9 Ways to Pray in Tumultuous Times
It is true what the wise ones teach: your frequency elevates everyone around you.
We talk about raising the vibe and selecting the vibe but exactly how does one adjust the frequency if things are not quite feeling right? The attitude of gratitude is easier said than done sometimes.
Yet recognizing that your mindset manifests much of your reality opens the door into the mastery of self. When you live in the awareness that you are responsible for creating your reality, you’re more likely to upgrade your thoughts.
This naturally expands your mind even further.
Yet prioritizing the thinking brain over the sensing heart is a spiritual trap. Attaching to the idea that we can think our way into making things happen will inevitably lead us to a dead end. Why? Because we can’t think our way into feelings. We can’t think our way into ecstasy. We can’t think our way into an orgasm. We can logic our reasons for staying in a relationship, but we can’t logic ourselves into falling in love.
Frequency is a feeling state that emerges from our belief system. This energetic matrix encodes our vibration.
Our belief systems encapsulate what we value and why, and if we value ourselves lower than everyone else, our reality will reflect that uncomfortable truth. One can certainly perform gratitude, but if you approach that space from an intellectual perspective, you won’t express it from your heart center.
Every day, there are a million things that invite distraction and demand attention. At the core of my inability to remain ever present is the desire not to feel too much. And ironically, when I try to avoid the things that generate suffering, they get sharper.
If nothing else, note this: your ability to pay attention is directly linked to your ability to experience profound ecstatic connection. When we succumb to distancing ourselves from what is happening, we diminish our ability to perceive divinity in ourselves and our surroundings.
Prayer is something I found challenging at first. I didn’t “know” how to do it. I equated it with the biblical psalms of my childhood, the structured rites of a religion that didn’t bring me relief or connection. When I started cultivating a deeper devotional practice, I realized I was teaching myself how to pray.
True bliss is an attainable enlightenment.
Prayer is one of those things you either embrace or reject. I lived in the latter category for most of my life, so I understand the initial squeamish reaction many have to this task. Prayer is nonpartisan. It requires no investment in any religious ideology other than the fact that you are alive and that is worthy of acknowledgement. More importantly, your aliveness is deserving of awe.
So get ready to worship.
If you are ready to experience the power of your own devotion, it’s time to practice some new ways to pray. Grounding the practice is important — in other words, it is more than holding a good thought in your head. Make it physical somehow. Speak it into existence. For that is the point: you are showing devotion, not conceptualizing it.
Use the following prompts to start playing.
Learn to see your perfect being.
Gratitude isn’t a mental thing.
No, gratitude is an embodied feeling we inhabit. However, it can be tough to access if you aren’t in the practice.
A quick way to get you in the mood for gratitude is to use your daily shower or self-care routine as a doorway to deeper appreciation for yourself and your life.
Set aside 5 minutes in your day to give your body some extra attention. This could be a simple massage with lotion or oil after your bath or gentle stretching. Use this time to acknowledge and appreciate your body and what it does for you every day.
Thank your hands. Thank your ankles. Thank your heart. Thank your eyes. Thank your brain. All of it.
Do your best to acknowledge as many parts of you as possible, all while you shower loving touch on yourself. Do it out loud.
Notice where your body glows or expands as you acknowledge it. Repeat this act on the regular.
Create an altar to your future self.
If you do not already have one, it’s time to make your own altar. Consider it the home of your soul temple. Carve out a private space for yourself where you can set up your altar. Make sure there is a place for you to sit in front of it comfortably. Gather sacred talismans that have significant meaning for you, or sacred items that bless you with their magic. I invite you to find a picture of yourself that shows you in a state of total joy or peace, and place it upon your altar. Anything that feeds your soul can live here, and you can add or remove things at will.
The point is to cultivate a dedicated area where you actively love on your being. Use this space to meditate, to cry, to sit in silence, to pray, to read tarot, to journal — whatever your soul wants.
Offer your tears to the earth.
Grief is a powerful emotion that wants to be felt. In allowing yourself to fully feel it, you allow your holy emotions the space to speak, which makes it easier for them to leave. If you feel ‘full’ of feelings and find it difficult to let someone go, then it’s time to create the space to allow these emotions to move through you.
It’s important that you allow yourself to grieve fully, for grief is the prayer for a love lost.
A powerful ritual is to offer your tears to the earth for transmutation of the pain into new energy. When I am in a grief process, I like to dig a small hole in the earth and cry or scream into it. I let my tears fall onto the dirt. I tell the earth where I hurt, and I ask for its support in transmuting my pain. When I am done, I fill the hole in with dirt and offer water for healing.
This simple practice can be profoundly powerful for those who are carrying a lot of grief. The greatest gift we can give to an aching heart is to let it breathe and speak.
