To Whom Do You Pray....

Joshua Eric Bryel

This question is more important than most think. The answer will colour all your experience. Those who answer that they do not pray are mistaken, for they do not realize what prayer is and the extent and power of it has in their lives.
Classically, prayer is, in essence, an act of communication. One communicates one’s desires to, presumably, some source deity who has power over his life or pow er to help him. Prayer is also an act of com munion with the source for expression of gratitude and reverence, deemed neces sary or recommended by the source, and for the reception of guidance or other sorts of upliftment and inspiration.
Continuing to define prayer by asso ciated meanings, the word “communi cate” means to connect, to join, in effect to become one. In prayer, there is always a desire to be aligned with the source to which we pray. To align with one’s deity is deemed ultimately desirable, if not im mediately beneficial. In this age of spir itual renewal, we are constantly work ing to align and attune ourselves with an ideal or an energy or some sort of great spirit that will bless our lives, and which many consider to be our true self.
Yet without realizing the real nature and extent of the act of prayer, many of us are sabotaging just that goal.
In the many books and workshops available on spiritual practices and tech niques, prayer is often highly recom mended. There are many related prac tices that are defined as forms of prayer such as dancing, drumming, singing artworks, rituals, even writing a prayer on a piece of paper or cloth and hanging it in the breeze. There is also a practice described involving what is called “con stant prayer”, which sounds like quite challenge considering the requirements of everyday life. Yet it is precisely this form of prayer that is the subject of this article. Whether you realize it or not, you are in constant prayer.
As I said above, prayer is essentially communication, and in this soup of con sciousness we live in, our every thought
communicates to everyone and everything around us. It communicates our beliefs and desires and fears and loves and hates Nothing is private and nothing is hidden It is widely accepted in our age of renewal that the state of consciousness affects every element of life. Yet more to my point is the fact that just whom we are trying to communicate our desires to, con sciously or unconsciously, moment by mo ment, is not fully realized.
What I am getting at is the fact that whenever you try to please someone, and are for some ego-based reason not being true to yourself, you are literally pray ing to them, attuning to them, and try ing to become like them in order to please them and get their blessing – or at least be left in relative peace. The moment to moment content of our minds and hearts and the acts that result, are this prayer It never ends. What we are is a constant song of prayer, alignment and attune ment to someone, and usually it is to someone who can neither hear nor help
Why do people neglect this true source within? Because of the persisting idea of there being powers outside of them One has to decide that false is false and that there is no separation: that all pow er is united within, and all that appears around one is an extension of one’s be ing. We have held back out of fear. The idea of guilt and self-denial is founded on this fear, and the source of fear is the idea of separation, of some other power being able to affect us in a way we don’ prefer. Yet if you decide your conscious ness is the source and generator of your existence, and that your aligned con sciousness is the divine source, you will know you have all the power that can ever affect your experience.
Involved in the confusion are the il logic and conflicts of our egos, all based on the idea of separation. If attunement means oneness with the source, we can say that prayer is an act of becoming one Then why do we pray to those we stead fastly hold separate from us?
We pray for approval, for validation for permission, for forgiveness — all from outside “sources” that have no real pow er over us or to help.
Prayer must recognize oneness as fact, for to perceive separation is to cre ate it, and power to create is always pro jected in the idea of separation. Teach ings such as “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven within” speak to us of the source being the divine light of our own true self Attunement to our limitless inner truth cannot but bring us all the happiness for which we have been praying.
“To thine own self be true, for it must follow as the night the day that thou can’st not then be false to any man.” The ulti mate of prayer is, therefore, the recogni tion of our oneness with divine will and with all love and power, and via this route with all those we perceived as separate.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’ be a victim and a master – and you can’ be a victim at all. This is the key to free dom through constant aligned prayer.