Lex Orandi est Lex Vivendi

“How you pray determines how you finally live”

— from the ancient contemplative tradition

“The will of God is not a ‘fate’ to which we must submit, but a creative act in our life that produces something absolutely new, something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation consists not solely in conforming to external laws, but in opening our wills to this mutually creative act.”

— Thomas Merton

Out of the gates, I am not wanting to get hung up on the word “prayer”. I am happy to juxtapose it with meditation, intention, manifestation, casting spells or whatever floats your boat. I am not strictly talking about the ritual of getting down on your knees, pressing your hands together and engaging in repetition. I am using the word “prayer” as a code word and catch-all for an entirely different way of processing life. One in which I am actively transforming one way of thinking for another. From an egocentric perspective to a Self-centric (soul-centric) perspective. But first some context…

I spent most of my life being agnostic and, in all honesty, a borderline atheist. My life was run on self-will and then on self-will run riot until my life just stopped running at all. I hit the proverbial wall and that took me to my proverbial bottom where reluctantly turning to prayer was the only option I had left. And it worked. Damn did it work! That was my opening to a new way of living that I embody today. Now for what happened next…

About 10 months after this life-changing forced experiment with prayer, I found myself at a stage in life where I was ready to move forward but was unclear how. I had been living in a basement suite for about eight months after leaving my rehab centre - as one does when they blow their life up. But now the constraints on my financial and legal situation were changing and I was getting more clarity on the road ahead. Despite it being what looked like an impossible road ahead, I knew it was time to move forward with what little agency I had at the time and this for sure meant a change in living conditions. On one random Saturday in September, I decided to go for a walk in the woods by my basement suite to pray for guidance on what next. And the guidance came. The first piece of guidance was the location of “Bowen Island”. Bowen Island is a 20-minute ferry ride from Vancouver. This is where my rehab centre had been and I had a spiritual awakening there. The guidance was to go back to Bowen and continue the work. I had not really thought of this before that moment, but it made sense. Surrender!

But the next question was “what should I look for”? I prayed for guidance again, and again it came. The guidance was for simplicity and peace, and it came with a vision. The vision was a small house with one or two bedrooms that was modest and simple for the work I needed to do on myself. But I had three teenage children who would need a place to stay. The vision of a guest house connected by a covered walkway emerged as soon as I had that thought. And finally, I had just finished reading the “Surrender Experiment” by Michael Singer. In this book, Singer builds a meditation hut in the woods motivated by his own intuition, and it ends up being a foundational piece of his amazing life. My guidance was for that too. This all sounded incredibly bespoke, so I assumed I was going to have to buy some land and build all of this. I got home after the walk and typed “Bowen Island real estate” in my search engine and about 10 different agencies appeared in the search results. I randomly picked one in the middle of the page for no clear reason. Just before I was about to click on the “land for sale” tab a house on the main page caught my attention. “Ashoka House - price reduced”. Intrigued by the name Ashoka, I clicked on it. The property offered a two-bedroom house connected by a covered walkway to a guest house. In addition, there was a small yoga studio as a separate building in the woods across the creek from the house. I visited the property the next day and bought the house. It is the only property I looked at. Surrender.

This is a true story, and this is the short version of it. The story of what happened between the day I viewed it and the closing date had so many synchronicities in it that it is almost too much to believe. But like Singer’s story in the Surrender Experiment, this property became the next significant leg of my transformation journey. It is where I fell in love with my wife Jacqueline, became a yoga teacher, started The Way Healing, hosted retreats and built community, and most importantly, found the peace I was craving. And the crazy thing is I have at least ten other stories just like this one. Moments where I let go of my own thinking, get out of my own way and ask for guidance on what wants to happen next. Guidance on Divine will to lead me away from self-will.

I used to scoff at the idea of prayer and now I will tell you, with full conviction, that prayer is the most important, and powerful technology, in my life. It is a conscious and intentional connection to the quantum field (I call this God) that is the blank canvas of all manifestation. I have discovered, through prayer, I can dream up the painting without lifting a paint brush. It is what Hawkins calls Power versus Force. And a life run on Power is so much more peaceful and serene than a life run on force. I have also experienced that prayer is the most useful, and the most powerful, when I avoid the trap of praying for things I want. God can help me get what I want, but this is still my self-centred desire, and it rarely ends up being what I need or what fills my heart. God’s much better role is to help me to know what I really desire and show me the way to it. That is the transformational power of the kind of prayer I am talking about and that is the doorway to the miraculous. The more I pray, the more I have learned to surrender and the more I surrender, the more I want to pray. Now I understand what my teacher meant when he said “I don’t believe in miracles, I depend on them”. Prayer is free, inclusive and the only side effect it has is to give everyone equal power to be a Creator.

So, that is the whole of it for me now. Self-will took me to the wall. Surrender took me to Bowen. And prayer is simply how I keep choosing Divine will over my own, one piece of guidance at a time. It is the doorway, and it is open to everyone who is willing to stop running on force and ask.

Praying this finds those in need of prayer,

The Way