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Lost Mode of Prayer?
by Gregg Braden
An excerpt from The Isaiah Effect: Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer and Prophecy
Perhaps the most empowering of the texts lost in the fourth century AD detail a sophisticated inner technology known today as “prayer.” Regarded by many to be the most ancient of all sciences, the inner technology of prayer represents our opportunity to directly access the creative and healing forces of our world, as well as our bodies, through specific qualities of prayer’s elements: thought, feeling and emotion.
Modern prayer researchers currently identify four modes of prayer used in the west today. Does an additional mode exist? Is there a fifth mode, a lost mode of prayer, that provides direct access to the creative and healing forces of our world, as well as our bodies? Recent findings in remote temple sites where these traditions remain today, combined with new research into some of the most sacred and esoteric traditions of our past, suggest that the answer is a resounding “Yes!”
Much of our conditioning in Western traditions invites us to “ask” that specific circumstances in our world change through divine intervention; that our prayers be answered. In our well-intentioned asking, however, we may unknowingly empower the very conditions that we are praying to change. For example, when we ask, “Dear God, please let there be peace in the world”, in effect we are stating that, to some degree, peace does not exist in the present. Ancient traditions remind us that prayers of asking are one form of prayer, among other forms, that empower us to find peace in our world through the quality of thought, feeling and emotion that we create in our body.
Recent translations of texts written by the ancient Essenes, the mysterious authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, invite us to embrace our lost mode of prayer as a consciousness that we become, rather than something that we do upon occasion. In words that are as simple as they are elegant, we are reminded to be “surrounded” by the answer to our prayers and “enveloped” by the conditions that we choose to experience. In the modern idiom, this description suggests that to effect change in our world, we are invited to first have the feelings within us that the change has happened around us. Once we allow the qualities of peace in our mind, and fuel our prayer through feelings of peace in our body, our lost mode of prayer states that the outcome has already happened. ancient Essenes, the mysterious authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, invite us to embrace our lost mode of prayer as a consciousness that we become, rather than something that we do upon occasion. In words that are as simple as they are elegant, we are reminded to be “surrounded” by the answer to our prayers and “enveloped” by the conditions that we choose to experience. In the modern idiom, this description suggests that to effect change in our world, we are invited to first have the feelings within us that the change has happened around us. Once we allow the qualities of peace in our mind, and fuel our prayer through feelings of peace in our body, our lost mode of prayer states that the outcome has already happened.
Quantum science now takes this idea one step further, stating that it is precisely such conditions of feeling that creation responds to, by matching the feeling(prayer) of our inner world with like conditions in our outer world. In the early 1980’s these effects were documented through studies of prayer and meditation in Israel, in addition to urban areas of crime in the U.S., the Philippines and India. In the presence of focused and intentional practices of thought, feeling and emotion measurable decreases in crime and terrorism were observed and recorded. The studies eliminated the possibility of “coincidence” stemming from nature, such as well known lunar cycles, or changes in social policy or law enforcement procedures. Clearly, there was a direct, observable and measurable effect of behavior patterns correlating with focused and intentional prayer and meditation. Scientists suspect that the effect may be due, in part, to a forgotten relationship described as a “field effect” between thought, feeling and emotion and the molecular levels of the world around us.
As modern science continues to validate a relationship between our inner thoughts, feelings and dreams with the outer world that surrounds us, we open the door to a powerful bridge that links the world of our prayers with that of our experience. In light of such research, what is the potential of applying such subtle principles of prayer to an outcome of collective healing, global peace and graceful transition through the challenges that await us in the new millennium?
