As a medical scientist, Larry Dossey, M.D., feels that not praying for his patients is withholding necessary treatment. He does not, however, offer his thoughts and prayers to an old long-haired white Anglo Saxon male god. He decided that meditation wasn't the answer either, so he created his own rituals that matched his beliefs. He believes he gets results.
Dr. Dossey co-chairs a panel for the National Institute of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine, and has just finished another book, Healing Words: The Practice of Medicine and the Power of Prayer. He gave up private practice about six years ago to write and lecture, and draws upon his experiences in research, healing, prayer and medicine in his efforts to help make medicine more effective and humane.
Research exploring the benefits of prayer, Dossey explains, involves tests with living matter as simple as molds and bacteria, and varies between specific or directed prayers and nondirected, open-ended prayer. Surprisingly, nondirected prayer, asking that "Thy will be done," proved to be about twice as effective as directed prayer. Dossey regards this information as a secret kept by the medical profession and considers its use as far more important than new drugs or procedures. In medical cases where prayer is not shown by Dr. Dossey to be particularly beneficial, he does believe it makes a difference because he feels more connected to the people he serves.
The more radical part of Larry Dossey amasses ignored and forgotten evidence of the relationship between spirituality and healing. He cites hundreds of reports of miraculous cures and spontaneous remissions that conventional medicine cannot explain. Dossey views these phenomena as evidence of a soul-like dimension of human experience that can result in miraculous or radical healings. He says that "healing need not be confined to or defined by what happens to our body, that the death of our physical body isn't a tragic failure of medicine to do its job, and that even if prayer or attempts at self-transformation fail in the course of illness, there is still a sense in which a cure can always occur."
He explains that "Our thoughts, our minds, our consciousness is considered purely physical in origin by Western medicine. What I'm talking about is something much more marvelous. It's the realization that physical illness, no matter how painful or grotesque, is at some level of secondary importance in the total scheme of our existence. Our authentic, higher self is utterly beyond the ravages of disease and death."
Dossey refers to our soul as our essense, our source of vitality, the rock that most religions build their theologies on, but declares that the soul is the nonlocal part of our psyche. Using terms borrowed from quantum physics, Dossey says the soul is "unbounded, omnipresent in space, infinite in time, and therefore eternal, immortal, and one with other souls." This may not be news to most of us, but it gives me hope to know it comes from the heart of an M.D. who further envisions a day when prayer studies are part of medical school curriculums, and physicians prescribe prayer as well as pills.
So who do we pray to, and to what end? We are improved and expanded by thought and effort to be the highest and best we know to be. We lift ourselves when we visualize our psyche/souls as infinite and eternal. We may simply whisper our most holy desires, or seek for new expressions that magnify the wisdom, love and power of our creation and continued existence. There need be no rules in regard to prayer. Whoever creates a new prayer every day strengthens the ability of the soul to perceive light.
As Dr. Dossey points out from his research, prayers for the will of God to be done seem to be most potent. The research appears to involve prayer for others more than prayer for ourselves, but finding the courage to pray alone and aloud can often make a difference in our sense of connectedness to Earth, Life, the Cosmos, God, ourselves, the Great Spirit, our family, anything and everything we love. If enlightenment is following the all highest light we already have, then Heaven is merely a thought away. If we would purify our bodies and our thoughts, and do good to others with all our wisdom, love and strength, how can we not realize that we already live in Heaven?