I often try to escape anxiety by searching the internet for resources to either help me or distract me from the discomfort of my mental trappings. Lately however, I’ve come to realise not all anxiety is created equal. Some anxiety isn’t because you did anything wrong, or the World has gone to shit either. It could very well be because you are longing to hold and acknowledge a presence within your mind that you have abandoned because, well you fill in the blank.
I’m not saying you need to be religious to pray, or you even need to make a lifestyle of praying, all I’m saying is that at a certain point I’ve come to realise that manifesting, intention creating, sleep, good nutrition, positive thinking etc… isn’t quite cutting it. I am craving to heal aspects of myself I am not in control of by talking to myself knowing and accepting I am smaller than the sum of all the parts within the Universe. That maybe by talking to myself, someone else will hear me.
It has been discovered that all frequencies, musical sound bath bowls to even radio frequencies carry the intentions with the messages with which are written upon them. If it’s the sound of a gong, you’re probably better off than the sound of a radio frequency with advertisements running on it every 10 minutes. It has also been said that your very conscious mind is like an antennae connecting itself into the web of all frequencies being emitted into the Universe. I wonder if prayer is a way to open up a feedback loop of connectivity instead of believing we are insular receptors of thought and information.
The greatest benefit that I have discovered by practising prayer as a spiritually agnostic millennial is that it satisfies my need to help and serve others in ways I know I cannot physically do on my own because it will take too much time, money and agency away from my personal priorities. It gives me peace of mind knowing my place in cultural society and place in history that I can cast thoughts of benevolence towards anyone I have met and going to meet or will never meet, but give myself that peace of mind that everyone deserves a chance at a quality life. Perhaps my anxiety is not only my own, but a form of empathy that has attached itself my my life and can only be released through prayer because I have the perspective of not having personally lived through the issue the other person is going through and can ofter a secret of acceptance and understanding…
I know that prayer may have certain religious connotations or expectations that it needs to be repetitious or formulaic, but I seem to need to pray when I feel there is something I do not have the words to articulate and understand but it becomes my desire to experience the insight of a sense of freedom away from the confusion or pain by accessing an inner sense of aliveness that is resolute in its knowing for peace and harmony beyond my personal sense of self. I know I am me, along with the idea that I have a telephone line to someone else a lot like me but a little bit better. That imagination blurs my understanding of what is real and what is fiction, yet to dream of the possibility of a higher Self seems realistic enough because I can dream, that it makes it real enough to enjoy the effort.