The Power of Prayer
Prayer is an important tool for our spiritual and material evolution. The practice of prayer dates back to the first civilizations of the world, and all of these civilizations, especially the main ones, can be unified in the sense that they all directed their worship and prayer to the same star, the Sun. The Sun represented sustenance, support, life. Thanks to this evolution of these ancestors of ours, seeing the Sun as a symbol of deity helped us evolve our thinking, the idea of a creator God.
As our minds have evolved, we have evolved our understanding of what God is, our understanding of this first and great mystery. As we evolve, the mind prepares to understand more about God. God is also revealing himself to man. God has made a progressive revelation throughout all this time, and He can do it for you in your life, not only in the collective of humanity, as we have been recording. But God can reveal Himself to you directly and personally.
Because God is your Father. Because God lives in you. Returning to the topic of prayer. Prayer is a tool that helps us modulate ourselves and our thoughts. Praying is tuning into a greater power that creates us. And as we rise to seek the higher mentally, our thoughts become more refined, our mind begins to travel through spiritual currents. These are ascending currents that when we tune in spiritually, our mind can rise to the invisible spiritual current to attract energy, spiritual flow towards us.
It is better that our prayers are not only in the moment of a challenge or a difficulty. Our prayer practice is also to give thanks, to celebrate, to connect with our spirit.
To focus on our day to day, sometimes we have religious ideas of praying in the form of a monologue where we are speaking or repeating a prayer. And this can have a certain benefit, repeating prayers, little by little the subconscious picks up on some of this. But a more effective and direct way to connect with this power is to make it conscious. To be aware of what you are doing at that moment, which is praying.
It means that you are turning inward, searching within yourself for that power that life has given you and directing yourself not as a monologue, but as a dialogue. Opening yourself to answers.
Answers are not always going to come to you in large, clear letters. Sometimes they come to you unexpectedly, such as a change of attitude towards something that was bothering you. Suddenly you begin to realize that it no longer takes control of your mind, that you are letting go. That is an answer to your prayer.
Sometimes it can come through an amplified understanding of a situation. It can be instantaneous. Simply by exposing it, talking about it, and confessing it. God already begins to use all that material to show and reveal the answers. God works in your mind and your heart is everywhere, inside and out. And prayer gives us that medicine, it gives us that breath to the soul, a breath of your own essence that recharges.
Although we use words to navigate towards these divine directions. God is seeing your attitude, He is seeing your heart, your sincerity, your vibration. You cannot deceive energy. You can say very nice words and dress very nicely, but if your energetic attitude inside you is not congruent with that outside, the outside is of no use, ultimately, at least not for God who sees everything. It is everything.
There is a phrase by Meister Eckhart that says “Prayer is a golden ladder that reaches to heaven and is the one by which man ascends.”
A golden ladder. Gold is said in traditions to be condensed light. It does not refer to physical gold, it is an analogy, it refers to the part of the spirit. The spiritual part is a ladder by which we ascend. Why?
Because prayer progressively modulates us, modulating thought, modulating feeling, modulating attitude. It frees us, and elevates us.
Use prayer to confess.
Not only when you are in a problem or in a serious situation. Use prayer to be thankful for something at that moment.
Use prayer to advance your life. To become a better person, to align yourself more. To grow more. You say, why do I want to grow more? Then be thankful that you are already everything.
Prayer can change. And that is something that I will briefly mention. Because there is a difference between prayer and worship. In prayer we are two and I approach the Father who is within me and I relate from my human part, seeking heaven, seeking the highest, seeking its Creator.
And in worship there are not two people. In worship you elevate your spiritual inspiration, inspiration, in-spirito, so much that you become one, and from that unity you commune.
There are different prayers that can gradually lead us to worship, which is the highest, the highest expression of the divine. Prayer can be, as the great psalmist King David did, it can be songs, poems, dances. It is not that God is looking for these things, but they are things that inspire us to give, to be thankful. Once we are in this state of great gratitude, and of great respect, and of great reverence and devotion, then we begin to scratch the veil of worship, which is another energy and another frequency. Surely you have experienced it, for a few fractions of a second or more, I don't know.
We have done it, sometimes in our most sincere moments of prayer, we have been able to reach that worship or in some spontaneous way, when we see something very beautiful, when we contemplate truth or beauty, in a sunset, a sunrise. Generally we find it in nature. Or in some work of art also inspired by the divine, then for a second we become one with that force and we are worshiping it.
Prayer will lead us to worship and to all these beautiful qualities and sacred experiences of the soul.
Bring prayer more into your life, get closer to God by praying. Praying for everything that happens to you, good or bad. Open this channel of communication, turn to see God as a Father, as a close being, as your family.
And finally, Jesus taught us a very powerful prayer, which is The Lord's Prayer, it is a magical prayer. And I say magical because it is alive on many levels, you have a lot of teaching that is revealed to sincere hearts. Use it.
God is very great, eternal and infinite. And as I mentioned before, God sees the attitude. Be sincere in your prayer, humble. Turn to see yourself as something small in front of an enormous power and recognize that you are not yet perfect, but confess your aspiration for perfection. These are experiences that only you will be able to determine their value and what they have done for you in your life. Today is simply to remind you of this tool and practice that we have available at all times.