Another item from my book to children.
How many of us have really meditated about prayer. Have we considered when and how we pray? I would like to offer some thoughts on the subject and hope it will be of help to someone. I learned the beautiful child's prayer of "now I lay me down, ETC." and then went to the Lord's prayer after Sunday School lessons. That was the last anyone taught me about prayer for many of my adult years.
There is an orthodox conception of prayer which can lead to failure. It recognizes a personal God as exercising an arbitrary will, but he does so for beneficent reasons. The individual confers upon his God not only the power of accomplishment but the highest moral value of which he is able to conceive. In other words, it is believed that their God is capable of anything, but will only do that which is in accord with moral good. This type religionist, then, will not ask his God to grant his prayer if it conflicts with, or is contrary to, what he conceives as morally right. He won't ask God to strike an enemy or give him money he should not have.
However, this religionist will not hesitate to ask for what he thinks just, no matter how contrary to universal law and order. He would not hesitate to ask God to stop a war which man has brought on. Psychologically, to such individuals, God is believed arbitrarily to exercise His will as against the very laws and causes He himself has established, as long as man in good faith asks it.
The illogicalness of such prayer never occurs to the petitioner. He may pray for his God to stop what another religionist, in equally good faith, is praying to be continued. The fall weather in California affords an excellent example of of an anthropomorphic conception of God and prayer. In late September the prune growers are drying their fruit in the sun; an early and continued rain might prove ruinous to their crop. Conversely, the cattle raisers are desparately in need of rain for pasturage, especially after the long rainless California summer.
Therefore a cattleman would pray for rain and a prune grower would pray for no rain.If God exercises arbitrary will, opposing the natural climatic conditions, whose prayer would he favor? Such a religionist view would place God in a ludicrous position and makes religion vulnerable to atheism. If the Divine Will could and would function arbitrarily, it would disrupt Cosmic Unity. There would be no dependency whatsoever. It is because God's laws perform consistantly and are immutable by the necessity of their nature that
man has an assurance of dependability of the Divine principles.
The most logical and productive prayer is that all things are possible with God except that which would oppose God. Since God is all things, there is nothing which can oppose it. Therefore a negative request will not be answered. One cannot expect to find darkness in light, for where there is light there cannot be darkness, so it is not sensible to ask for the impossible. You should never ask for setting aside of a natural law which is brought on by your own acts, whether brought on by malice or ignorance.(God's law of reaping what is sown.)
God does not transmit things to man; rather it is man that directs and assembles the power of God which he has access, to bring it about. We should not ask for a completed particular, but illumination as to how it can be brought about through our efforts, or if our desire for a particular is not proper, that the desire be removed from us. In other words, if we can't be shown how to satisfy a need, we need to be shown a way to rid ouselves of the false desire that makes us think it necessary. We should indicate we don't desire anything that will bring an injustice to another person.
With proper understanding, many of the things we pray for will lose their importance and would be shown to be insignificant and unworthy of a Divine appeal. We torment ourselves with many things because we fail to analyze them in light of their relation to to the whole law of God. Prayer, in reality, is a consultation between the two selves of man. It is an appeal from the mortal mind to the immortal mind of the God within. The answer to prayer is actually an insight into God's wisdom through proper attunement. With the proper prayer none of the disappointment you may have had with unfilled prayer will bother you. You will get an understanding of why the
prayer was unnecessay. It will always be satisfying.
Prayer is beneficial to any man if properly practised. Prayer requires humility. It requires submission to the better side of our nature. It puts us in harmony with the more subtle influences of our being. There are three kinds of prayer. We confess to God we are contrite and admit we have violated moral ideals. Then there are prayers of intercession, where we ask to be guided so as to prevent undesired effects of certain causes. There are also prayers of gratitude, like those of the Psalms where man hails the majesty of
the Divine and expresses joy in realizing his own Divine nature.
I believe of these three kinds, if we use the latter more often, we will eliminate the need for the other two. If we recognize the Divine, and commune periodically with self, which is a part of it, we will discover a personal mastery of our own being that prayers of intercession or prayers of confession will not be needed. Here is a model prayer for your consideration.
It is given not to change the Lord's prayer, but to replace some of the other unnecessary prayers made in the past. May God cleanse me of all impurities of mind and body, that I may commune directly with God. May my mortal consciousness be so enlightened that any imperfections of my thinking may be revealed to me, and may I be given the power of will to correct them. I humbly petition that I may perceive the fullness of nature and partake thereof, ever consistant with the Godly good.
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