Hopeful Thinking - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - What Is Prayer, Anyway?

    Why are we encouraged to pray? I know why religion says we should do it, but what’s the deeper reason? The reason that informs the doctrine. What’s the reason underneath religion’s advice? What is the intrinsic human need, or capacity, being addressed here?

    Not long ago I saw someone requesting prayer on social media for the victims of a recent tragedy. I see it often of course, especially lately. But on this one occasion, several people reacted angrily. They said prayer doesn’t help, God doesn’t exist, if prayer worked so well we wouldn’t need it now, etc. I understand where they’re coming from. Prayer often feels like talking to a wall. And it’s easy to blame God, or claim It doesn’t exist, because why would a so-called loving God allow for harm or illness or tragedy in the first place? Suffering is viewed as proof that God either doesn’t care or doesn’t exist.

    It’s worth noting that some of us have a very hard time with the loaded word, prayer. For some it has deep connections with an abusive experience of religion. Of being coerced into performing a religious act with which we have no understanding or connection. Or with the apparent futility of ritualized prayer we have struggled to memorize. Some are reminded of their anger with God for ignoring them. They have been led to conclude by the culture of praying itself that they didn’t believe hard enough. That they’ve failed. It’s implied that it is their own fault their prayers weren’t answered.

    A famous quote from scripture is “Ask and you shall receive.” But on what levels of our consciousness are we asking and receiving? I would think all of them. If scripture is hinting at a truth here, what is it? It can’t be as cut and dry as ‘ask and you shall receive’ or else I’d be a millionaire right now and my best friend would still be alive. Am I a failure at prayer?

    That’s where the flaw in the thinking comes. It must be that prayer doesn't work like that. We must be thinking of it too literally. Or following advice about it which is now outdated.

    In the metaphysical world the act of prayer is described through the philosophy of the law of attraction. Simply put, we tend to attract what we are putting out. It has a fairly logical ring to it. Scripture might look at this also as ‘you reap what you sow.’ Business would say ‘you get out of it what you put into it.’ Essentially, the mindset we maintain informs the view of our surroundings as well as what comes to us. Or what we allow to come to us.

    What happens when you decide something? When you decide you are going to have a job that makes you happy, or when you decide to get out of debt. What happens? I do not despair at the seed below the surface simply because I cannot yet see a green shoot. Still, I water. I do not give up. We spend so much time in a state of lacking confidence that we don’t even realize how often we sabotage our desires by giving up on them too soon. In my experience, when I’ve made a definitive decision about something and remain steadfast, I begin to notice slight changes in not only my attitude, but the attitudes of the people around me. I notice little coincidences and synergies that appear to align with the decision I’ve made.

Is this the act and answering of prayer? Perhaps.

Prayer may have nothing to do in particular with the existence of a deity. It may be that the belief in a deity gets us out of the way of our own self-doubt because we don’t realize how powerful and magnificent we have been created to be. We give credit to “something higher” than we are. As part of a learning curve, that’s fine. But we are sophisticated enough to realize now that we are a part of the great “I Am.” Not separate from It. As such, we should frame our desires accordingly. And believe one thing, if nothing else: We have been created to thrive, and given the power to accomplish it.