Prayer and Meditation Practice

Four Step Prayer and Meditation (PDF, 117KB)

Step 3: Switching the Energy®

This is the moment when my ego lets go and I receive the inspired information from Mary Magdalene and my guides. She often speaks in the first person or uses the word “we” as she communicates with me. I write freely what I can and keep my attention on relaxing and receiving the information. I am able to shut off my mind and my wounded ego, which might be complaining, arguing or interjecting “yea, buts”. I simply write and write until it is finished. This part now happens very quickly for me and without much conscious thought. However, some of you will find it challenging to let go of all the talk from the ego (as I did at the beginning) so that the information from your Spirit guides can come through. Again, do not lose heart and stay with it. It will shift in time and become easier, more organic and natural for you in your own practice.

The moment in your mind’s eye that you connect with each of your Spirit Guides and Soul Partners is important. This is an essential juncture to experience pure love and care from them. No matter what I bring from my wounded ego that day, as I connect with them in my mind’s eye, I receive a pure blessing of mercy and love. This is an important preparation to receive what they have to say.

If the channeling and receiving seems difficult or doesn’t flow, just stop and thank your Spirit Guides, Soul Partners, Higher Power or however you define this Divine Source for yourself, for coming to you this day. Ask them to teach you to be willing to receive and let them know you will be back the next day to try again. Perhaps in your Authentic Journaling® the next day, you can address the difficulty you are having in Switching the Energy® and allow your guides to speak to this challenge. Simply being open to receive from your Spiritual Source and being honest about the challenges that arise reaps amazing results. When you couple being honest with simply showing up to your own prayer and mediation practice on a consistent basis, I promise that you will begin to connect and experience the miracles of Divine inspiration from your Soul Partners and Spirit Guides. It will be a matter of time before the flow of connection and writing becomes easy and an ordinary occurrence in your spiritual life.

After you switch the energy and receive their wisdom and message, you will have a sense of peace, fulfillment, joy and serenity. Every time that I have received insight and love from my Soul Partners and Spirit Guides, I felt centered and fulfilled. The angst and frustration that I may have brought to the Authentic Journaling® was reshaped into a gift, and there was a deeper meaning to my difficulties plus a Divine perspective that made sense to me. I understood that each ego wound that I brought to this prayer and meditation practice, once surrendered, created space for a deeper and more profound connection to my soul’s Divine Purpose and Destiny. It was through these wounds, hurts, petty jealousies and fears that restoration came, as well as the full expression of my soul’s purpose. That truth was significant for me. I remind myself of this daily as it can be challenging to have the same obsessions, fears and shame come up repeatedly and not lose heart. Remember, healing comes over time.

Part Two of Switching the Energy NEXT WEEK.

Step 1: Creating the Ceremony with Intention

When I sit down to do my prayer and meditation in the morning, I burn sage first and often light a candle. I always prepare a cup of tea or coffee. In the winter, I often build a fire and sit in front of the fireplace. These first steps can seem small, but they have so much significance. When I travel, as I do frequently, the ritual of this preparation time occurs often in my mind and heart. Even when I am in a hotel room, I bring sage and prepare a cup of tea or coffee. If I choose to create this space somewhere outside my hotel, I gather my journal and sage and find a coffee house or perhaps a place to hike in nature for the meditation time.

Regardless of my location, I create the space in my mind and the sacredness of the practice is present. Over time, there is something deeply powerful about this consistent self-care and the creation of this ceremony with intention. Nourishing ourselves occurs naturally with the intention of creating this sacred space. The commitment to take this time in the morning, wherever you are, begins to establish itself within your body, mind and spirit. There is a sense of harmony, order and fidelity to self. One’s spiritual journey is enhanced with the practice of this intention and ceremony.

Be cautious about making promises to yourself regarding doing this every day or attaching a value to how well you did it. Create this time for yourself with realistic goals, perhaps five out of seven days a week. Even if you simply sit and breathe for five minutes without writing or journaling, acknowledge this time for yourself and your intention in creating it. Do it with love and kindness and forgive yourself when days pass without this ceremony. Pick it up again and let yourself know that you are doing the best that you are able to do right now.

Taking this time for yourself with the intention of communing with your Soul Partners and Spirit Guides will require you to love yourself increasingly and, over time, your self-esteem, self appreciation and self care will expand. I noticed this for myself over the months and years of this discipline.

I also began to be faced with my own woundedness, lack of self-esteem and wounded ego challenges. When I sat to receive these amazing blessings and messages from my Soul Partners and Spirit Guides, I had to increase my capacity for receiving such gifts and for believing I deserved such blessings. As you begin to experience your own Soul Partners and Spirit Guides and receive the profound blessings that they give, you, too, will be confronted with your own lack of self-esteem and with the beliefs that you carry inside that you are not worthy of such sacred communion. This will pass. I encourage you to remain steadfast in your promise to yourself to continue with this practice. In your continued action of creating this ritual and ceremony with intention, you build the foundation for the Authentic Journaling® which is the next step in this process. Each step builds on the one before and must be held with gentleness, openness, and forgiveness of self when falling short of your own expectations. You must couple this with the discipline and determination to start over and over and over again, trusting the process and allowing yourself to be loved and blessed unconditionally.