Say the Hoʻoponopono prayer.
This traditional Hawaiian practice is a simply prayer that clears serious blockages in the heart. What’s powerful about this prayer is that it doesn’t seek to change the person who might be the cause of our pain. It seeks to change and heal you. By acknowledging your own role and investment in the situation, you can more easily burn through whatever buried resentment exists.
The essence of the prayer is: I Love You, I’m Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank You.
When I’m grieving a loss or working through a forgiveness process, I usually identify the person I want to clear things with, and allow myself to move through each part of the prayer until I feel complete. You don’t need to have this person present in the room with you, it is enough to simply state the following out loud to yourself.
I will begin by honoring all the ways in which I love(d) this person.
I will then apologize for all the ways in which I helped create the situation that caused either party pain. (This is especially important if we feel that we are the victim.)
Next I will ask for forgiveness for the things I’ve done to this person that were harmful, thoughtless, or did not feel good for my soul to speak out loud.
Finally, I will thank this person for all the ways in which they’ve helped me or my life — whether they helped me see and honor my own boundaries, or gave me the fuel to stand up for myself, I will find ways to express my gratitude. Sometimes it’s simply enough to thank them for being them.
While this might feel counterintuitive if we are experiencing anger or resentment, it soothes the heart immensely and can open the way for our buried emotions to point the way to our healing.
Dance your inner landscape.
Sometimes our prayer is a movement, a moan, a way of melting back into ourselves. It does not need to be silent supplication at an altar. Sometimes prayer is loud, feral, chaotic, sexy.
It’s all a heartbeat.
Dancing your prayer is a way of embodying energies so that they can find expression. In acknowledging what is moving through you, you bless the presence of this energy, and you release it. Let your anger unfurl through you as deeply as your joy. You might find that in the dance, there is no difference.
How can you dance your prayer today? If you’re not sure how to start, simply begin moving. Listen to where your body wants to go, and follow it there. Give yourself the space to be imperfect and weird, to flow with what wants to emerge. Hold gratitude for it all.
Scream a blessing.
Practice shouting a prayer with joy into the sky. Scream your blessings into the void. Or just holler with gratitude. Whatever that looks like to you — just don’t hold back.
Forgive someone.
Any resentment that lives within you should be actively resolved, as much as possible. This is because when you hold onto anger and irritations, you have less space for bliss. These emotions actively obstruct peace and love. Simple as that.
Search your heart to see whose name(s) comes forward when you ask yourself: Who do I need to forgive?
Once you’ve identified some people that you are wanting to forgive, create a ritual of some kind to acknowledge your act of atonement. Even if the other person is “guilty” or was the one who generated this situation, only your atonement is necessary, for you have now taken on the pain.
This could look like: writing a letter, doing an act of service in their name, sending them a healing gift, saying their name over a candle and stating that you release them from your heart space.
Feel free to get creative and follow your instincts. No matter what you do, make sure you are ready to really let go. Once you do, you will feel different.
Go to the woods.
Prayer is primal. It is often an organic response to majestic things that generate the feeling of awe. We experience this feeling when we are confronted by both the terrifying and the infinite — think of a mountain, for instance. Visiting one can make us feel a mixture of intense emotions: fear, excitement, curiosity, respect, awe. That is why nature helps us connect to our prayer.
Nature is saturated with divine intelligence.
Take yourself somewhere unfamiliar in nature: not a manicured parklet; somewhere raw and wild and unruly. Go to the borderlands of your region, wherever you are, and let yourself wander. Find an ocean, a mountain, a forest, a river bottom. Go and let yourself be guided. Follow an animal trail, walk slowly and absorb the sounds around you. See things in a new light. Examine things as though you are seeing them for the first time. Turn off your phone, don’t text, just be in nature for an hour or more. Thank each thing that speaks to you.
If you want, bring a journal and see what arises in the silence.
Surrender something sacred.
What can you give away that would bring someone joy? Is there something that has strengthened your soul that you could provide to others in a spontaneous act of kindness?
Consider what has become sacred to you — is it a beautiful crystal, a lucky talisman, your time? Is it your health? Identify something that you deeply value, that you might even worship, and consider how you could multiply your gratitude by sharing it with someone else. If you value your time, perhaps consider volunteering to a cause or movement you support. If you value your health, perhaps you donate nutritious food to someone who has none. If you love beautiful talismans, consider gifting one to someone else.
Then, let it go.
🔺
Katharine Hargreaves is a spiritual mentor, transformational facilitator, ceremonial guide, and initiated medicine womxn. Her first book, The Art of the Experiment, is a transformational manual for people who want to change their life but don’t know where to start. For more information on Katharine and how to work with her, visit her website.
