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Prayer: Bringing Light Instead of Worry
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I used to associate prayer with my devout Catholic mother's prayer list—if anyone was having a hard time, she would put them on her list. It felt comforting, but not something I ever did on my own.
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Over the years, however, I’ve learned a lot about prayer from many wise teachers and I've experienced its power to bring positive energy (light) to a difficult situation or, at least, to transform my relationship to it.
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My greatest lesson in prayer came from my late husband, Wes. Due to his health issues I lived with the reality that he could go at any time, in any moment. This is true for everyone, but was extra vivid to me during those years. He knew how worried I was, and he would say to me, "Instead of worrying about me, hold light for me." He said that it's potent medicine to bring light instead of worry. When I asked him what he meant by that, he said:
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“Different people practice it in different ways because the light is revealed to people individually and uniquely. Some people experience the light intuitively as a positive, intuitive sense of goodness and grace and loving care. Some people experience it kinesthetically as a vivid sense of lighted goodness that they can hold and radiate in relationship to anyone or anything, or a matter at hand or in mind that they care about.
Others experience it as a particular virtue of feeling. It could be a sense of kindness, generosity, compassion, faith, trust in something larger, that holds all this. It could be some variation on the feeling of devotion or deep acceptance of a situation, and faith in a positive outcome. And by opening to that feeling or that virtuous resonance, they hold light for something that would otherwise have the feeling of darkness, trouble, complication, pain.”
~Wes Vaught
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I carried this practice with me after Wes passed and started writing and saying prayers for family and friends. Prayer is sometimes the only support I can offer. I've noticed that I can forget about prayer as an option in the midst of situations that feel hopeless or intractable, but when I remember it's always amazing to me how empowering it feels.
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I continue to be surprised by how positively people have responded to the prayers I've written for them. The prayers I write are always collaborative—I send a draft first and ask for input to make sure everything feels right to them.
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“Sometimes you can invest a lot of prayer in something and it only reflects one's own need for more light in one's own living being and sphere of awareness. So in that sense prayer is good for the one who prays whether or not things seem to shift outwardly or immediately or soon.”
~Wes Vaught
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I think the world would benefit from more people praying, so I created a prayer library on my website. The prayers are nonreligious and cover a range of topics. The prayer for someone who is having surgery is a popular one. The prayers are meant to be modified for your own situation, so you can go to the website, copy a prayer, change it, or cut and paste parts from different prayers to make it right for your situation. I also offer simple but powerful instructions on different ways to pray.
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“When love and compassion are present in us, and we send them outward, then that is truly prayer. In sending love outward, we may notice a change in our own heart.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh
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