Many of people have commented that it seems that sending a few prayers is just a drop in the bucket of need for the victims of a tsunami, hurricane or an earthquake. Those of us who study Edgar Cayce noted how frequently he spoke about the value of prayer.

Perhaps understanding how prayer works would help all of us to see the importance of our prayers. When a disaster of great magnitude occurs, there is a wave of grief, horror, fear, anger, bewilderment, and shaken faith that sweeps the whole planet. In the ether, this wave looks like black soot. It adds to the soot that is already there, but it is such a huge volume of new sooty blackness that we can feel the difference. We feel bad, achy, irritable, sad, and prone to tears and have queasy stomachs.

Prayer is the one spiritual tool that works in the ether. Prayer cleans up this sooty blackness, transmuting it into pure light. Prayer that comes from our hearts and is sent to all of those who are grieving, injured, afraid, confused and alone helps to clear them so that they can think more clearly. Prayer cleans the blackness of hurt and replaces it with seeds of hope and energy. Prayer is the energy that people need to get up another day and face a shattered life. That is what we can give to a person we don't know and to a place we haven't been. Prayer opens the way to cleaning up the physical mess the on-scene people feel and see.

Prayer helps us to heal ourselves. As we grieve for others, we are often grieving for things that we have lost as well. When we pray, we open ourselves up to pure light and goodness. We may not realize it, but we fill ourselves up with this light so that we can send it to other people. This serves two purposes: we are healed and we are helping other people to heal.

Karma is always efficient and any natural disaster is a karmic opportunity to rise above our own problems. It allows us to focus on giving to others what we would want the most for ourselves: the energy and the courage to go on another day, to bury our dead friends and family members and to rebuild our shattered lives.

Prayer that is part of our daily practice helps us to heal every single cell in our body because we are filling all of those cells with light so that it can be sent out to others. If we can remember to brush our teeth every day, we can remember to take our physical vitamins and our spiritual vitamin—prayer.

What kinds of prayers are best? Christ was once asked about what was the best prayer and His answer was eloquent in its simplicity: the prayer that springs naturally from your heart, the one that you feel deep within you, the one that is the easiest for you to use to communicate with God.

When you build a spiritual practice of prayer, you know that every day you are of service to others and you can feel whole in your heart because you are continuously connecting to God.

The people who will be receiving your prayers will not know you personally, but they will be grateful to you spiritually. Love and gratitude begin to clean the darkness so that life can continue.

So, each disaster is also an opportunity if we choose to view it as such, to don our spiritual aprons and become spiritual cleaning folk, cleaning the darkness and affording aid and comfort. Think how powerful our service of prayer can be in any situation!

A.R.E. note: You can join our worldwide prayer group at WorldPrayerGroup.org.