On Prayer

As I was looking up a quote this morning, I found this passage about prayer illuminating.

"The wisdom of prayer is this: That it causeth a connection between the servant and the True One, because in that state (i.e., prayer) man with all heart and soul turneth his face towards His Highness the Almighty, seeking His association and desiring His love and compassion. The greatest happiness for a lover is to converse with his beloved, and the greatest gift for a seeker is to become familiar with the object of his longing; that is why with every soul who is attracted to the Kingdom of God, his greatest hope is to find an opportunity to entreat and supplicate before his Beloved, appeal for His mercy and grace and be immersed in the ocean of His utterance, goodness and generosity." -Abdu'l-Baha

On Prayer and the Power of the Holy Spirit

Thanks to A for inspiring me to discover the following passage by Abdu'l-Bahá after reading her wisdom on prayer. I've bolded my favorite part. Only through the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit, which we must seek through prayer and through our most earnest efforts to understand the wisdom of the divine and holy writings, can the greatest fruit be yielded.

As someone who is constantly struggling with questions like "why pray?" and "to what effect is prayer?" this passage also sheds some light.

"O thou handmaid of God! The heavenly glad tidings must be delivered with the utmost dignity and magnanimity. And until a soul ariseth with qualities which are essential for the bearer of these tidings, his words will take no effect.
O bondswoman of God! The human spirit possesseth wondrous powers, but it should be reinforced by the Holy Spirit. What thou hearest other than this is pure imagination. If, however, it be assisted by the bounty of the Holy Spirit, then will its strength be a thing to marvel at. Then will that human spirit uncover realities, and unravel mysteries. Turn thy heart fully to the Holy Spirit, and invite others to do the same; then shall ye witness wonderful results.
O handmaid of God! The stars in the sky do not exert any spiritual influence on this world of dust; but all the members and parts of the universe are very strongly linked together in that limitless space, and this connection produceth a reciprocity of material effects. Outside the bounty of the Holy Spirit, whatsoever thou hearest as to the effect of trances, or the mediums’ trumpets, conveying the singing voices of the dead, is imagination pure and simple. As to the bounty of the Holy Spirit, however, relate whatsoever thou wilt—it cannot be overstated; believe, therefore, whatsoever 161 thou hearest of this. But the persons referred to, the trumpet-people, are entirely shut out from this bounty and receive no portion thereof; their way is an illusion.
O handmaid of God! Prayers are granted through the universal Manifestations of God. Nevertheless, where the wish is to obtain material things, even where the heedless are concerned, if they supplicate, humbly imploring God’s help—even their prayer hath an effect.
O handmaid of God! Although the reality of Divinity is sanctified and boundless, the aims and needs of the creatures are restricted. God’s grace is like the rain that cometh down from heaven: the water is not bounded by the limitations of form, yet on whatever place it poureth down, it taketh on limitations—dimensions, appearance, shape—according to the characteristics of that place. In a square pool, the water, previously unconfined, becometh a square; in a six-sided pool it becometh a hexagon, in an eight-sided pool an octagon, and so forth. The rain itself hath no geometry, no limits, no form, but it taketh on one form or another, according to the restrictions of its vessel. In the same way, the Holy Essence of the Lord God is boundless, immeasurable, but His graces and splendours become finite in the creatures, because of their limitations, wherefore the prayers of given persons will receive favourable answers in certain cases. ...
O handmaid of God! The prayers which were revealed to ask for healing apply both to physical and spiritual healing. Recite them, then, to heal both the soul and the body. If healing is right for the patient, it will certainly be granted; but for some ailing persons, healing would only be the cause of other ills, and therefore wisdom doth not permit an affirmative answer to the prayer.
O handmaid of God! The power of the Holy Spirit healeth both physical and spiritual ailments. ..."
-Abdu'l-Bahá

Prayer of Abandonment

More often than not, we may have no idea what God's will is for us--should I go back to grad school? should I take this class or that one? should I stick with this job or look for another? should I persevere with this relationship, take the next step, or end it completely? should I travel to do service or attend a conference that will enhance my professional growth? Some of these decisions may matter less than what we make of our choices. We are often confused about the path(s) before us, while sometimes simultaneously struggling to make sense of the path we've just traversed. This is especially true in times of change or times where we're contemplating change. Someone commented on the last post that prayer is an important means of clarifying God's will. "As long as we are able to attain a state where we admit that we, on our own, might not be able to understand God's will, but we ask for His guidance and pray for His will to be done - over time it will become clear what we need to do." Thus, I offer up the following prayer of abandonment, one I learned from Pastor Tim long ago. May you find in it the comfort it has provided me over the years.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you
and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road
although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in
the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

-Thomas Merton

Post-Surgery, Reflections on Prayer

I want to extend my sincerest thanks to all who prayed for me on Friday when I had my surgery. Your prayers for my continued healing and for positive results are greatly appreciated.
I want also to reflect on part of that experience. Leading up to the surgery I had hoped to make lots of time for prayer to prepare myself for the surgery (prayers for tests, assistance and detachment) and prayers for healing after the surgery. The day before and the day of the surgery I found myself with little of this precious time. I was able to steal a couple of brief moments to myself here and there, to say some comforting bits of prayers to myself when I was lying down on the hospital bed (a good reason to try to memorize prayers) ... but not as much as I would have liked. I had wonderful, loving people around me, but sometimes that can be a distraction from prayer.

