There was a point in my lifetime where prayer had become distasteful. I was turned off by the idea of myself and others begging God to do something about the mundane. “Oh God, help the Redskins win this game and I’ll never be bad again.” And what about the Giants fans who are pleading for their team to win. Which team does God help? The one who has the most prayers said on its behalf? C’mon, listen up. Is God a football fan? I don’t think so. Pleading is not praying.
Another aspect that turned me sour on the concept of prayer had to do with people praying for others without their permission. “Dear God, make my son stop seeing that awful girl.” Is that God’s job, really? What of personal space, freedom, and self responsibility? It became personal when I chose to study a spiritual teaching other than the one I grew up with. Family members began to pray for their prodigal daughter, me, to return to their church of choice. I was horrified. Is it right to plead with God to make someone do something that you think is in their best interests? Again, what of personal choice?
Later in life, I got over my general prissiness about prayer when I realized how much I actually loved the idea of prayer. I am deeply touched, for example, whenever I see a family take the time in a restaurant to bow their heads in thanksgiving. They are doing it in a public place whether anyone else thinks it to be cool or not. I think it is very cool. There is nothing so beautiful as a man, woman or child communing with God.
Here’s another thing that touches me deeply: When you pray to God, you are not a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a B’hai or an ECKist; you are not of any one religion. You are simply you, a child of God, the same as everyone else. God is, the same God no matter what belief system you choose to follow.
What form should prayer take? Whatever form you want it to take. Perhaps the greatest prayer is: Thy will be done. (See www.jeleonard.com for a dream lesson about God’s will.) Or maybe the greatest form of prayer is the repetition of one of the many names of God: Allah, HU, Bhagwan, Jehovah, I AM THAT I AM, and on and on. Perhaps we are praying any time we remember God.
Author Paul Twitchell spoke of praying, not in words, but by impressions.* He was in the throws of a God experience when it occurred, a place where language no longer existed as we know it. I’ve experimented with praying with impressions; looking perhaps for a reverse route to God. It’s hard; words keep creeping in. But here and there, in a few brief moments, I felt it, that wordless state, when a spiritual power coursed through my limbs. Love was abundant. I felt expanded.
How to you pray?
In gratitude,
P.S. Please share your journey by writing to me on my web site at www.jeleonard.com
* The Tiger’s Fang (ECKANKAR 1963, 2003)
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Quote of the moment:
and think you are praying.
That’s parrot’s work.
If a cat comes, what does a parrot say?
“Help! A cat approaches?” No,
it will squawk and screech, completely
forgetting its prayer-performance!
Yearning for God in every thought,
directing every breath toward the One,
intending no harm,
that is prayer.1
1. Early version of the written Quran c. Eighth-Ninth Century as it appears in
Coleman Barks and Michael Green, The Illuminated Prayer (Ballantine Wellspring 2000)
#1 by admin on January 3, 2010 - 11:59 pm
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Thank you, Peter, for taking the time to read my blog and to share your experience with me and my readers.
Jo
#2 by Peter on January 3, 2010 - 11:09 pm
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How do we pray? Once, when I was in a state of intense spiritual desire, I asked this same question of a friend. My own tools didn’t seem to be working–I felt I was missing some key ingredient.
The question took my friend aback, and she demured from answering. I’m sure in time she forgot. But I never did. Just today, as I was sending a New Year’s greeting card to her and her husband, I recalled my unanswered question of five or more years ago.
And it’s just occurred to me that, in a strange way, _that question_ was itself a kind of prayer. It was itself the answer I was looking for.
I think the key ingredient was the sincerity with which I asked it: the willingness to listen, the recognition that I didn’t know the answer, and the earnestness to find some means to bring me a step closer to God.
And the trust I felt in my friend.
Now, if I’d just approached my spiritual exercises and the Inner Master in the way I approached my friend…then there’d have been no problem. And so that’s what my walk is these days: learning to be a friend to that Presence within.
Thinking of my spiritual practice as a discipline, as something I ‘should’ do, didn’t help me do it with the heart state needed to open the inner door. So now I just try to make a date with The Friend/The Beloved; I recognize the ways in which I was touched by love during my day; I let gratitude gently uncoil my heart; I listen; and then I let the love billow through me.