

I am more or less thinking aloud here as I write this article but I think that prayer would best become something that you love and something that you enjoy being engaged with.  Sometimes it might become dry and this can be acknowledged as a time of incubation.  Surely, however, prayer isn’t something that you think you should do because some outside authority tells you that this is required of you.  I think that prayer might be thought of as a communion between a lover and their Beloved.  Sometimes this can be challenging but this takes us into new thresholds of creative possibility.

 Prayer, I think, can become a way of tuning into the vision that is unique to you and the way that the light of Love plays through you.  For, me personally, the prayer that I most identify with is that of St. Francis of Assisi.  This begins 

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy Peace.”

Even to live this first line is a statement of a visionary of Love.  In this request there is no praying to get anything but it is a prayer of a co-creator willing to be used for the purpose of peace on earth.  It would be, personally speaking, difficult to come out of the rock of the separate sense of self with a more visionary statement than the invitation asked for in this line.  It could, if you were so inclined, become a kind of living mantra.

Thinking aloud again, I ask myself what would be the qualities required to write your own prayer.  This list of qualities and practices that I immediately think of are these.  They are listed simply as they arise and this does not indicate any level of importance to any of the qualities or practices listed.  I would include humility, silent witnessing, patience, intention, commitment, attention, faith, courage, surrender, enthusiasm, self worth, compassion and thankfulness.  This is not a list that is definitive but as for myself anyone of these is a great foundation on which to begin the practice of writing your own prayer.

In more practical terms you would need to commit time.  You would also need to have a place of quiet and you would need a journal to write in.  I wouldn’t use a computer because there is a direct connection between the use of pen and paper and the hand and heart that I think the computer does not give.  A computer is not a natural extension of your bioenergic form.

Looking at the above list that has simply arisen I find myself thinking that there is every reason to begin to write the prayer of your heart.  This would be the prayer, or unique spiritual statement, that you can feel directly in your heart and which you have no issues about using in the service of Love.  This invitation from John O’Donohue has given me inspiration to at least begin to step out on this journey of writing my personal prayer as a kind of love letter to Creation.

This, I think, is very different to praying a prayer of chanting a mantra given to you by an authority outside yourself.  This is an authority that you have projected your spiritual power unto.  I often think that mantras are given to the individual from direct divine awareness and that they are unique to that individual.  They represent the direct connection of that individual to their divine nature and are not for anyone else.  Creation never creates twice.  Even when there is a cloning the clone is never a full representation of the original.   

When the Lords prayer is recited it is intended to be an invocation from a state of consciousness which is Christ Consciousness.  To invoke the power of the Lords Prayer you need to at least be aware of the existence of non-dual consciousness from which this prayer is intended to be spoken.  If this awareness is not present then you are simply mouthing sounds that have no resonance to the direct experience out of which this prayer arises and out of which the power inherent in this prayer and other universal prayers arise.

When I go to church or chapel on occasion I am always astonished at how quickly the Lords prayer is recited.  It feels to me as if it is a race to see who can get to the end of the prayer first.  It is as if it were some unpleasant taste in the mouth that one wanted to get rid off.  Personally speaking I think it would be better not to recite it at all if you cannot give it the presence it deserves.

Go one step further, however, and imagine claiming your own spiritual authority and writing your own prayer that you can say and feel and love.  So if you where to begin to write your own prayer how would you begin.  Here again I am thinking aloud because in this article I am in my own way beginning to examine this process.

I think I would do what I am immediately drawn to do. I start with simply trusting the process.  I trust the first through that comes into my head even if it makes no logical sense, which is often the best beginning.  So the first thought that comes to my mind is “Start from the end.”

I don’t know about you but this “Start from the end” really excites me.  This is because it is a paradox, a kind of riddle and I love paradox and I love riddles.  They take you beyond the prison of the intellect and into the unknowing knowing of the heart.  It isn’t sensible.  For many of you it will be kind of confusing.  It is a kind of Zen koan, the kind of phrase that might pop out of the mouth of a child.  It is what I call thinking outside the box.  There are consultants who are paid vast sums of money to come up with this kind of out of the box thinking and get no where near as crazy as this opening thought invites.

You are probably like myself, You don’t know the end. However, as far as I am concerned this writing your own prayer is an engagement with creation and I in this process of writing my own prayer am a co-creator.  I am sure of one thing and this is that creation knows how to create.  I am sure of one other thing and this is that creation knows how to create far better than I do.  I create through a limitation that I think I am called me, myself, I.  Creation is the I AM that creates all things out of no thing.  The best way of being a co-creator is to get out of the way and trust the creative process to be the creative process.  This getting out of your own way is the difficult part

So let me end here with the intention that I come back to this writing your own prayer process as a way of refining my own inner light and the way the vision within me and the vision within you can begin to shine and envision others.  Let me also invite you to join me in this journey by committing to writing your own prayer.  With that intention I am examining the possibility of adding a private forum to the Anam cara Experience website where you would be able to share this journey with myself and others.

If you are interested in becoming part of this “Writing your Own Prayer” group I would be pleased to have you join me in this adventure into what I have come to call the deep hearts core.  This phrase the deep hearts core is taken from the last line of the wonderful spiritual poem by W. B. Yeats entitled “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”  So either email me at one of the following email addresses.

radiate@anamcaraexperience.org

or

irishmysticstoryteller@gmail.com

Or if you know of anyone who would be interested in joining me on such an adventure then please mention this invitation to them.

©   Tony Cuckson 2009

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