SadhanaOriental Meditation and Christian Prayer
Prayer with fantasy
[26]Prayer to receive seven blessings from God －１
This is a prayer (contemplation) to seek seven kinds of blessings from God: God’s love, justice, power, life, words, wisdom, and benediction.
We will eventually proceed to the phase to seek the seven blessings simultaneously, but for now, let us seek three of them at a time.
In this first phase, we seek three blessings; God’s love, justice, and power.
Here is how we pray. Let’s start with a prayer to try to fully receive God’s blessing of love.
God’s blessing of love has already reached our heart. We pray to receive the invisible blessing more fully by using the power of visual imagination. Form a clear image that the love from God emits light in our heart like a candle. Choose a color of the light that you like. (Author chose light pink.)
When we are ready to proceed, we clear our head and observe the sensation of each part of our body (for about 10 minutes) before we actually start the main part of the prayer. In the main part, we follow the process of seeking God’s love first, and then God’s justice, and God’s power.
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With our eyes closed, let’s imagine that God’s love emanates wonderfully-colored light like a candle in our heart. Imagine that the light fills up our heart, our mind, and our whole body. Imagine that the light continues to expand and fills the room that we are in, the entire building, the town, the earth, and the universe.
Form a clear image that we are wrapped in this light of God’s love. The light erases evil in us, such as anger, hatred, material desire, ambition, jealousy, vanity, and arrogance to judge. Stay wrapped in this light for a while, hoping that evil decreases and love increases in us.
We spent some time to pray and seek God’s love. Now, we proceed to seek God’s justice as a second step. Imagine that God’s justice emanates wonderfully-colored light (in author’s case, it is yellow) like a candle inside our belly button. Imagine that the light, like the light of love, fills up our stomach, heart, mind, whole body, the entire room we are in, the entire house, the entire town, the entire earth, and the universe.
Form a clear image that we are wrapped in this light of God’s justice. This light erases our greediness, malice, sneakiness, and distorted disposition.
Stay wrapped in this light for a while, hoping that cowardice decreases and justice increases in us.
After we sought God’s justice, let us seek God’s power as a third step. Imagine that God’s power emanates wonderfully-colored light (in author’s case, it is red) like a candle in our lower abdomen. Imagine that the light, like the light of love, fills up our stomach, heart, mind, whole body, the entire room we are in, the entire house, the entire town, the entire earth, and the universe.
Form a clear image that we are wrapped in this light of God’s power. This light erases our weakness, fear, cowardice, and shyness.
Stay wrapped in this light for a while, hoping that weakness decreases and power increases in us.
End this session in about 25 to 30 minutes in total, including the preparatory step. Conclude this prayer by singing a hymn (Tenrei Seika (Japanese liturgical hymn book) #6, for example).