“My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God. If you say to God, ‘I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don’t like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You,’ that might be the most honest thing you’ve ever said.”
BOOK RECOMMENDATION
Do you know how to pray?
Do you have the spiritual confidence to face East and speak from your heart out into the great mystery?
Do you trust that your prayers will bring you back to the essence of love inside yourself?
Yes. Sometimes. Maybe.
Whatever name you ascribe to that sacred aspect of light that animates you and animates everything else, are you able to look directly at yourself in the mirror and see that same divine spark in your own eyes?
Once you can see divinity in yourself, prayer will not be an obligation, a guilt-infused regret, or lackluster invocation. It will be only one thing – true. And true will be enough, for this is prayer: a reaching out and up and in towards truth.
Allow these photos from the experiences Rochelle writes about in Chapter 7 to inspire you to trust your prayers to bring you back to the essence of love.
MOVEMENT: DANCE WITH YOUR SHADOW
Many of us fear that if we really let the darkness in, it will destroy us. The pain will be too much, the grief will pierce the only remaining part of our heart, and we will drown in sadness.
Do we have such a limited view of our own love?
Have great confidence in your heart’s ability to hold the intensity of life by embodying it.
Have great confidence in our world’s collective heart to heal the intensity of our human experience through the movement of our bodies.
RITUAL: BREAKING THE COCONUT
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
In addition to doing the exercise from the book, you can learn more about letting the divine take the lead in Tosha Silver's books Outrageous Openness and Change Me Prayers.
COMMUNITY CONNECTION: PRAYER CIRCLE
This prayer circle is intended to transform your forgiveness – through fire, to ashes, to essence in the sky, to your gratitude grounded in the earth, and to the next co-creation born into the world. Through it, you can experience the energy and life force that pulses through and informs your body at all times. For divine assistance, make sure you have your favorite items for opening sacred space on hand like sage and a prayer cloth, and be sure to have an oracle deck from which your participants will draw a card.
PILGRIMAGE: PURIFICATION PILGRIMAGE
To purify is to shed what stands between you and that which you yearn for. If prayer is reaching out and longing for truth, this pilgrimage helps you release the barriers between you and your communion with that essence of indescribable light. All of life operates through vibration, so you can only experience that which you attune to. If your body is more acquainted with feeling uncomfortable and unsupported because of poor diet, lack of exercise, or constant stress and exhaustion, then bliss, joy, and transcendence will be hard to feel.
*Click here to purchase a copy of Qoya: A Compass for Navigating an Embodied Life that is Wise, Wild and Free.