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Make prayers OF your desires, rather than prayers FOR your desires.

Photo by William Farlow on Unsplash

Let’s pray FOR good health…is this going to result in achieving our wants or desires?

As children we are taught how to pray for what we want: we pray for good health, for good grades, and for good weather. Naturally, as we mature into adults, we carry this tradition along with us. However, it is of little wonder that most of us never receive what we pray for since the words of our prayers do not attract our desires; instead, these words push our goals further away from us. 

Don’t ask for the bad, sad, or unwanted to be removed from your life

It seems that there are some basic misconceptions about prayer which then affect our success and our lives. First, it is a common belief that we should ask for the bad, for the sad, or for the unwanted to be removed from our life. But, when we pray for a change in our life, we are asking out of want, lack, and desperation which only add strength and power to our worst nightmares.

Visualize the good and not the bad being removed from your life

Prayers for abundance empower poverty. Prayers for health empower sickness. Prayers for happiness empower sadness. Rather, we must understand to pray of abundance, of health, and of joy in the present. We are not just playing with semantics; this observation is entirely consistent with the Universal Laws. When I say pray of abundance, I mean see the end goal at this moment. And pray of health and of joy; as a result, see good health and happiness in your life at this moment.

Words aren’t our prayers…our emotions and our feelings are our prayers

Second, there is the accepted idea that our prayers are our words and our words are our prayers. However, this idea is a long way from the truth as the ancients left us clear evidence that our prayers are not just our words, rather, our prayers are our emotions. Without a doubt, the essence of prayer is in our feelings which we find within the 2,000-year-old messages that the Gnostics left for us.

The Gnostics timely message from over two millennia ago

To paraphrase their timeless message; we must surround ourselves with our answers. With these wise words, it is apparent that we must overcome our natural reaction to want to focus our attention upon what ails us and ask for those things to change.

Experience your wants and desires within before they materialize from without

Rather than using our words and asking for the removal of the ills from our life, we need to first experience abundance, good health, and happiness already in our life. In order to escape our unpleasant present situation within our minds, we must use our emotions to help us navigate around and through our troubles before our wants are actualized on the physical plane.

Express prayers of gratitude daily to achieve personal fulfillment and joy in your life

Third, we often think that the sole purpose of prayer is to ask for success in life. However, let us not forget that prayers are not only the harbingers of change in our lives. Previously, we made our prayers of abundance, of good health, and of spiritual Self. Having received what we asked of The Source, we now can make new prayers of gratitude. Watch what happens when you turn this around and make prayers of gratitude every day. When we express our heartfelt gratitude, we can only receive more of the same from the universe.

Prayer connects our spiritual and physical world

Prayer is the connection between our spiritual and our physical world. It is not limited to our words, those eloquent or pious sayings which roll off of our tongues. Rather, it also includes the myriad of feelings we hold within our hearts and souls. This subtle yet meaningful difference will provide the answers of your prayers.

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Let life take you to where you should be taken to.

8. Do not swim – float.

(Osho’s Eighth New Commandment)

Offer no resistance 

If we are unexpectedly thrown into the water, our natural reaction is to swim, to make a concerted effort to escape our present situation, an unpleasant present so to speak. We are conditioned to save our self, and the fundamental need to survive and escape from harm’s way is the same when in the water, on the land, or in the air. However, to experience life to the fullest: we need to let the water carry us to where we should be without any effort or resistance on our part; let the land carry us to where we should be without effort or resistance on our part; let the air carry us to where we should be without effort or resistance on our part.

header18A metaphor for your life 

In this post, the words and ideas are not about splashing in the waves of the ocean, frolicking around the streets of the land, or drifting along on the currents of the air…the reference to water, land, and air is intended as metaphors for and about your life. And since it is about life, we should always consider what plane of existence we want to live on; surely, it must be without question to seek a higher plane of life, a higher level of consciousness, and a higher vision of self…the one that was, is, and will be you. Still, this is  lost to your self if you and you alone let it happen.

Spend time alone

In order to float effortlessly upon the sea of life, you must spend time alone; time without all of the distractions we face in this modern era…our mobiles, Internet, televisions, and newspapers. For it is when you are truly alone that you silence the white noise that causes you to be distracted from the real you, the truthful you, the super-conscious you. As you separate yourself from the distractions, you feel the soothing waves upon your soul, the sweet smells  upon your senses, the warm breezes upon your body, drifting with an innate purpose to the destination that is meant to be your end destination.

When you are alone, it should be the greatest of joys; the greatest of thrills; the greatest of opportunities to reflect upon what you are, where you are, and who you want to become.  As you reflect upon your life, it is soon apparent that you can be free in every sense of the word if you focus upon freedom; as you release any chains that encumber your spiritual transformation to the real you, you feel the miracle that is you…the beating of your heart, the breathing of your lungs, the echoing of your thoughts.

Let the tide take you to where it wants you to be 

As you are thrown into the water of life, let it take you to where it knows that you should be taken. And as you swirl around this way and that, do so without resistance, without a fight, without a preconceived idea of where you should be brought to…just let it happen. As you let it happen, you soon feel the euphoric feeling of freedom; you are free of society, free from having to swim to survive, free to let the tide take you where you should be taken without any interference on your part, without any ego on your part, and without any agenda on your part.

Seekers need not seek

We are too often caught-up in seeking that which we want, however, when we do this we often close our eyes, ears, and minds to what our inner being is saying to and for us.  With closed eyes, ears, and minds we believe that we know the answer, and that answer appears to us as an illusion from the materialistic world, the unreal world, the world of untruths. As we run towards our goals, we run away from our self. We run an untrue race to nowhere. We run to a void not out of a void.

In life, the seeker cannot run away from self; furthermore, the seeker also runs within self…as such, the outer world of the seeker appears frantic, anxious, fearful; and the inner world is a mirror image of the outer world. Thus, a seeker’s inner world is frantic, anxious, and fearful. Will this lead to a happy life, a life of freedom, a life of enlightenment?

Non-seekers, by contrast, have no need or desire to run from self. They thrive on being the one true self, the self that is innate, created by the Source. As such, the outer world of the non-seeker is one of peace, harmony, and joy and their inner world is a mirror image of the outer world. Thus, a non-seeker’s inner world is one of peace, harmony, and joy. Will this lead to a fulfilled and meaningful life?

Live the journey without effort

The key is to let life take you where you ought to be taken, and as you drift along with the current and not against the current – when you go against what most of us do when thrown into the water called life – you feel an inner transformation of peacefulness, happiness, and tranquility….you have arrived at where you should be without making an effort to get there.  Be grateful that your innate wisdom has usurped the worldly non-wisdom; the truth has usurped the illusion of non-truth, and the divine has usurped the profane. The destination that always was, is, and will be your final one.