Oct 6, 2018
Welcome to Episode 6 of Spei Lumina — Lights of Hope. Yesterday, Oct. 4th, was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. I thought rather than take a recent news cycle and work on transforming its reactionary impact on the cosmos, on each of our psyches into an imaginal prayer exercise, I’d use this remembrance of St. Francis of Assisi and his words and works attributed to him as the basis of our imaginal prayer exercise. In so doing, I thought it would give me an opportunity to further explain or give examples of what I mean by “imaginal prayer”.
St. Francis is quoted as saying, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
It is my hope and intention through this podcast to help emblazon and inflame the light of God, the light of hope, in the world which is bombarded with so much darkness, division, criticism, judgment, and fear through modern media.
This podcast came into being as a result of my feeling called to help make a difference in the world through nurturing the reflection of Divine Light in the world so overshadowed by the darkness. I have long had a devotion to Archangel Uriel and wanted to honor that devotion by grounding my imaginal prayer exercises praying to Archangel Uriel for intercession and enlightenment as we imaginally journeyed in our conscious and opened ourselves to God’s Divine light illuminating our conscious with the vision of how we could be vessels of that reflected light and hope in the cosmos.
Imaginal prayer is not so much praying with words as it is making space in our consciousness for settling down and quieting, clearing, and vanishing from our mind the thoughts and images which distract us from our Divine calling.
So much of our exposure to media — be it broadcast news, social media, radio, and other sources on the Internet — incites intense reactions and emotions. This reactionary impact is what prompted me in my spiritual journey to explore better ways of dealing with the reactionary impact of media within my own life.
Meditation indeed seemed key, but I was drawn to something more, to some way of taking the negative reactionary effect, the darkness and transforming that reaction to something positive and reflecting great light and love in the world.
This passion for further exploring a way of transforming this reactionary impact of media into something Source focused, Light focused, God focused led me to exploring what I call imaginal prayer, visioning prayer, or pray dreaming. This exploration of imaginal prayer has been greatly influenced by the late Islamic studies philosopher and theologian Dr. Henry Corbin, Phd, and his cosmology of the Imaginal Mundi and more recently by the work of Dr. Joseph M. Felser, Phd and his work The Way Back to Paradise, Restoring the Balance Between Magic and Reason.
So, in a nutshell, imaginal prayer offers us not only a way to transform the negative reactionary impact of media within our lives and replace the reactions with making space for God to illuminate our imagination to the solution and how we might respond and offer ourselves in creating that solution. Imaginal prayer leads us from reaction to responsive action that helps reflect and co-create the grace of God, of light, of hope in the cosmos.
I have come to believe and know that imaginal prayer is not so much controlling and creating the vision we seek to participate in and ask God to enlighten us how to make it be, as it is humbly clearing our mind, our consciousness from distracting images, visions and thoughts and creating that silence and solitude and blank slate within our consciousness to be open to God/Sprit/the Universe illuminating our mind with the vision that God/Spirit/the Universe calls us to be co-creators in helping come to fruition on Earth.
I don’t claim to have all the answers about imaginal prayer, but I do believe that it is a method of contemplative prayer beneficial to those for whom praying with words can occasionally become monotonous and have no meaning.
I hope that you too are enjoying this exploration into imaginal prayer. I’d love to hear your feedback. I try to respond to all emails I receive. I can be reached at fr.donald@angelsofthenativity.org.
Let us now begin our imaginal prayer exploration of the the Peace Prayer which is attributed to St. Francis.