Theme: Magicians Reporting for Duty

Week 35: Einstein weighs in on prayer

Beautiful Magicians,

Last Sunday I wrote about something arriving(opens in new tab). Something uninvited. Unanticipated. Unannounced. And suddenly, everything has changed. For the better—the much much better.

I must have been talking to myself because that happened to me twice this week. Twice. And not with snippets of ideas, but with two massive mystical discoveries. I’m still a bit discombobulated by it all.

I’m pretty sure these arrivals will continue. I welcome them, I even look forward to the next one, although I can’t say I totally understand.

I welcome them because it’s getting clearer and clearer to me, and to most of us, that we have entered a new walk in the human cycles of life. One we have not walked before. The previous answers, the existing religions, the familiar teachings and touchstone teachers no longer apply.

And that can feel disorienting.

But at the same time that the familiar is no longer relevant, and we see that we are standing in the dark—in the bardo, in the space-between—we are somehow not afraid. For we sense that we are not abandoned or neglected or ignored. What has been is done. It is finished. There is no reason to continue to repeat it.

So how can we know what is arriving? Listen.

• The ancestors are speaking.
• The planet is speaking.
• The wisdom of the once was and, yes, the wisdom of the not yet are both speaking.

We just have to stop. Listen. Pay attention. And start asking new questions. Questions we have not even considered asking until now.

As good fortune would have it, questions and I have a long, intimate, and wild history.

I have loved the power of questions to activate unknown-knowing ever since I started asking big, new, scary questions. Questions I had never asked myself before. That was 29 years ago as I stumbled upon the nascent practice of deep soul writing. Asking those questions didn’t just heal me or soothe me—which they did; those questions literally slingshot my life from being a part of the corporate juggernaut to becoming a writer.

When Writing Down Your Soul came out, I thought I was a spiritual writer. But bigger and bigger questions kept pushing me deeper and deeper into the Mystic until the label “spiritual” wasn’t big enough anymore. Labels that feel more accurate and comfortable to me and a tad more provocative to the culture are; prayer artist, mystic witch, firekeeper.

Well, the Mystic sent up two big questions this week.

Questions that have the power to slingshot all of us into a different, holier, sweeter life. A life full of meaning and purpose.

The first was a question I have pondered ever since prayer artist arrived. What is prayer? Well, what is it? It’s clear it’s not what the dictionary or any of our religions have told us. I was raised totally immersed in Catholic prayer, yet I never asked what prayer is. A question like that would have gotten me in trouble.

But something happened ln 2018 that forced me to ask: What is prayer?

A young woman came to a prayer intensive on Ho`oponopono. I knew she had paid a high price for walking away from fundamental Islam, losing her family, her community…everything. As a gathering was ending, she yelled: “I hate that word! I hate prayer!”

That sent me scurrying to the dictionary. I was shocked to discover that she was right. If prayer is “supplicating an external male god figure following a formula,” I hate prayer, too.

But I had just received that job title: Prayer Artist.

And, although I didn’t understand it, I loved it. And I knew I couldn’t say to my sacred Voice, thanks but no thanks. So I spent the next six years redefining prayer. It was a long labor of intense love.

After six years, I can say that prayer is:

1. love songs
2. sacred medicine
3. living relationship with prayer and with everyone who has ever prayed
4. vibration of love that goes beyond all universes
5. forever ancient yet mysteriously always new
6. theatre of the miraculous
7. the Great Mystery

I have held every prayer practice from walking a labyrinth to saying the brand new, religion-free rosary, The Song of the Morning of the World, up to those seven definitions and always, always, the truth and beauty of real prayer shines through.

So I thought I was finished. I had defined prayer. It was good work and I was complete.

That is until last Monday.

Someone posted this quote from Albert Einstein in the NYT Spelling Bee. (My morning delight.) The quote had no connection to the words that day. It popped out of nowhere, a random gift from the ethers. Einstein stopped me in my tracks. I wrote down what he said. I called my Mystic Witch partner, Cathy Stevens Pratt, and read it to her. I brought this statement into Her Council of Love prayer practice that afternoon and it completely changed how we prayed.

Read this slowly, out loud, and see if you, too, hear a deep truth about prayer.

“Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other, above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy.” 

What I Believe 1930 and Living Philosophies 1931

Is there a phrase that jumps out at you? I could not stop saying, “We are here for the sake of each other, We are here for the sake of each other.” Everyone in our prayer circle agreed that that is exactly what we do in Her Council of Love. We pray, not to ask any god to solve the world’s pain, but because we are here for the sake of each other.

To make that physically clear, the first in our group said, "I am holding the hand of ______ " and named the person or group for whom they were praying. Then, they said that the last person in that group was reaching out and taking the hand of the next person in our prayer circle, who in turn would say that they were holding hands with someone they were praying for, and so on, until our little circle of eight was holding hands with thousands of people around the world. All in one circle.

A physical and mystical expression of being here for one another.

Isn’t that the richest image of prayer? Not beseeching a distant, disembodied, and disinterested god in the sky to fix anything, but acknowledging the truth of life:

We are here for the sake of each other

• We are here for the sake of people—all people
• We are here for the sake of the planet
• We are here for the creatures with whom we share this beautiful alive planet
• We are here for the waters and the rivers and the seas
• We are here for the whales and the pigeons and the frogs

It was a profound prayer experience.

The next day, Tuesday, August 25, Einstein’s words returned to nudge me to ask the biggest question of all: How does patriarchy end?

The answer came. It came. But it's so big I really need another week to sit with it. To digest the four-part answer. Four parts that begin with Praying in the Dark: When People Feel Safe, Patriarchy Falls Apart.

Say the name of this intensive aloud and you have the first of four answers to the question of the moment: How does patriarchy fall apart?

We're going to explore these four profound questions gently and slowly over four intensives. Each is four weeks long with plenty of time between intensives to digest, and ponder, and pray.

Praying in the Dark: When People Feel Safe, Patriarchy Falls Apart opens September 15.

• We have Live gatherings on four Tuesdays at 6:00-7:45 pm Eastern, a time that works well for the Americas and the Pacific Rim
• We have Watch Parties on Thursdays at 1pm Eastern for our friends in Europe and Africa
• To make sure everyone can come to a live discussion cafe, we meet on Sundays at both 1p and 6p
• Plus, for those who wish to pray, we gather every Wednesday at 5p eastern and once a month on Sunday at 1pm to pray The Song of the Morning of the World rosary
• it's a particularly rich intensive.

Follow the link below for full schedule and details.

When you register, I'll send the big Welcome email with access to an array of bonus materials to get you started, including in-depth information on the seven definitions of prayer. Plus an invitation to our private Facebook group. We have SO much to talk about!

 Praying in the Dark--Minotaur(opens in new tab)

Life is fragile, handle with reverence and prayer because we are here for the sake of each other

Janet

PS: There is only one great book on the Minotaur and it's out of print. So, on Friday, I read the chapter on Lair of the Minotaur. It will be posted in 3 sections on our Resource Page by Tuesday.

PS2: If you haven't, please consider taking the first intensive, Praying in the Dark: How Visionaries Pray in a Time of Collapse.(opens in new tab) On-Demand at a crazy-low fee of $88. Take it so you get comfortable with the radically different theology-free prayers on this rosary, learn the couplets, the five crimes of patriarchy and the Five Blooms that heal them, get to know the real timeline of human history, and get a first taste for our guides: Hecate, Minotaur, Corn, and the Bees.

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