Authentic Journaling®

The first part of four step process for a prayer and meditation practice that connects you to your Spirit Guides and Soul Partners is Creating the Ceremony with Intention®. Our intention provides the foundation for actions we can take that our aligned with our intention. It’s a powerful circle that moves us in the direction of our desires and dreams in manifesting our Divine Purpose. Our second step in creating the ceremony for our prayer and meditation is a powerful step as well. It is called Authentic Journaling® and is taken from Blessings From Mary and described below.

Step Two: Authentic Journaling

Authentic Journaling® is much like writing morning pages, which I first came across in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. This type of journaling is a free-flow writing of what is going on in my mind at the time of sitting down to meditate. Authentic Journaling® is often most powerful when the focus is on the resistance we have to receiving the messages and inspirations in our prayer and meditation. It’s okay to stay focused on our discomfort and resistance as long as we write it out on paper. This is an inner journey into mysterious places. When honesty is the driving force in the journaling, the writing that will reap powerful results. These results will show up in step three during the energetic switch that occurs when we connect with our Soul Partners and Spirit Guides.

What began to happen for me in this step was that Mary Magdalene and my guides would often respond directly to the issues or challenges I brought that day. It was not only very comforting to me, but it became clear that this type of journaling could become a necessary rung for others in their communing with their own Spirit connection. It also became clear that the challenges that we each bring to our prayer and meditation practice are the very challenges that our Soul Partners and Spirit Guides want and wait to respond to for us. They gather to support and commune with us, specifically in the areas that we ask for healing and wisdom. It is through these very challenges that our transformation will come and our gifts will emerge. While there were many times that I felt frustrated with my unhealthy ego showing up repeatedly, I also learned that this honest Authentic Journaling® allows for my Spirit Guides and Soul Partners to meet me in the most honest and pertinent places for healing. I was learning patience with myself, deep and profound self-love and forgiveness, and a compassion for the hurt places inside. I also began to look forward to my prayer and meditation practice since I did not have to try and “stop” or “control’ what I was bringing to the practice. I could be honest about my difficulty and writing it out on paper released the energy around the resistance. I began ready to receive the inspirations from my Soul Partners and Spirit Guides. Authentic Journaling® during my prayer and meditation practice, became the necessary stage of welcoming authenticity and as I opened myself honestly to the real wounds, hurts, jealousies, fears and shame that I carried in my ego, transformation began to happen. When I am finished with this step in my prayer and meditation, I take a deep breath and move on to step three which is Switching the Energy®.

Ask Your Spirit Guides and Soul Partners

When I began this prayer and meditation practice several years ago, I didn’t intend to make public these daily inspirations nor was my intent to develop a process for connecting with Spirit Guides and Soul Partners. I did believe in daily prayer for many years. Being raised Catholic, I spent every weekday morning through grade school going to early mass and often went in the evenings with my Aunt Ann to 5:15 mass. At night, I said prayers before I slept, and whenever there was an evening meal with family we said grace before we ate. Prayer was part of my life. I didn't have a sense of personal connection or inspiration, nor did we discuss meditation, but I did engage in a consistent prayer ritual and believed in a Higher Power.

When I entered 12-step recovery with an eating disorder and codependency issues in the late 1980s, there was an increased emphasis on spirituality in my life. Part of working through the 12 steps involved developing a relationship with a Higher Power and integrating spiritual meditation into daily life. I was no longer attending the Catholic Church or any church on a regular basis but my prayer and meditation practices along with my spiritual life blossomed. Morning and evening prayer and meditation became part of my routine.

During the next twenty years, I experimented with different types of prayer and meditation practices including transcendental, chanting meditations, deep breathing meditations and focusing as a form of meditation. I also did several sets of 40 days of meditating and chanting for health, prosperity and the ideal relationship. I have memories of my four-year-old daughter crawling into my lap early in the morning as I sat cross-legged in the living room practicing the latest technique for prayer and meditation, chanting and manifesting my heart’s desires. All was good and each practice brought its unique gifts.

Over the last ten years, I began to develop a great affinity and curiosity for learning about Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine. I think my Catholic upbringing brought me to a deep appreciation of the Mother Goddess as a result of another female figure, the Virgin Mary. It was Mary Magdalene, however, who inspired something within me in recent years. As the quintessential feminine energy, I felt a kinship with her that seemed to nest in my core. I studied masculine and feminine energies and began to see Mary Magdalene in my mind, what I thought she looked like, how she might have behaved or spoken.

Mary Magdalene began to appear in my mind’s eye during my daily prayer and meditation. It was an unbelievable gift to me and one that still amazes me. Stay turned for more details about my own prayer and meditation practice and how you can use it in your own life to connect with your Spirit Guides and Soul Partners.

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