Mitra Rahbar - Miraculous Silence: A Journey to Illumination and Healing Through Prayer

We were all the children of God. The seed of my soul had awakened to this knowledge that our Eternal Parent is the sacred thread that weaves us all together in this tapestry of life. As a young child, this understanding, coupled with my outgoing personality, led me to embrace everyone with a smile and a hug. I felt a knowing comfort in this connection. Strangers at first appeared to hesitate when I would smile at them, but in a matter of moments, each heart would melt at the sight of a young child who would not stop smiling. In a split second, my smile would be reciprocated! As a teenager, I found myself in a new countrydue to political unrest in my homelandfar removed from all I knew, loved, and understood.

The trials of immigration, loss of loved ones, financial struggles, and my deep longing for my beloved homeland and family were depleting the reserves of my young life. With the passage of time, my inner baggage was getting heavier. I found refuge in prayer circles comprised of women only. There, in the hours of chanting, and amidst the cries of my many sisters, I would lose myself in the infinite love of the Divine. As a young woman, pregnant tears would burst fervently upon my face, awakening a deep longing that would call to me. The prayers and chants were a much needed quiet for my yearning soul, but deep in my core, I knew that soon I would be unable to withstand the weight of the heavy baggage that remained with me.

The suicide of a dear friend led me to the altar of a sacred sanctuary one afternoon in the midst of winter. My body could not contain my disbelief and shock. I swayed with this grief for countless minutes. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my head. I heard a voice as I lifted my eyes. You have cried enough.

God has heard you, said an elderly man with a captivating presence. Get up, he said. I got up, in a haze, taken by his commanding demeanor and gentle voice. In the months that followed, the whimper of my soul was slowly becoming a cry, screaming, Look at me, look at me. A choice was upon me: to look or to ignore. The words of the old man kept ringing in my ears.

Until that moment, I had understood prayer as going to a place of worship or just talking to God and allowing my soul to be dissolved in the Infinite. But this stranger had proposed a new thought to me: God had heard me. I had been heard. These four words opened the pathways of my mind to a deeper understanding of prayer and my connection to God. They implied that I could have a conversation with God, that He was within my reach, not somewhere far, but here with me. With that, I decided. I looked.

I devoted myself to creating sacred space each day and laid my tired body at the gates of Gods love. I chanted, meditated, visualized, used stones, prayed... and prayed. In those years, in the midst of my inner chaos, I chose to delve deeper into my soul, peeling aside the layers of pain, one by one, to create healing. Like a soldier on a mission, I devoted my life to this. I would sit with God, talk with God, and rest with God.

As I slowly unraveled, I could see a radiant light at my coreone that was fearless, with beautiful brilliance, as designed by the Beloved. The prayers had taken me to the seed of my soul, beyond the chatter and clutter. I could barely contain myself as my tears would birth a joy and love so profound upon my chest and being. In this silence, I had found the most precious and treasured gift of all: God and me. When friends would invite me out, I would leave early, thinking, I have a date with God! Sitting in prayer was the best part of my day... and of me. He was always waiting, and I was always yearning.

For my entire life up to that point, I had been swimming against the tides of my culture, my peers, my friends, and my age. This had created some inner conflict and discomfort in me, although I had always followed my truth and heard my voice clearly. As I emerged, so did another truth: I realized that the tides were my tides, and I was following my own current; I embraced being different and choosing differently. In this acceptance and honoring of the self, I broke through the walls of judgment, guilt, and self-pity and found a new freedom of self and life. I surrendered to the divine design of the Universe and all its splendor. In over three decades of work, I have seen the yearning and emptiness we can all experience.