I discovered two things related to prayer as part of this experience:
1) that I now really crave prayer, feel how important it has become to me and feel its lack when I do not find the time to center in prayer. Friday night, when I had this realization, my heart was overwhelmed with gratitude.
2) I gathered great strength and comfort in knowing that others were praying for me. Tears came to my eyes in the evening when, around midnight on Friday, in my first moment of peace to myself, I read a healing prayer my beloved had emailed me. Somehow knowing that someone else had held that energy of prayer for me felt like I had been taken care of, even when I had personally not found all the time I would have liked to take care of myself in this way.

So let us pray for one another in our utmost sincerity!

Pondering Time, Space and Prayerful Energy

What does it mean to produce energy when we pray?

To me, this is one of the most mystical aspects of prayer. My mind cannot fully understand how this process works, how it is possible. I’d say it has to do with the fact that the mind, as the machine-work that helps us to access the spiritual qualities of the soul, has the potential to be a center of positive energy. As I become more adept at prayer, I improve my ability to generate more of that positive energy. When I pray together with others, that prayer becomes even more powerful because that combined prayer produces still more energy.

Though my mind may not fully understand how this energy gets produced, I know (in the conocer concept of "to know" – as in, to be acquainted with through experience) that when I fully concentrate my thoughts and open my heart in prayer, I can at times feel a physical effect – that of energy being produced. I have experienced this, at times, as a warmth in my chest. When an effect is produced upon my own individual consciousness, I, in turn, am possibly producing an effect on a larger “collective consciousness” of which I am a part. Pretty wild. By that account, our prayer has power to create change, to effectively change the world!

Lately, in reading a book I previously mentioned, The Energy of Prayer, I have been fascinated to think about how this prayerful energy is not bounded by our normal conceptions of time and space. For, when we pray, we and all other creatures are a part of this “collective consciousness” (God). Thich Nhat Hanh describes it in the following way:

“The collective consciousness is made up of the individual consciousness and the individual consciousness is made up of the collective consciousness. The two things make each other possible. It’s not that one comes first and the other comes later. There is no ‘above’ without ‘below’, there is no ‘inside’ without ‘outside’; the two things have to be there at the same time. The same is true with ‘I’ and ‘we’: they make each other possible.” (p. 58).

Let me digress for one moment from my original point, because this quote presents a fascinating question: can we prove whether God exists either with or without His creation? Can there be God without an “other”, a.k.a. without His creation? Is not God actually greater than the sum of all these created parts? Is not God the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end?
Returning to my original point, let’s pretend all agree that each of us individual human souls is already connected within a larger collective consciousness/energy/spirit (that we call God if we’re ok with the God label)… Thich Nhat Hanh writes about how there are there are two ways to think how prayer works when that object of prayer is another person for whom we want to pray. In one view (the one I find more traditionally engrained), the person who prays sends her/his energy to God to then transmit to another person on the planet. In the alternative view we and all other created things are part of this larger collective consciousness of God. By this latter view, “we don’t need to send prayers anywhere, because God is omnipresent. There is no need to convert God into some divine telecommunications satellite in the sky.” Space and time get crossed out of the equation and prayer is seen as being totally independent of these. Yet, the idea of "production" is something that we understand in the context of space and time, so what does it mean for energy to be "produced" through prayer if prayer were independent of these concepts? I’m much better at asking such questions than in coming up with the answers.

The Energy of Prayer

I'm currently reading an excellent book called The Energy of Prayer by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Here are a few snippets directly related to the energy of prayer that have stood out to me.

"When we send the energy of love and compassion to another person, it doesn't matter if they know we are sending it. The important thing is that the energy is there and the heart of love is there and is being sent out into the world. When love and compassion are present in us, and we send them outward, then that is truly prayer. In sending love outward, we may notice a change in our own heart. That prayer has begun to have a result inside us."

