The Paradox of Prayer

Ok, Ok. I know that this can all sound a bit religious when I start talking about things like prayer. But if you bear with me you'll come to see that prayer really has nothing to do with organised religion, or supplications  of unworthiness before a distant God who hands out favours at whim. Indeed, real prayer is the opposite of these things. So please indulge me for a moment and forget everything you may have learnt about praying from some sick idolatrous religion.

What is Prayer?

Prayer is communion with Grace, much the same as meditation, contemplation of the divine, self inqiry, sacred dance, intentional chanting and a dozen other forms of spiritual practice. Prayer can take a great many forms, but what tends to distuinguish it from other practices is that it usually takes the form of a 'conversation' with whatever the person recognises or conceptualises as the divine. Many people view prayer as asking for some sort of favour from God. A situation in which the little powerless human being begs the big powerful deity for some sort of intercession in their life. If this were true, you could imagine that the big G would be pretty busy attending to the needs of billions upon billions of lifeforms.

Such prayers seem to go unanswered, because the basic premise of them is flawed. For Grace to intercede in our creation of our lives would be a fundamental denial of who we are, an affirmation that what we are is something less than an expression of the divine creative life force. If such prayers were to be answered, it would give valididty to our concept of ourselves as small, powerless and dependent. Grace will never affirm such a misconception, will never support such an insanity. The purpose of grace is to bring us back to awareness of the truth of who we are, to help us beyond this injured identity and rediscover our divine self. A loving God would no more seek to make his/her children dependent and powerless than a loving human would.

True prayers never go unanswered, because they occur in recognition of our right relationship to Grace. This is the recognition that we are not separate to the divine in any way. A real prayer begins with the recognition that we are believing something that is causing us suffering. Perhaps we have projected our power onto something seemingly outside of ourselves, or become trapped in an illusion of separation, grievance and powerlessness. Whatever the reason, the form of a real prayer is deceptively simple. We are asking grace to restore us to right perception, to help us clear our minds of the illusions that are causing us to suffer.

There are many ways to ask this question. Some of my favourites are "please help me see with the eyes of God", or "What would love do in this situation" or "Show me the errors in my minds viewing of this situation" or "Help me to see what is for my highest good in this situation". Prayer doesn't always have to be in response to suffering either. As people develop their relationship with grace many simply make it a daily practice to pray. This can look like "show me how to live this day in peace" or "help me to find grace in each moment" or "show me how I might live my day closer to love". Answering these questions are the function, the very purpose of grace. Grace is the gift that helps us to find the truth and recover from the ilusions of sinfulness and powerlessness and prayer is one of the most powerful ways that we can connect with grace.

As much as a loving and responsible parent would not encourage dependence in their children, nor would they turn a deaf ear or fail to offer appropriate assistance. The paradox of prayer is that all prayers are answered by grace, it just may not look like we think it should. In the movie Evan Almighty, one of the main characters prays to God for a more loving, closer family life. After all hell breaks loose, threatening to disrupt their family life altogether, she unknowingly encounters God (as played by Morgan Freeman) in a roadside diner. He challenges her with the proposition that if you were to pray for a closer family do you think God would send you warm fuzzy feelings, or the opportunity to create closeness through offering love and support in difficult times. It's not often that I look to hollywood for spiritual wisdom, but this seems to me a perfect example of the way irresponsible prayers are answered.

When we pray we are engaging in a partnership with grace, not giving our power to it. Attempts to give away responsibility for our life usually result in situations that provide us with the opportunity to reclaim that responsibility. Grace partners us by giving us the opportunity to grow, heal and rediscover the reality of our divine self. If it were to do these things for us it would be a partner in our disempowerment. Graces ultimate answer will always be this, that you are whole, complete and powerful. That you have always been whole, it is only in your mind, and the illusory reality you create with your mind, that these dark dreams of brokenness can exist. They are but shadows that never affect the true reality, the reality of love. However, until we are ready to hear this answer, grace will always allow us the opportunity to experience our delusions, and offer us the opportunity to give them up. The choice, as always, is ours. Free will, it's a bitch.

Prayer isn't hard to do. It requires no rituals, no incense, no special words or scented oils or fancy buildings. In fact, Jesus instructed his disciples that "they would be better to pray in a closet than in a church". It requires nothing except a sincere willingness to let grace show us the truth. But don't take my word for it, give it a go.

together we rise