What is prayer? (and why do it?)

Prayer doesn’t always seem to fit naturally with talk of a soulful life.

Perhaps prayer seems more suited to the ‘upward’ journey of transcendence – mystical union, expansiveness, light. Not to the messy, downward, inward journey of soul.

But to me, these two journeys are not separate. They are one and the same. Our bodies are the portal to the divine – to above, and to below.

I pray, even if I don’t call it that.

My mode of prayer: sometimes, an intentional turning inwards. I sit on the armchair by the window, close my eyes, breathe deeply. I am aware of the sun making patterns on my eyelids, or the sound of the rain against the glass. I send out roots to connect with something deeper, my ego making a conscious decision to step aside. It knows by now that it is not the one best suited to the depths; it doesn’t know the descent to the well. It knows its zone of operation is at surface level, and it respects and even delights in this need to access a deeper source of truth and wisdom.

Prayer happens too at times when I am not ‘praying’.

Prayer is the natural companion of a soulful life, always close by. It is a yearning I feel even when I am not ‘doing’ it. Prayer is a call-and-response song between the universe and the part of the life force I embody. The universe sings to me. In the beginning I had to strain to hear it. I sing back to the universe; the universe responds. Our songs get louder and the pull to respond, one to the other, becomes ever stronger. We move closer. The song becomes a memory the body does without thinking, an ever-deepening source of truth and peace.