I wrote about prayer yesterday, because I was called to teach people how to pray.

Today I woke up with another insight on the subject. As it turns out, the whole of the "secret" to prayer can be found on the first few sentences in Genesis. It is often this way, the greatest secrets are hidden in plain sight. Only cloaked by our inability to see.

God said "Let there be light, and there was light".

Again, we can see the command. It is not a petition and it is not a plea. It is a decree.

Now, light is very symbolically loaded in our language. It is symbolic for good, for life, for compassion and for love. It is a very dense word, it is loaded with meaning.

How does one stand up towards the darkness that seems to be everywhere in this world? The hate, the division, the cruelty and malice in the human heart? How do we stop the wars and the injustice?

"Let There Be Light"

I think perhaps this is the only prayer we in actuality need. It micromanages nothing, and yet changes everything. On every level, from the personal to the global.

So if one was to begin every day with the words: "Let There Be Light", uttered from the divine masculine energy of command and with a clear vision of such a world where there is light, you have changed a great many things.

It strips the darkness of its power.

Personally, I would finish the decree with another. "Thank you for having heard me". It is gratitude, but it is also the assertion that I am heard and that my prayer must have effect because I am heard.

"Let There Be Light" works as a prayer because it micromanages nothing. It doesn't specify which darkness, which conflict, which personal struggle. It simply asserts the condition under which all of those things transform. It's operating at the level of the field rather than the level of the symptom. Which is both more humble and more ambitious than any specific petition could be.

The addition of "Thank you for having heard me" as the closing completes the circuit. Command opens it, gratitude closes it, and the closing is simultaneously an assertion that the opening was received. The prayer becomes a complete act rather than a transmission waiting for acknowledgment that may never come.