Study: Prayer does not work

[JOE]

That Was Meant To Say Without Emotional Attachment

[zpivat]

Call me old fashioned, but I do believe in prayers and miracles!
When my dad was very young, he was involved in a very severe motorcycle accident, and was comatose for about a month. His left arm was also severely injured, and the nerves in it got severely wrecked. It started to get deformed, and he could not move it at all. The doctors did their best to restore the form of the arm, but they could only do so much (and by the way, he still could not even move it at all due to the damaged nerves).

After a few years, he decided to go to France and pray at the shrine of Lourdes (we're Catholics). He did it over the span of 3 days, and guess what, shortly thereafter (within a couple of days), he started to be able to move the left arm, and since then its shape had got better over time.

There you go........

[Megan]

If that's a placebo effect, I say bring on the placebos, zpivat!

Praise placebo!

A rose by any other name smells as sweet.

[Megan]

By JOE, Yesterday 08:44 AM

But it would take a better person than I, to be able to concentrate on such matters without at least some emotional attachment...........but I take your [Dorothy's] point.

I don't think it's a matter of "concentrating" or of being "better" in the least.

It's just a matter of noticing your attachments as they come up and letting them just be.

Don't judge your judgments, IOW, as this just adds layers of complexity, I think.

Also, notice that the things we judge outside of us are mirroring things inside us, so that accepting ourselves is not something different from accepting others, at the deepest level.

When you can own that the polarity is inside, rather than projecting it outward, all you have to do is sit with the feeling until it resolves. [Disclaimer: this doesn't mean you should live with someone who is beating you up--but you can continue to work on the issue from a safe distance!]

It can help to put your attention simultaneously on your physical heart, on "God" or something positive, but if you just have a mustard seed of faith that the Universe is friendly, just sitting and breathing with the uncomfortable feeling inside without judgment or trying to change it will eventually cause it to resolve.

I believe this is a deep alchemical/spiritual process that affects collective reality.

There are endless layers of things that need healing: this is a lifelong process.

I hope your "circumstances" are resolving nicely.

[spirited]

Thanks for all your replies to my question. In summary, your arguments seem to be:

• The wording of the prayers was wrong: never ever focus on what you do NOT want.
• Praying for strangers does not work as well because we do not really, truly feel the intention to heal them.
• The study does not take into account the intentions of the patients themselves.

And that does make sense.

[MartialDev]

They measured the wrong end.

[munish]

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[nantucketsunset]

Larry Dossey MD has written some interesting books about the study of the effectiveness of prayer and mental intentions. He's very open-minded, though a traditional, Harvard-trained physician.

I think it's totally worthwhile to study prayer and mental intentions scientifically, though like many things in life they are complicated phenomena and difficult to isolate for the purposes of an experiment.

The Princeton engineering lab's studies of random-number-generating machines being affected by human mental intentions towards them and the studies of petri dishes of bacteria being affected by distant prayers by strangers are quite interesting because they were done on non-human, easily-measurable entities.

[asrai]

This is an idea i'm Rehashing that I've heard Wayne Dyer speak of.

Most people pray like God is a with-holding God. That we need to ask HIM for something and only He can give it to us if he decides we are deserving. Thus we don't beleive we (or anyone else) is deserving until God decides whether or not.

I wish I could recall exactly as he says it becuase it's really good. And in the same vein there is this article I came across: Joe Vitale Is "Mr. Fire" for Copywriting, Promotion, and Marketing Consulting

Joe Vitale speaks of the World's Most Unusual Therapist. Who healed people by orking on their issues within himself.

[Megan]

Good stuff, asrai! I think this goes along with Gregg Braden's Isaiah Effect ideas, too.

And about Dr. Len, The World's Most Unusual Therapist, I think he's tapped into the real alchemy!

MindReality started a thread on him:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/p...therapist.html

[megaplex]

Originally Posted by spirited

I am sure most of you will have heared of this study: Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer
How do IM believers explain those results?

Co-creators would not pray like this.
They would not think like this.
They would not talk like this.

Co-creators work only with isness.

M

[dor]

Originally Posted by Megan

Good stuff, asrai! I think this goes along with Gregg Braden's Isaiah Effect ideas, too.

And about Dr. Len, The World's Most Unusual Therapist, I think he's tapped into the real alchemy!

MindReality started a thread on him:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/p...therapist.html

this looks very interesting..thanks (and thanks MindReality)

what is the 'isiah effect"/?

[megaplex]

try this audio the I love you from Joe Vitali based on DR Len.
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[Megan]

megaplex, I'm downloading the audio--thanks!

dor, I have all sorts of reservations about Gregg Braden, but I really like him at the same time.

He wrote a book called The Isaiah Effect, and frankly, I mostly don't believe his story, but I think he's right about aligning thoughts, feelings, and emotions being the basis of prayer, and that we can collectively change the direction we're heading.

He gives us hope that we can make an end-run around Armageddon, which is a shot in the arm for some of us raised on Bible religion.

I wouldn't say go buy the book necessarily--just sort of tuck the idea away--lots of different streams of thought are feeding into this idea of manifesting a new world by virtue of the way we hold our consciousness, and especially feeling.

I like EFT because it gives you a way to clear away energy patterns without really knowing how to work with energy very much.

I like Dr. Len because I think the essence of his outlook is very close to that of Christ, i.e., I think he's on to the real deep stuff.

But I haven't verified if he's really the real deal--haven't found much about him yet. I mean, if someone were really able to heal psychotic criminals, it seems like that would be big news!

But to paraphrase something said about Jesus,

"If Doctor Len doesn't exist, we shall have to invent him."