Recently someone asked me what might be the most important question of all. I no longer think much about prayer for reasons that will become clear to you below, but Denise’s question wonderfully captures the conundrum that many sincere people face:
“Angels, spirit guides, dead loved ones, God. If we need help, to whom do we pray? Sometimes I think God is pretty busy and maybe I shouldn’t bother him but I worry if I don’t do it right, it won’t work out. Frankly, most of my praying is begging which I know is the wrong way.”
We are taught to think of God as a religious figure, and of prayer as a religious act; and since religious are fear-based superstitions, we tend to fret that we might do it wrong. We don’t want to use incorrect words, to irritate or harass a busy God, or even to offend some spirit we should be praying to instead of directly to God. And if we do it wrong, what might happen to us then?
Before we can begin to talk about prayer, we first must set the stage. Just what is God, anyway? And what is prayer?
God is all that exists. We know now based upon abundant evidence that the only thing that exists is an infinitely powerful energy-like potentiality without size or form, alive in the sense that your mind is alive, intensely loving and therefore probably self-aware. That is what God is! And nothing whatsoever except God exists. Everything else that we think of as real is an illusion being continuously manifested by God, and that includes space and time. So God is eternal, by definition. And fortunately, each human mind is part of God, so our minds are also real and eternal (Whew!).
God acts in our lives through God’s minions. Each of us has one or several spirit guides who also are part of God, and we each have at least one guardian angel. Every person you see is a walking crowd! We are told that God never takes human form. As best I have been able to determine, God acts in our lives through guides and angels and through direct contact with our minds.
Then, what is prayer? In a very basic way, our contacts with God and with God’s minions are not supplications and thanks offered from outside of God, but rather they are communications that originate from within the very Mind of God.
What does all of this suggest about how we should be praying? Here are my thoughts:
- Every prayer is an internal conversation. It is time for us to get past the thought that God is in any sense outside us.
- We probably pray to God and to God’s minions simultaneously. I have
seen communications from spirit guides that suggest that they won’t “eavesdrop” if we want to talk to God alone, but the evidence is strong that they are aware of our prayers in the same way that they are aware of our thoughts. It’s their job!
- Rote prayers are not the most effective prayers. This is true for several reasons. First, if we are saying a memorized prayer we tend not to give it the same level of attention. And a rote prayer is unlikely to contain precisely the things that we are trying to say. Then too, nearly all religious prayers are directed to an external God, which is something that we know now does not exist. I still pray the Lord’s Prayer daily, but I don’t think of that recitation as more than a nod to the religion that I still love.
- Asking for things will make it harder for us to have them. Our minds are powerfully part of the Mind of God, continuously co-creating all that we see around us, to the point where our saying “Please make my child get well” may actually be a way to create illness in the child. Instead of claiming the lack, claim the gift! And since gratitude seems to supercharge our prayers, the most effective prayers are likely to be gratitude affirmations. Pray “Thank You for making my child healthy and happy!” Then go about your life with the certainty that your mind is assisting in bringing that gift into being.
- What will happen will be what is in your best interest and in the best
interest of others. Remember that all of us are living wonderfully complex eternal lives! From our very limited perspective here, it is impossible for us to know what is best. For example, we are told that every child who dies is an advanced being who didn’t need to live a whole lifetime, but whose brief life and death are meant as a gift to you in order to assist you in your spiritual growth. That being so, then even the child’s death can be seen as God’s loving answer to your prayer.
My own belief is that the best way to pray is by living with an open prayer-line. When I first realized that my mind is entirely open to God and to God’s minions, I kind of shrugged and resolved to live in prayer, since in effect I was doing that anyway. It feels to me now as if the top of my head is always open, day and night, and a beam of light is constantly beaming upward while a cascade of love is pouring in. I’ll admit that when I first deliberately opened my mind to God to this extent I was actively policing my every thought, but I don’t feel the need to do that now. God knows me thoroughly and loves me as I am, with every failing and every flaw. I pray to God every day the same gratitude affirmations, saying “Thank You for giving me work to do. Thank You for showing me how to do it.” I might chatter to my primary guide, but for the most part I simply feel his presence. Whenever something comes up, I assume God’s help in bringing God’s Own will into being, so I never feel the need to ask for an outcome. And a wonderful benefit to continuous prayer is the fact that when your mind is always open to God and to your guides in such a literal way, you feel so much more connected with them! You feel loved and accepted and empowered in ways that I never could have imagined before.
You are God’s best-beloved child. So long as you always keep that fact in mind, whatever prayer method seems best for you will be right!