PART ONE: PRAYER

IS THERE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND PRAYER?

PART THREE:

PRACTICAL, POSITIVE PASTORAL COUNSELING

APPENDIX: Resources, pg 75

 My experience has been that whether you have taken a metaphysical/New Thought approach to your path or are a mainstream Christian, Jewish, or practicing any other religion, that has God as their central figure, you will feel that answered prayer has something to do with your "relationship" with God. For a metaphysician, God (also called Creator, Universal Mind, and more) is recognized as being an energy that is everywhere present. It exists outside of us, inside of us, in all things, and all people, everywhere. There is no place that God is not. We know that we have that spark of divinity in us and affirm that when we greet each other with Namaste' or the more formal Namaskar (In Yoga, namaste is said to mean "The light within me honors the light within you," (as spoken by both the yoga instructor and yoga students.). We believe that there are universal laws and if we are in alignment with those principles, in our thoughts, words and actions, that what we ask for will be done. And, whether we call it prayer, affirmations or go through the process of a more scientific prayer with Spiritual Mind Treatments we "act as if" it's already done and give thanks knowing that in the mind of God IT IS already done.

 In general, some other faiths teach that how, when or if your prayer is answered is going to depend on what your scorecard looks like. Having a relationship with God doesn't necessarily mean that you know God exists or worship God. For example, in Does God Answer Our Prayers?, Marilyn Adamson suggests that not only may it be because they don't have a relationship with God; "they have never received from God complete forgiveness for their sin". She goes on to quote scripture that supports that idea with "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear" (Isaiah 59). In continuing to read her essay she seems to be conveying that one of the essential problems is that people question their right to ask God for help and there's an awareness of personal sin and failure. Without going into the ways that the people on different paths take to get to God (through Jesus, saints, etc...) suffice it to say I believe we have a direct connection. In metaphysically interpreting this passage, we know that sin is actually an archery term that means "missing the mark". And, the iniquity spoken of could be that we are feeling separate from God (or our Source). So, because we have missed the mark and have not been in alignment with universal law we will not get the result we are looking for. To someone that has given their power to something or someone "out there" it would appear that the prayer has fallen on deaf ears; however, being empowered we know that all we have to do is realign ourselves with universal law, those eternal Truths that are unchanging, and universal mind (God) and it will be done.

 In Illuminata by Marianne Williamson, in the chapter titled Ladders to God she says "Prayer reweaves the rent fabric of the universe. It releases us, in time, to the snares of lower-energies". When you are coming from that place of lower energy, you are in a space of not remembering your connection to God. We sometimes think we're asking God for too much; however, most of the time we're actually asking too little. It is important to always be aware and conscious that as children of God we have a spark of divinity within us and that at our core, our essence is that of Spirit. When we feel the connection to our source (which is actually always there), prayer will give us strength.

 Through prayer, we talk to God and there are many ways we do this. Adapted from writings by William Peel, my own experience, whether personal or in observation is that several ways of praying could be described or explained in this way:

Most likely, many of us have had our own personal experience of praying in one or more of these fashions.

In facilitating a Spiritual Support Group I had the experience more than once that as we went around our circle speaking affirmations of Truth, the person that followed me would say "I can't follow that". And, then I would have to remind them that it was not about the words (as in the King James or Written Exam Approach); but, about the intention behind the words. To me, the most important part of prayer, affirmations and more scientific approach of spiritual mind treatments is what is in your heart.

How we pray may be the result of the religion or tradition we grew up in or as an adult on a metaphysical/New Thought path, in a moment of despair, reverting back to the childhood relationship we had with the anthropomorphic God, of our childhood. In general, I believe that our choice of prayer is going to be a reflection of how we perceive God. There was a time, not too long after I ventured into my first New Thought experience, that I realized that somewhere along the way I had confused God with Santa Claus. When you think about Santa, what comes to mind? In the popular Christmas song titled Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, The lyrics say,

Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He sees you when you're sleeping,,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

So...You better watch out,
You better not cry
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why.

Santa Claus is coming to town.

I also heard someone say recently that we often go to God as we did as children, when we went to see Santa and brought lists of what we wanted. So, are you praying to a God out there, making sure that you're using one or more of the right formulas? Are you praying to a God who answers prayers on a whim, depending on His mood and/or how you have behaved? Or, are you praying to the Universal Intelligence/God, that is everywhere present, using a positive affirmative approach, with your thoughts, words and actions all in sync?

In How To Know God, Deepak Chopra writes "A striking example that there is a reachable place beyond material reality is prayer." More than twenty years ago researchers started experimenting to see if prayer had any scientific basis. When seriously ill patients in hospitals were divided into two groups the ones in the groups that were being prayed for appeared to have a better recovery rate. Important to note is that it did not matter if the person knew the patient personally or if they even knew their name. In 1998 Duke University (formally this project was known as the Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training), presented its findings to the American Heart Association. The religion or belief system of the person praying also did not seem to matter. Included in the experiment were people from seven religious groups around the world. They included Buddhists, Carmelite nuns, and an email group that accepts prayers to be inserted into the Wailing Wall. The statistics showed that with someone praying for them, recovery could improve by an average of seventy-five percent. The reason for this to me is clearly that because as Chopra goes on to say, "Prayer is a journey into consciousness - it takes you to a place different from ordinary thought." I wish I could have taken part in that study as one of the researchers. I would have liked to take it a step further and have part of the group praying using Affirmative Prayer and Spiritual Mind Treatments in order to compare the difference in the recovery rate when prayer is a done in a positive, affirming way. I do believe that the recovery rate, on the average, would have been higher.