Healing Prayer and Meditation

7 Steps for Effective Prayer

Here are some steps for working with the practice of directed prayer (that is, praying for something as opposed to prayer simply as communication/communion with God) to help make the most of your prayer time:

1. Identify a prayer request. Identifying a desire for assistance directs intention and focus toward this issue. Actually writing it in words makes this even stronger. This starts your creative and healing energy moving in the direction of your intent.


2. Begin your prayer period with 5-20 minutes of quiet meditation. Use this time to quiet any thoughts and emotions that strengthen feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness and fear. Read inspiring words, listen to uplifting music, or do whatever else helps you to shift attention away from the perceived limits of your situation and toward the limitlessness of God.


3. Imagine that you are, or whomever you're praying for is, already whole and healed. In this way you magnify the healed Self rather than the dis-ease. If you're praying for another person, imagine your own whole, healed Higher Self joining with theirs and, in this way, invoking their highest healing power as you also affirm your own.


4. Become the prayer. That is, fill yourself with the inner experience of peace, love and healing. If you're praying for others, let this well-being overflow to include them. In this way you give what you most want to receive and discover that your gift comes back to you multiplied.


5. Let go and let God. Let go of expectations of how and when your intention will be fulfilled. If you pray for the highest possible outcome you won't be disappointed. If you pray for very specific results you are more likely to feel that God is not listening. God gives us what is truly for our highest good, which may not be what we most want in the moment. Sometimes the path that will ultimately lead us to the highest joy requires letting go of something we're attached to. We may need to release an unhealthy relationship, job or cherished but unrealistic goal before we can have something better. To have our prayers answered we need to stop telling God what to do! This is equally important when we pray for another. Instead of praying for someone to heal in a specific way, ask that they now heal in the highest possible way.


6. Expect results. As soon as you complete your prayer period, shift your attention from the "dis-ease" in your life to the signs of healing. Many of us have such an ingrained habit of paying attention to all that's wrong that, even when healing and miracles start to happen, we still give more attention to our problems that to our blessings. What we give attention to we make bigger! Consequently, if we give problems most of our attention, we grow a bigger garden of unhappiness and don't give healing a chance to take root.


7. Practice gratitude. Through your own and other people's prayers, you receive a precious seed of healing. You must nurture its growth with your continued loving attention. Starting now, begin to find the gifts, blessings and miracles in your life and give thanks. The more attention you give to your blessings, the more there will be!

Healing Prayer

God (Goddess, Creator, Higher Power, Universal Spirit),
I turn to You with all my heart.
I joyously realize Your absolute presence.
I see You everywhere-in all places, all people,
all that is.
You breathe life and light into my very soul,
YOU who are Infinite Love.
Yes, I feel Your Presence-You live in me!
Thank you for the Divine Spark within.
God, You have said "Ask and it shall be given."
I come to You now in gratitude and love
for Your assistance that is ever present.
Receive my prayer as an offering of faith that what I ask for has already been given and received.

(Take a moment to bring your prayer intention to mind. Speak it out loud or silently to yourself. Imagine handing all dis-ease and lack over to God, and God lovingly receiving it. Create a vivid inner experience of already having, doing and being your prayer request. And then hand this, too, over to God asking that Divine Will be done.)

Thank you, Divine Spirit!
I have faith in reality of Miracles!
I believe in the power of LOVE!
I release this intention into Your hands.
I surrender to Your will.
May the Divine Design now manifest!
I know I am whole and perfect as You made me.
There is nothing to be healed;
only DIVINE LOVE to be revealed.

Now I join with my brothers and sisters
as we speak to You in unity.
Our hearts join and overflow with Divine Love,
And we become a powerful channel for
Your Healing Work:

By the Grace of God, Divine Love now heals and guides
all those who have prayed for Your help!

By the Grace of God, Divine Love now heals and guides
every member of our personal communities!

By the Grace of God, Divine Love now heals and guides
all life on our earth!

