Getting your manifesting ducks to quack in unison
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
–T-shirt I saw in Hawaii
Filmmaker Michael Moore, in a 2002 commencement speech, gave the following advice. “All you boys should learn that once you give up on that girl, she will come to you.”
In some ways, prayer works the same way. By believing we desperately need prayer or a miracle or something we don’t have now, we deny God’s truth. We suit up with the wrong attitude.
Any time we look for an answer, we make the false assumption that the answer isn’t already here. Praying for love or happiness or some other desired goal defeats the whole purpose. It assumes somehow that the outcome of life is still in doubt. It’s not. God’s truth is perfection, all-joy, all-love, and to crave some piddling commodity is believing there’s something else. You have to suit up with perfect confidence that you have the right for all that is good. In fact, you have to believe it’s already here.
To Jesus, prayer was not a matter of bribing God. It was simply understanding that the higher law of Spirit overrides the lower law of the mental and physical plane. To plead or beg or to act like it’s not here is to suppose duality, not unity. And unity is what we’re going for. To get those ducks lined up, to get all those waves in laser-like coherence.
Like a laser, touched for the very first time
“We can’t afford the luxury of doubt.”
–Elastigirl in the Incredibles
I don’t know if you know anything about laser technology, but it works a little bit like Congress did on September 12, 2001. Remember how all those cantankerous old senators and representatives completely forgot they were Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives? How the only thing in their minds were “I’m an American, by God” and they sang God Bless America” in one great, big unified chorus? Well, that’s how a laser works.
Unlike ordinary light, that has lots of different types and sizes of wavelengths, lasers have one size wavelength, each of which precisely reinforces every other.
This is how you want to pray. Or it is if you want to see something appreciable happen. When Jesus “prayed” to multiple the fish and loaves, he didn’t beg God to “make something happen,” he simply put all his thoughts into one laser-like formation, namely that abundance and plenty was his divine right.
In fact, the real reason Jesus was crucified was those in command thought he was altogether too confident. How dare he be so bold as to think he could make crippled people walk, lepers dance? But Jesus didn’t just think he could do these things. He knew. He knew the truth of who he was which made his mind a veritable laser. He didn’t doubt for one second there was plenty of food to go around. He didn’t stop to question if a blind man could see (after all, the gift of health and perfect self-expression is everyone’s divine right) or if that storm that so scared the disciples was real. He knew that he had the right to command the heavens and the earth. In fact, that’s the only big difference between Jesus and you and me. We’re still wondering.
If you go back to Aramaic, which as you probably know is the language Jesus conversed in, the root word of ask reveals more than a “well, if it’s not too much trouble.” Ask, in Aramaic, means a combination of claim (as in that deed to the land is yours) or demand. To ask for something in prayer is to simply lay hold of what’s yours. You have the right, and even the responsibility to command your life.
How can we be sure, you ask? Same way you’re sure two plus two equals four. Because it’s a simple, unalterable principle of mathematics. If you add two plus two and get five, that’s not the principle of mathematic’s fault. Likewise, if you’re not getting the answers you want from your prayers, that’s not God’s fault. It’s you that’s screwing up the principle.
With God, there is no variation. There is one perfect picture of health, abundance, joy, peace, love, and all that other good stuff. But because we, like ordinary light with its variety of wavelengths, have all these variety of thoughts, we create a lot of turbulence. But it’s not necessary.
Prayer that is focused through an integrated, whole personality is like a laser—a single, clear beam. It doesn’t matter who asks or how they ask God’s answer is always “love and light and peace.” That’s not only God’s final answer, it’s the only answer
