What is Prayer?

[Guest guest]

> 1) What is a prayer ? and whom should it be addressed?

 

Generally, prayer can be defined in 3 ways :

 

1. A reverent petition made to God, a god, or another object of

worship.

 

2. An act of communion with God, a god, or another object of worship,

such as in devotion, confession, praise.

 

3. A specially worded form used to address God, a god, or another

object of worship.

 

These are the definitions we would find in the dictionary. I always

believed that prayer is a way to communicate with God, prayer does

not need to consist of specific words. On the contrary, we often

repeat prayers that we have no idea of their meaning, this becomes a

mechanical way of prayer which looses its initial purpose. Actually,

one needs no words in order to set himself into the ecstasy of

devotion. One can communicate just through the emotions and concepts

which reside inside him. Havent you ever thought of something without

actually thinking the words that express it? This is what I am trying

to describe, a wordless prayer. The goal of such a prayer would be to

communicate with God, or to at least create this illusion. Its a way

to quench the thirst of the soul to meet its creator, even for just a

few moments. However, when we talk about prayer, many people relate

it to a long list of desires that they want God to fulfill.

 

Yogananda used to say that it is our birthright, as children of God,

to demand from Him what we want. Not all prayers are answered,

though, and one might wonder what is it that decides whether a prayer

is going to be answered or not.

 

First of all, I would like to stress that our thoughts and desires

are our perpetual prayers which form our destiny and draw upon us

situations, waves of energy and thoughts which vibrate in the same

frequency as the thoughts in our aura. So our actual beliefs and

daily thoughts, are the ones that decide what kind of situations will

be drawn to us. If we pray for one minute, for something which we

dont really believe or have faith in, then this prayer will surely

have no effect or little effect and will be overpowered by our

perpetual prayers. Chopra, in his books, lays emphasis on the signals

and the messages that we sent to the universe, to the nature

surrounding us. If our wishes and desires are not specific and as

long as we are sending confused messages, nature will not be able to

respond. It will send back confused energies as the ones we emitted.

In that sense, even the prayer of a thief would be answered, if the

thief has a good understanding of the mechanisms of prayer.

 

"4) Is prayer not a sort of confirmation of Dwaita ?"

The question of Dwaita is a great one. But I would like to pose

another question. Isnt our belief to God as a separate entity not

another confirmation of Dwaita?

 

Prayer is a tool, just as the belief to a personal god is. We use

these tools to make our spiritual life easier, that doesnt mean that

these are absolute terms. Prayer and the personal god are two

relative concepts. As long as we have not merged into paramatma, as

long as we have not achieved samadhi, our reality will be of a dual

nature. Even if there is oneness behind everything in life, we are

not in the position to realize and really experience this. So it

depends on where we stand and observe this situation. It depens on

our perspective. If we observe this from our point of view, there is

only dwaita. If we observe this from the objective, global and cosmic

point of view, oneness prevails and its just the maya that prevents

us from realizing this fact. For practical reasons, as I said above,

it is always useful and recommended to use methods that apply to our

perspective.