‘Praying rain’: The lost art of faking it till you make it
How do we create the life we desire?
In his book Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, scientist and spiritual teacher Gregg Braden describes the moment the penny dropped and he really got how manifestation and prayer worked. An American Indian friend of his was doing a rain ceremony to break a drought in an area of New Mexico. Greg asked his friend if he had been praying for rain, but his friend said no, he was praying rain.
At first Gregg thought it was an innocent grammatical mistake, and he tried to correct him, saying, “You mean, you prayed for rain.”
“No,” he said. “I prayed rain.”
His friend then went on to explain that if you pray for something it will never come to you because you are saying that what you desire is not here. As the universe can only reflect what you already are, praying for something that you don’t have will bring you more of what you don’t have. So when he prays rain, he feels the rain on his skin, smells the rain on the adobe walls of the pueblo dwellings, and hears the thunder roll across the sky. He prays himself into an experience of the outcome as if it is happening now. In this way he closes the gap between present and future and makes the manifestation real in the Now.
Gregg realised this was the same message he had received in all his studies of advanced healers and meditators from cultures around the world – don’t pray for something, become it. Be it. Bring it into the Now and experience it as if it is already real. And then give thanks for the manifestation that has already happened. And it has happened (at least in essence) if you feel it has happened. You give thanks for the present-moment, utterly true experience of rain or abundance or health or whatever it is that you are praying.
Bring your desired future into the Now
This is the key to effective prayer and creative work – don’t put it out there as something that you hope to have in the future, because that will only keep it in the future. The universe is a mirror, it duplicates your present-moment state, not your future state.
The difficult work is in bridging the inner conceptual and emotional divide between where we are now (wanting something) and where we want to be (having something) when we do not yet have the thing we desire. We have to essentially fake a new reality in order to create the new reality. Fake it till you make it.
While the idea of faking something can seem inauthentic at first, it’s worth remembering that we are already faking reality. What we take to be real is just an interpretation that we have practised so often that it has become second nature. We assume we are seeing what is true, but really we are seeing our beliefs and unconscious attitudes reflected back to us. In this light, it is not inauthentic to reach for and affirm a more positive (and therefore more true) interpretation. In fact, it is one of the most authentic things we can do. We are reaching for the true abundance and limitlessness of our true nature. Lack is the illusion.
So now, when you are tempted to pray or ask for anything, let it be a signal to you to stop asking and start giving. Give yourself the outcome now. Close the gap between now and the future so that the future is lived now. Don’t pray for rain – pray rain.
