What is prayer, really?
Someone recently asked about the nature of prayer from a place of awareness. “What is it we actually do there?”
Great question. There’s no “doing” in awareness. Just being. Is-ness.
But let’s back up, because prayer actually looks different depending on our state of mind.
Most of us are familiar with worldly prayer: asking for things to be a certain way. We don’t like conditions and want them to change. Or we do like them and want circumstances to remain the same. This kind of prayer reinforces our identification with a separated “me” trying to navigate life. Focus is on the self and the people/causes that matter to the self.
But there’s another form of prayer from within that same realm — the prayer to see things differently. This prayer essentially states: “Everything I’ve tried hasn’t worked. There must be something beyond this me-world framework. Help me to see another way.”
You could say this is the highest level of consciousness the ego can achieve. It’s the prayer that requests: “Help me catch the me caught up in its me-stuff.” This directed attention leads us beyond the worldly realm into awareness itself, or what the Course calls the right mind.
Once we’re resting in awareness, then what? Again, nothing to do. Just be. Love may flow through us as words, actions, or thoughts, but without any sense of doing. It’s simply a channeling.
The Course describes prayer as a ladder reaching to Heaven. At the top, there’s no need for prayer because there’s no need whatsoever. Separation dissolves into the glorious union of oneness.
So we climb that ladder step by step: catching attention having been lost in the drama of the world. And then resting in the presence that caught it. “Forgiveness is still and quietly does nothing. It merely looks [with gentleness and without judgment].”
Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll explore how prayer and forgiveness work together to lead us home. I look forward to seeing you then.