Time To Get Busy Living The following is an exercise that may help someone with anxieties or other challenges in life. Some Particular Qualities 1. Praying straight through with a determination not to repeat the same issue or pattern prayed for over and over again. In this way the prayer "covers more ground". One of the points is to be able to lay each thing 'to rest' after the prayer about the topic has been stated. The 'determination not to repeat the same issue or pattern...' the topics inside of the particular 'prayerful monologue' session. The point here is not to be repeatedly praying the same thing. 2. Topics of the prayer may be diverse and it is not necessary each topic be associated with one another. Ultimately each topic has something to do with one-another -- that is, each topic and its prayer is being sourced from within the same person! Having the topics of the prayer be open throughout lets the prayerful monologue continue longer, topic-to-topic, in the strongest and steadiest course. 3. Pray all of the way through each topic you take as the prayer's current 'interest' (or hate or dislike or what not) without letting the topic fade away until you have a complete message. For example if the prayerful monologue's topic reaches the point of "I would like a house.." then speak through within yourself all of the qualities of that house. In a prayer topic for a home someone may say, "I would like a house.. on a suburb just on the outskirts of town.. peaceful and clean environment.. with friendly neighbors who keep their lawns.. where my wife will be happy.. the house may be painted.. creamy white.. tans.. and dark accents.. it should have gutters along the roof.. and a big tree in the backyard.. and the backyard should be.. at least a one-sixth of an acre.. and the house should have three bedrooms and two and a half baths.. one bedroom for myself.. another for guests.. the third bedroom will be my home office.. " It is also possible there will seem to be a drought of things to pray for. If the desire is to really continue with the prayer for the sake of how it helps clear the mind, pick something you know about and tell about it as if you were teaching another person who was very patient or very interested in hearing what you have to say. For example when my prayer began to droop in terms of qualities, I decided to imagine it was somehow time to tell someone about what I know about an ancient mythological place called Elysium, whereupon, I got to pray to myself about the beauty of Elysium, that it is considered a Heaven for soldiers and warriors in the old pagan days, and went on to describe the things that make Elysium saying, "The heaven of Elysium was represented as a beautiful, expansive outdoors space. A verdant green valley with green grasses, flowering plants and great trees. Streams of crystal clear, flowing water over beds of smooth stones abundantly present. The sky a rich blue color with gorgeous white clouds. Fauna such as doe-tailed deer and fluffy squirrels populating the lush outdoors scene, with tall grasses gently waving in the breeze. Elegantly chirping birdsong complimenting the relaxing atmosphere of the valley." The above is something I wrote after the prayer session; so grammatically it is a bit better than when I actually made the blazes speaking the prayer. A videogame fan may go through a topic, choosing to describe everything about a certain videogame. A fast food worker may decide to speak through all of the things about their job, the kitchen at their job, the tools and how each is used, what the hamburgers ingredients are, and so on, until reaching a point where a new topic of interest is arrived at. A straightforward praying for every one of your loved ones and each thing you care about makes for a good 'topic of interest'. The goal is to get a long run of swift, well-formed words, flowing as well as possible from statement-to-statement and topic-to-topic. 4. Every moment of your prayer does not have to be stated with perfect English (or other language), as if you were reading it from a book, but if you know you can make better, more clear, higher-quality statements with a little bit more energy, go ahead. Its stuff that is going to be in your brain, so it will be better if it is of the highest quality you can provide by your own spirit! Concluding Remarks A really great long prayer that follows the guidelines presented above can change the course of your whole week. Its a way to gain some peace of mind; for someone with a lot of anxieties, it is a way to literally gain a "piece of mind"! A prayer such as this helps to relieve anxieties that take place in other parts of the day. And creates a greater sense of knowingness and peace that helps with "staying on top of things" and remaining present and alive moment-to-moment throughout the day. The long internal prayerful monologue described here may go on for a whole hour, or two hours, going from topic-to-topic. If the prayer activity gets boring and you want to get more out of it, go faster, that is, pray the words faster without losing yourself in gibberish or becoming very lazy in your phrasing. Keep a positive outlook in the prayer. If in your internal prayerful monologue there is really a negative thing that seems to be totally blocking you from thinking straight, take that thing as a topic of interest and just say everything you can that is straight-up going to resolve the problem, or straight-up positively talk through the topic by listing the available solutions. Apply the general principle that the internal prayerful monologue is not about precisely resolving anything about the topics of interest. This will prevent any negative topic that is hard to beat from taking charge. The long, swift prayer is about covering a lot of ground and building a good carpet to lay over the sometimes-a-disordered-furnace of the brain. The prayerful internal monologue is about creating a 'light' (of words in this case) in your mental spaces. The approach helps to limber up the brain, get the mind away from anxious, disordered or repetitive thoughts (no matter how 'true' the undesirably repeating thoughts are), and help you 'look up' from the same-old, same-old, and gain new perspectives that may provide solutions to otherwise hard to solve problem and situations. Advancing this approach is to have a focus on keeping a pattern of healthy, full breaths and staying physically relaxed throughout the body without losing your natural upright posture. Laying flat on the back while doing this exercise is also very good. Finally, I will point out that there is a little bit a feeling of irony in that if you are someone who already has a lot of words sloshing around the head, i.e. "someone who thinks too much", a well-performed internal prayerful monologue may create a good barrier that helps the mind separate word-think from the rest of what life is.