PRAYER… as a Spiritual PRACTICE

PRAYER…as a Spiritual PRACTICE

Each one of us has a list of spiritual practices that we embrace and try to include in our everyday life. I know you have all heard many times that my daily practice of yoga and meditation is a MUST every single day. Those practices ground me and keep me in a place where I feel like I am  LISTENING for guidance through LOVE from God and my own angels and guides that are always in connection with me. I am also feeling like that is a time that CONNECTION into the afterlife through my loved ones beyond can help me reach their thoughts and guidance as well. I feel that presence often, but of course there are days where I come away from these practices and think…”OH, I wish I had more TIME to stay in silence!”

I know  that my time is limited due to my life circumstances, so I  begin into the second stage of letting go and being available to LISTEN for guidance. It’s kind of a funny practice that those with obligations MIGHT understand! It doesn’t matter the reason. This is another spiritual practice really and so I thought I’d share it with you in case it helps YOU out at times! I leave my earphones on with spiritually inspiriting music for me and begin the daily must do’s that have to be done. I allow my mind to simply wander off, and YET…my human mind is focused on what I need to accomplish.

Hmm…do I have two brains working here? Maybe? NO, of course not, I am living in a human body. Oh wait a minute… YES of course I have another mind…it’s my soul taking over a time when I NEED it!! What would I call this KIND of practice? As I began this post, I kept wondering what IS this practice? What is a name for it?  I can’t even point to one of my spiritual guidance teachers that have TALKED about this. So…I’m out on a limb here as the saying goes. I am describing a practice to YOU hoping one of you will come up with a  name that helps people understand it.

That’s when I decided that in a different sort of way…

“I am PRAYING with a grateful heart to change life for my DAY to go as well as it can!”

My two minds melded together and that  reminded me…PRAYER is a Spiritual Practice!! There might already be a term for prayer using the two minds that we ALL have. We have our link into our soul always and then there is the human mind that can take over because we LIVE in a human body during this life time!

This thought reminded me of a recent article I was reading in my Spirituality and Health Magazine. It was an article that Allan Hamilton, M.D. put in called The Neuroscience of Prayer. He is quoted as saying…

“As a sustained mental practice, prayer is mechanistically similar to meditation, contemplative practices, and other directed attention tasks that induce neuroplastic changes in the brain.” ~Allan Hamilton, M.D.

Perhaps this article came into my thoughts in ways that might help you as well. Dr. Hamilton was helping people understand what happens in the brain DURING prayer. He talks about how all of us as humans pray in totally different ways. and how personal it is to each of us. And yet…sometimes it is very public. Churches use this type of prayer often.

But this article is talking about an ancient relic in what is now called ancient Turkey that was built more than 11,000 years ago called Gobekli Tepe which very oddly means “Potbelly Hill”. That means these people were hunter/gatherers.  The site was abandoned and thought a graveyard. But current excavations are proving otherwise. Instead,  Gobekli Tepe suggests that the catalyst for civilization was not farming but religious passion. People were already gathering at a place to worship and PRAY to a God that we can only “imagine” in that time in our planets history. Imagine building at least 20 temples for their gods while they were still trying to figure out farming and eating!

” Humanity became civilized not for commerce but for religion!” ~ Allan Hamilton, MD

The article is very comprehensive, so I cannot share it all. But, I clung to another area of the article about Prayer and what happens with the brain.

“Additional research on meditation and contemplative practices suggests correlations between regular practice and measurable changes in the brain regions associated with attention and emotional regulation, including areas of the prefrontal cortex.”

Regular practice simply spoke to me for sure! My methods may not at all be typical, but I DO think they might show a part of us that is deeply connected into our soul’s agenda and one that is rooted in our human body experiencing the duality that we cannot prevent. This following quote spoke right to me for sure.

“Brain imaging has also shown that prayer seems to help reduce activation of the amygdala, which regulates our sense of threat and reactivity. This, in turn, leads to better control over one’s emotional states, and, especially, distrust.”

No matter how we pray I am so happy to have the comfort, hope, connectedness and gratitude that my daily practice provides for ME! I do hope you are helped by some of these thoughts as well! How does the brain neuroscience help with our thinking? It helped to convince me that not only are we CAPABLE of using our human mind to bring in the connection to our soul, it gives us the ability to use consciousness along WITH our human mind  during our prayer practice. Isn’t our connection to God amazing?!