Divine Spirit, spark our faith, hope and love into new action this day.
Our lives fill with gratitude, wonder and awe. Miracles happen.
We receive the blessing of Your perfect love and wisdom.
And with this prayer we now embrace the call
You gave us-to be spiritual beings,
in service to each other
and to You.
Amen

Listen to a Healing Prayer Meditation

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Listen to a Guided Healing Meditation

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Why do some prayers seem to go unanswered?

Prayer is a powerful practice that invites grace and healing of all sorts into our life. Research is showing a powerful connection between prayer and physical healing, even when those being prayed for don't believe in prayer or know that prayer is being said on their behalf. Science is proving what many world religions and spiritual paths have taught through the ages, that with faith, love and clear intent anything is possible. (A compelling book on prayer research is Healing Words by Larry Dossey, MD.)

With so much evidence coming, not just from the spiritual community but from the medical community as well, that prayer really does have an effect, why does it seem that so many prayers go unanswered? If we believe in a God or Higher Power, why would it choose to answer some prayers and not others? Even if we believe it's the power of our own consciousness that makes prayer work, why would it work sometimes and not others?

I believe there's an art and science to prayer that make some more effective than others. For many of us prayer is something we don't even think to do until we're desperate and have exhausted all other resources. In this state, our prayers are less a reflection of our trust in a Higher Power and more an affirmation of our own powerlessness. These aren't the most effective prayers.

There's a Bible passage, Matthew 7:7, that says, "Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." It's easy to become cynical about this spiritual truth by the time we're old enough to learn Santa doesn't bring us everything on our list! Yet I believe "Ask and you shall receive" is spiritual law, not religious metaphor, and that if applied correctly, it works. Obviously there's a trick to it because we all could name things we asked and pleaded for but never got. I believe the secret lies in another spiritual law, which we've heard a distortion of in the familiar, "It's better to give than receive" but comes through more clearly in the modern day spiritual text, A Course in Miracles, as "Giving and receiving are the same."

If we combine "Ask and you shall receive" with "Giving and receiving are the same" it means our prayer request needs to offer up, to give, a bit of what we're asking for in order to be truly effective. A powerful prayer is one where we create first within ourselves a bit of the peace, joy, love, surrender, safety and fulfillment we want to grow in our lives and give it up to Spirit-like planting a seed.

When prayers don't work they're often a desperate plea of, "Pleeeaaassse God, rescue me!!" They may have an element of bartering: "Pleeaassse— I'll do anything!" Or we may be praying from our fear-based need for control. Instead of praying for the highest possible outcome, trusting God to show us what that is, we come to God with our grocery list of specific requests saying, in effect, "This, God, and only this will do." In so doing, we undermine the purpose and power of prayer: to give us what is truly for our highest good, not just the limit of what we can imagine our highest good to be.

Spirit gives us what we love and ask for, and we demonstrate what we love and ask for it by how we give our attention. Our state of mind is a powerful force and what we give attention to we magnify. So if we're praying (pleading) for healing, love and prosperity while we fill our attention with wishing (magnifying what we don't have), complaining (magnifying what's wrong), resenting (magnifying separateness and lack of love) and worrying (can you think of any time worrying helped?), is it any wonder that God answers our prayers by giving us is more of the same?

If our prayers aren't being answered in the way we hoped, we might need to ask differently. A 180 degree turnaround may be in order. Instead of a "pleading" prayer, try a "giving" prayer. Transform wishing into gratitude by giving thanks for what you have and even for unanswered prayers as though they have already been fulfilled. Turn complaining into creating by focusing on what you can create in your situation rather than what's wrong with it. Change resentment into forgiveness. If it's hard to forgive, start with yourself. If it's still difficult, ask yourself the question often: Would you rather have God answer your prayers by proving you right or by making you happy? And when your mind is crowded with worries, this is the time for faith. Reach up to a higher power. Recognize that your personal power may not be enough to get you through but Divine Power is.