"Buddhism teaches that we need to have a practice to go along with our prayer. In prayer there has to be mindfulness, concentration, insight, loving kindness, and compassion. Anger, blame, jealousy, and spite are not enough. We need the energy of mindfulness, concentration, understanding, and love to put electric current in the wire. Otherwise, how can the words of our prayer reach the ears of the one to whom we are praying?" (see proceeding quote for greater context about the idea of this electric current)

"We know that when we want to use our telephone, it needs to have a wire and there has to be electricity in that wire. Prayer works in the same way. If our prayer doesn't have the energy of faith, compassion, and love, it is like trying to use a telephone when there is no electricity in the wire. The mere fact that we pray doesn't lead to a result."

How Prayer May Work

"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." -Sir Arthur Eddington (regarding the Uncertainty Principle)

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, dear reader, on whether this is a good metaphor for how prayer works. It makes a good deal of sense to me.

Prayer Alignment

Today I had a totally new experience with prayer: the exquisiteness of being in complete alignment with another person in prayer. Bahá'u'lláh, the Báb, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá have given us such gems to choose from. Today I was reveling in a deep sense of gratitude, praise and abundance. When my dear friend and I came together to pray at the close of a wonderful visit, how appropriate that he should choose the same prayer I had on my lips and at my finger tips:

"All praise, O my God, be to Thee Who art the Source of all glory and majesty, of greatness and honor, of sovereignty and dominion, of loftiness and grace, of awe and power. Whomsoever Thou willest Thou causest to draw nigh unto the Most Great Ocean, and on whomsoever Thou desirest Thou conferrest the honor of recognizing Thy Most Ancient Name. Of all who are in heaven and on earth, none can withstand the operation of Thy sovereign Will. From all eternity Thou didst rule the entire creation, and Thou wilt continue for evermore to exercise Thy dominion over all created things. There is none other God but Thee, the Almighty, The Most Exalted, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.

Illumine, O Lord, the faces of Thy servants, that they may behold Thee; and cleanse their hearts that they may turn unto the court of Thy heavenly favors, and recognize Him Who is the Manifestation of Thy Self and the Dayspring of Thine Essence. Verily, Thou art the Lord of all worlds. There is no God but Thee, the Unconstrained, the All-Subduing." -Bahá’u’lláh

And how appropriate that, in such the power of such connectedness, he should then pick a prayer that gets directly at the wondrous promise of what is to come when we trust in God's will (or call it trust that things always seem to work out as they're meant to, if you don't like the God label). I am grateful that, despite the number of doubts, dips, flips and lulls I've encountered in my spiritual journey, that I have long known this to be true based on my own personal experience: that one thing is not taken away without it being replaced by something of equal or greater value in my life, that I am only provided with tests according to my ability to grow from them, and that, with a clear and pure intention, all that I truly need always appears.

"Ordain for me, O my Lord, and for those who believe in Thee that which is deemed best for us in Thine estimation, as set forth in the Mother Book, for within the grasp of Thy hand Thou holdest the determined measures of all things.

Thy goodly gifts are unceasingly showered upon such as cherish Thy love, and the wondrous tokens of Thy heavenly bounties are amply bestowed on those who recognize Thy divine Unity. We commit unto Thy care whatsoever Thou hast destined for us, and implore Thee to grant us all the good that Thy knowledge embraceth.

Protect me, O my Lord, from every evil that Thine omniscience perceiveth, inasmuch as there is no power nor strength but in Thee, no triumph is forthcoming save from Thy presence, and it is Thine alone to command. Whatever God hath willed hath been, and that which He hath not willed shall not be.

There is no power nor strength except in God, the Most Exalted, the Most Mighty." -The Báb

While I have prayed with people in a variety of ways over the years, this is the first time I've felt so aligned with another person in prayer. I grew up in in the Christian way of praying and am more accustomed to spontaneously using my own words to talk to the Creator. I still appreciate this method of prayer and will likely use it throughout all of my days. Lately I have been thinking and talking to others about the value of the Bahá'í way of using prayers written in the enlightened words of the Faith's most recent manifestations: the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh (the same can be done with Psalms, for example). Today, I discovered in a new way the power of those divine words in not only expressing exactly what I was feeling (more adequately and eloquently than I could, too), but something even deeper in being able to share that experience with another person who spoke those prayers for me without consciously realizing how perfectly appropriate they were for us both.

How can we seek to align ourselves in prayer? I can say from my personal experience that it involves a great level of being present in the prayers being shared (which, I attest, I am not always able to achieve). Hold the focus. It involves trusting that the right prayers will arise (even if you yourself feel a little inadequate in your prayer choices, as I sometimes do, others can possibly find just the right prayer for you). And here's an experiment that just might work: if you've experienced something joyful and precious with another person, share gratitude for that experience together through prayer. If it is protection or guidance you both seek, come together with the same purity of spirit and abandonment to prayer. You, too, might be blown away by the experience.