How to pray
Say it with feeling
For prayer to work properly it should be expressed with sincerity and feeling, and the whole act should be performed with single-minded concentration. We should not pray as though talking at a party or gossiping with a friend. Prayer is not a telephone call to your mother, or a request made to your boss, a priest, movie star, politician, or even a president – it is an appeal to the Divine Source. Imagine, metaphorically speaking, that you had the opportunity to have an audience with God, if that’s how you want to refer to the Divine Source, and say what it is you want and how you feel – this is virtually what is happening when you pray. If you mumble your prayers, or say them without feeling, you are as good as saying, “I don’t have to make any effort when expressing myself to God.” In fact, this shows a lack of appreciation for the Divine Source of all creation and, therefore, for the most important part of yourself, and will considerably limit the power of the prayer.
Jane Austen said: “Grant us grace, almighty Father, so to pray as to deserve to be heard.” She made a good point. Technically, all prayers “deserve to be heard”, because they invoke and transmit a certain amount of energy, but the quantity and quality of the energy will increase dramatically when we start to pray dynamically.
Try saying ‘The New Lord’s Prayer’ or, indeed, any other positive prayer, in as expressive a manner as you can. Don’t worry about seeming silly. Just give it all you’ve got. Make it as dynamic in intensity, but not volume, as a scream you might let out if someone ran over your foot, and as wholehearted as when football fans cheer for their favorite teams, although exerting more self-control. You don’t have to be very loud – the important thing is not to hold back at all. Imagine that your very life depends on every single word. Don’t be melodramatic or over emotional. Put genuine feeling and love into it. This is the first step.
Controlling prayer energy
The next step – when you’ve got used to saying a prayer out loud with all the feeling you can muster, thus invoking and transmitting much more energy than you did before – is to train yourself to gain more control over the energy. This will enable you to act as a channel for even more, and better quality, energy which will, in turn, make your prayers better than ever.
Prayer should be a balanced symphony of opposites, a melody of yin and yang, a harmonious blend of light and shade, each bringing the other to life. To gain more control over prayer energy you should be:
gentle, but also definite and firm
passionate, but controlled and not too emotional
filled with compassion and want the result of the prayer with all your heart, and yet also be detached from it
imploring, yet confident of the outcome of the prayer
humble, and yet feel as powerful as the Divine Source, which is our essence
With the development of these qualities your prayers should become quieter without losing any of the intensity displayed when praying loudly. A good way of cultivating these opposite attributes is to alternate the volume of your prayer a little, so that some words and phrases are louder than others, and some words may be barely audible at all.
Praying like this is not easy and can take a lot of practice. Remember you are making yourself a channel to allow the energy to flow through you. You are not trying to force it. Your body should not be tense to the point of shaking. Instead, you should be physically relaxed, while trying to maintain the posture described in the prayer technique.
Often you may not feel in the mood to pray at all. In fact, when we feel at our lowest, prayer can be a struggle, but this is the very time when praying can do the most good. So try it. Just do one short prayer. This can change your mood so quickly that you may well feel like carrying on and saying more prayers as soon as you’ve finished the first one.
Prayer and personality go hand in hand. Everyone has an individual way of praying, even when adhering to the same principles, as listed above. What is interesting, though, is that our true personality seems to be revealed by prayer, after all, prayer has to be genuine to mean anything at all. It has to come from the soul. Someone who is apparently very passive might suddenly come to life during prayer, becoming almost unrecognizable. This is that person’s real personality. The one he or she usually shows is merely the surface of the still, deep ocean of his or her true spiritual nature.
Learning to pray is not just the acquisition of an incredibly useful, practical skill, it is a tool for personal transformation and discovery. As your ability improves you will find that you improve throughout your life in countless different ways. It will, in short, bring out the very best in you.
