Prayer
What do you say while you are praying? To whom are you speaking? Have you ever prayed for others, for the world, for peace? How have you done this?
How to pray? With tears in our hearts. Where to pray?
In a lonely place. When to pray? The moment our inner
being wants us to pray. Why to pray? This is the question
of questions. We have to pray if we want our aspirations
to be fulfilled by God.
When I am praying, I am communing with the Highest Absolute.
I speak to Him either like a beggar to an emperor or
like a child to his grandfather. I started praying and
meditating - you can say unconsciously - at the age
of four or five. But since the very beginning of my
conscious spiritual journey, I have been praying to
the Supreme not only for my own perfection in life but
also for a oneness-world founded upon inner peace. At
this point in my spiritual journey, all my prayers are
for others, for the world, for peace.
Then again, in the highest sense, there is no separation
between myself and "others." After I attained
my own conscious union with God, I came to realize that
there is only one "person," and that is my
universal oneness-life.
During prayer and meditation, it is advisable to speak
to God in your own mother tongue because the language
that you learned from birth has become inseparably one
with your life-breath, which is all simplicity, sincerity,
purity and divinity. So it is advisable, especially
for seekers, to pray to God in the language in which
you were brought up.
To pray to God
or to work as God wants us to work - which is the better
of the two?
I am happy to answer this question. It is a question
of questions. But the answer is quite simple. To pray
to God or to work as God wants us to work - both are
of supreme importance. Both are inevitable means to
an end. And that end is God-realization.
Which is the
most beautiful prayer: the prayer of praise and beseeching,
where man sees God as omnipotent, or the prayer of acceptance
- "Thy Will be done"?
The prayer "Let Thy Will be done" is infinitely
more beautiful, infinitely more illumining and infinitely
more fulfilling than a prayer of praise and beseeching.
When we say, "Let Thy Will be done," it means
we have become fully aware of our measureless limitations,
incapacities and ignorance, and aware of God's measureless
compassion, concern and love for us. Because of our
fathomless ignorance, we admit that we do not know what
is good for us. We realize we may ask for the wrong
thing, which instead of helping or satisfying us will
only make us miserable. So we ask our divine Father,
who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves,
to take control of our lives and make the decisions
for us.
