Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer

THE HIDDEN POWER OF BEAUTY, BLESSING, WISDOM, AND HURT

By Gregg Braden

excerpted from Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer

The worldwide census that was conducted in 2000 is believed to be the most accurate accounting of our world in recorded history. Among the compelling statistics that the survey revealed about our global family, and perhaps the most telling, is our nearly universal sense that we’re here on purpose, and we’re not alone. Over 95 percent of the world’s population believes in the existence of a higher power. Of that number, over half call that power “God.”


The question now is less about whether or not something is “out there,” and more about what that “something” means in our lives. How can we speak to the higher power that so many of us believe in? The same traditions that described nature’s secrets thousands of years ago answered this question as well. As you’d expect, the language that connects us with God is found in a very common experience that we all share. It is the experience of our feelings and emotions.


When we focus on a certain quality of feeling in our hearts, we’re actually using the mode of prayer that was largely forgotten after the now well-publicized biblical edits of the fourth century. The key to using feeling as our prayer-language is simply to understand how prayer works. In the most remote and isolated sanctuaries remaining on Earth today, those least disturbed by modern civilization, we find some of the best-preserved examples of how we may speak to the presence that 95 percent of us believes exists.


FEELING IS THE PRAYER

I was reeling from what I’d just heard. The cold from the stone floor beneath my knees had found its way through the dampness of two layers of clothing that I’d worn that morning. Each day on the Tibetan plateau is both summer and winter: summer in the direct high-altitude sun; and winter as the sun disappears behind the jagged peaks of the Himalayas—or behind the high temple walls like those that surrounded me. It felt as if there was nothing between my skin and the ancient stones on the floor beneath me, yet I couldn’t leave. This was the reason why I’d invited 20 others to join me in a journey that led us halfway around the world. On this day, we found ourselves in some of the most remote, isolated, magnificent, and sacred places of knowledge remaining on Earth today: the monasteries of the Tibetan plateau.