Shree Maa's Msg. to say "Thank You" with a life of prayer!

[Guest guest]

Though I have limited time to keep up with all of you in this Chat

Group, I did recently catch Shree Maa's msg to the Prayer Group,

and wanted to share some thoughts that I found quite provocative

from Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev in the India Times. Please bear with the

length of it, because it is a beautiful challenge Shree Maa gives us:

to make our life "a life of Prayer"!

 

Title of Article: Prayer is the End, Not the Means

What is your prayer? "God give me this, give me that, and save

me". What you are seeking in prayer is not God; what you are seeking

is free happiness. Ultimately what you want with prayer is well-

being –you are just not willing to admit it. The first step is to be

straight with yourself. Then we can see how to cross the threshold

of limitations to true happiness and well-being.

If you examine your deepest motivation for religion, you will

see you have never aspired for the Divine. Your aspiration is for

comfort, wealth, power, pleasure. You think God is a tool to achieve

all these things. When you are seeking protection or materialistic

things, greed and fear become the basis of your prayer. This will

not work.

We think prayer is a means to reach God, but what do we really

know about God? We have no direct experience of God; we are coming

from a particular belief system. Using prayer to reach a god we have

no direct experience of, can be illusory. Thoughts and prayer can

open a person up.

At the same time, they can create hallucinations that grow to

big dimensions, because the illusory is always more powerful that

reality. An illusion has the freedom of becoming anything it wants.

When the illusory process gets exaggerated, it becomes more powerful

than life. That is why we have always stayed away from prayer

because prayer can be not only misused, it can also be deceptive.

Meditation, compared to prayer, is a much more reliable method

to reach the inner nature and experience the Divine.

Authentic prayer is a deep connection with the Divine inherent

in everything and everywhere. It is a quality, a state of being. As

we become prayerful it is extremely beautiful, but that state is

reached only when we connect to our inner nature. Then the

experience is absolutely joyous; we are wide open and we can

receive. The best thing that you can do to this world is not

service, not spiritual teaching, but to be a joyous person. What

kind of people do you want to work or live with, miserable people or

joyous people?

Everybody wants to be joyous. By choice they want to be joyous,

but they have become miserable because they are unconsciously

choosing misery. Their whole life happens in unconsciousness. In 24

hours time, how many moments are you truly conscious of who you are?

Most of the time your whole life is happening unconsciously

And so your life is accidental. So whatever the situation around

you, you become that. When you are an accident, at any moment you

may become a calamity.

You came here WITH nothing. You are going about your life as if

you came here with a big investment. But because you came with

nothing, whatever is happening, you are always in profit. It doesn't

matter what is happening with your life. Your identity, your name,

your clothes, your gods, your beliefs, your heaven, your hell – you

picked up everything on the way. Everything that you know has been

taught to you, including your gods and demons. When you go, anyway

you have to go empty-handed. So when you came with nothing, whatever

is happening here, you are in profit. Isn't it?

So you must be happy always.

And when you are in such a state of happiness, prayer no longer

becomes a monologue, but a beautiful phenomenon and a celebration

which brings great joy. Then you pray not out of fear or greed; you

pray because prayer itself is the reward.

Patanjali, the father of yoga, goes as far as to say that when one

knows how to be truly prayerful, prayer is not a means to reach God,

but God is only a means so that we can pray.