Ask, and Ye Shall Receive
There’s something really magical about prayer. Maybe I’m just so special and so enlightened that I actually do just get whatever I want when I pray (HA!). What’s more likely is that there is something about prayer that tunes us into the abundance of what we already have.
Recently, I was praying for more social activity. More connections. More contact from and with my people. More new friends or networking or just contact with humanity. I’m not even sure why. Perhaps I was feeling lonely or neglected. These prayers were said last week or maybe the week before. Now, it feels like I am being bombarded with requests for my attention. And the best part? The best part is, I’m not sure my life has changed at all.
I really cannot tell you if God actually did summon all my people to start blowing up my phone or if, in reality, the amount of attention or social interaction in my life hasn’t changed, but the very act of praying made me more aware of how good I had it to begin with. It doesn’t really matter either.
There is something about the act of asking for what we want under the guise of a willingness to believe that makes it all come together. In A Course in Miracles, the act of prayer is called The Holy Instant. Wayne Dyer (and many others) call it Conscious Contact with the Universe or the spiritual realm. It is furthered by meditation. We can almost live in a state of prayer through meditation and a commitment to living in the Now. With practice, we can return to it whenever we get preoccupied with the past or the future (also written about by Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now).
We’re probably all familiar with the Biblical expression ask, and ye shall receive. Seek, and ye shall find. I don’t really know why we have to ask or participate or interact with the Universe with intention, but maybe that makes sense. The only way to change our perspective or see something new is to become an active participant in whatever happens next. In the action of prayer, we move from helpless passivity to hopeful participant, which has the power to change everything.
Rumination, which is a factor in depression, is a way of passively engaging with stressful circumstances and it often includes a component of hopelessness. People who ruminate often feel like they have very little power to change the conditions in which they are suffering, even when they may actually be able to make changes. Perhaps prayer is a way to become willing to actively engage in possible outcomes. Perhaps it is a hopeful act in circumstances that sometimes feel hopeless.
Regardless of the mechanism, I’m here to report that prayer is working for me. I can’t tell you the wonderful things that have happened to me since I first started building a spiritual life. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s important to keep it simple, especially at the start. It’s easier to measure outcomes with fewer variables.
Based on my own experiments, I am happy to report that it’s as simple as finding a place to meditate for a few minutes randomly wherever you are, whenever you think of it a couple times a week. It’s as simple as praying as much or as little as you want or can remember, whether you’re in a terrible bind or your life is pretty wonderful. Get on your knees or don’t. Put your hands together or don’t. Say your prayers out loud or don’t.
The wonderful things that have happened to me since I started have encouraged me to spend more time mediating and more time praying and more time studying faithful practices to see what else might work for me. But I’m far from being a priest or priestess, far from living in a nunnery or becoming a monk. I’m not perfect and I am no saint, but my life is much better after building a little bit of faith.