Diving Into Prayer...

                                                                           Beginning The Dive...

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​Hail Mary full of grace, bless us we pray... bless the Divine Unity in all People, and bless too, the Oneness of all Creation...

Om Mani Padme Hum... (Hail, Jewel of the Lotus)...

​Diving into prayer is as easy as eating a luscious piece of pie... or kissing your lover... or jumping from a high flying airplane (without a parachute, of course!)... There is no high or low, no better or worse, no deeper or shallow... If ... 

​Prayer simply is... it is like a bubbly bath and dry-bone desert, both, at the same time... it is as normal as being born and making babies... And there is no better comparison than that of dying... "Huh?" you ask. And add, "but nobody ever really wants to die!"

​Ah, but there is the rub! We, likely as not, would never admit it, but we all do, in fact, very much want to die! Certainly later rather than sooner, but life without the lurking adventure of death would be something other than life! And that we could not bear... Exactly so, there is the living adventure of prayer...

​Cowards pray for shit, for answers and victories... On the other hand, there are the boldly intrepid who yearn to experience and delight in the love they already know dwells without limit in their heart... This is the beginning of prayer...

​To be sure, there are any number of wants, needs, and preferences: the Universal Consciousness that is the Root of All Manifested Existence "knows" all of this: already immutable "laws" will continue, without evident concern, in motion... "pray" all you want, but the dice has already been rolled... some will win, some will lose... and in the end we will all die... so, prayer is not about getting or in losing... it is an entirely different beast...

​Prayer is the path of identification... if you are really wanting to stay in the ego, in your identification with your "little self" of personal history and confirming story, you can! The Universe will not stand in opposition! Be yourself! But on the other hand, you just might be among the boldly intrepid, and you already realize that you were made for something other than simply ego identification...  This is the promise of prayer...

​With whom and with what do you wish to identify? Mary, the Mother of Jesus, chose exactly that, but more: she chose to be Mother to all of the poor little ones throughout time... Her identification with Jesus liberated her from ego identification: she became who she was meant to be by surrendering her ego-self to the intention of the Sacred Cosmos that she be Mother of All Sentient Beings... Don't you wonder what the intention of the Sacred Cosmos is for you? This is the path of prayer...

​Very much as with Mary, Buddhism teaches a path of ego-liberation, a blossoming of the "little self" with the intention of the Sacred Cosmos by means of the Bodhisattva Vow: to willingly re-incarnate, perhaps an infinite number of times, to serve the liberation of all sentient beings, before entering heaven oneself (indeed, one "becomes" all selves, if you can wrap your head around that!) Such a being is Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion... This is the fruit of prayer...

​Identification is key: regardless of the name that we were given, we were never supposed to "stay" Bob, Jane, or even Kamala forever: while yet alive, we are supposed to disappear... "Disappear into what?" you ask... By now, I think you already know the answer: disappear into who you really are, as in a mirror of the Sacred Cosmos... disappear into an activated compassion, disappear into a practiced justice, disappear into serving equality, disappear into nonviolent peacemaking: disappear into whatever way in which you are needed... Disappear into "Hail Mary"... Disappear into Kuan Yin "Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail, Jewel of the Lotus)... 

​This is prayer as a disappearing act...