A Prayer for the Alleviation of Suffering
for those who cause unnecessary suffering
Written Mar 25 2026
The prayer I’m sharing with you came to me this morning in an emotional conversation with my ancestral guides.
It was actually written with the intention of being an alleviation of suffering prayer for those who are causing unnecessary suffering. My ancestors asked me to pray for those I find it most difficult to pray for. For the ICE agents, for the prison guards, for the soldiers, for the politicians waging war, for the technoligarchs, for those who poison and pillage the Earth, for those who move in destruction and greed.
A prayer for the alleviation of their suffering? It brought hot angry tears to my eyes. I said, “I don’t think I can do that….” but what I heard back was, “If not you, who will?”
So I did it. I faced the feelings and listened to what came through. And I wrote the full prayer. When I sat here, on my laptop typing it into Substack, I made a tiny-but-pivotal change. I changed the words from “their heart” to “the heart”, from “their soul” to “the soul”, from “their mind” to “the mind”.
I read the same prayer again and received it totally differently. Not as an angry-righteous-prayer for those other beings, those who I’m soooooo graciously allowing space in my heart.
No. I read it now as a prayer for my own pain, my own wounds, my own shadows.
What started out as a prayer for the most difficult to love is actually a prayer for all of us, a prayer for all of the most difficult-to-love-and-be-loved pieces that make us who we are.
What I pray for my own heart-body-mind, I pray for all heart-body-minds.
May these words stir something in you, whether you speak them to your own deepest, most shunned parts or whether you can extend them to the wider human community.
With love,
Lior
A Prayer for the Alleviation of Suffering
for Those Who Cause Unnecessary Suffering
May the dry, arid soil of the heart be returned to the fertile, wet grounds of love.
May all bitterness that has poisoned the soul be transformed into the sweet delight of being.
May all anger, rage, and hatred that darkens the mind be melted away into a sea of compassionate care.
May all broken aspects of self that believe they are beyond forgiveness see that there is nothing that can be done to disconnect the self from the love of God.
May all shame, guilt, self-hatred, and self-diminishment be released, returned to the Earth, composted, and returned back to us as seeds of self-love, self-confidence, and self-worth.
May all impulses of harm be replaced by the tender desire to responsibly care for one another.
May all nightmares of violence be replaced by dreams of abundance and peace.
May all who have been cast aside be woven back into the great circle of life and remember that they belong here and now, as one.
May all who have harmed be forgiven.
May all who will harm be forgiven.
May my heart be wide enough to refuse to cast anyone outside of the circle of life.
Amen
