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Feature Article (Archived) |
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PRAYER: ITS OWN REWARD There are many who have not yet discovered what prayer in its essence is, who still look for tangible results of prayer in the world of actions and possessions. But there are others who have come to realize the tremendous and hard-won truth that prayer is a means to nothing, that it is an end in itself, and is itself its own reward. How could it be otherwise? In deep prayer we commune in speechless love, and wonder, in a silence more profound than the silence of great deserts, with the Power that created us. Is there anything beyond this that we could hope to gain from the act of prayer?
Who or what is it
that prays? A body? A mind? An ego? An entity separate from the Power it
pra Ideally, we are told by masters of prayer of all religions, that we should pray for the purification of our minds so that we may understand our own natures. Through prayer and meditation, they tell us, our minds will become gradually pure, our true nature will unfold itself to us, and ultimately we will all know who we are, and why we have lived. Only prayer, meditation, and divine grace, can bestow upon an individual this supreme knowledge. Prayer is the major weapon of the soul to transform itself into what it believes. The soul’s struggle to realize its own divinity is the only drama enacted consciously by the individual and as such stands alone—sublime and unutterable. In this drama, prayer and meditation will give us the insight we need into our inner essence, and the power to control our senses for living in a sense-imprisoned world; the power also to reduce and attenuate our egos, our desires, and our clinging to a level of life which, when we think about it, is tragic and unbelievable. Prayer and meditation will lead us back to the perfection which is already ours, already our own natures, though we have forgotten it. There are many who shrink from the prospect of attaining perfection, or of seeking it at all. The most dangerous stage of our development is where we have made a certain amount of spiritual progress: the mysteries of scripture unfold themselves; our faith is stronger, usually, than any challenge the world can throw against it; purity attracts us more and more, in a way we cannot fathom. We look around us and cannot help but compare ourselves to others, and we feel that we have approached more closely than most to the ideal laid down, presumably, for every person by all the great Masters of the earth. The danger is that we will now insist that perfection itself is not required, that divine enlightenment is only for the few. After all, we are limited beings. We are born, we suffer, there is so much that confuses us. How can such frail reeds be expected to reach perfection, or to seek after it? But we must. We must try to. All the higher prophets have endlessly told us so. Equally powerful is the urge from within that impels us toward this perfection, as well as the inexorable logic of it. And it is prayer and meditation that will give us the power to conquer our senses, which keep us in the realm of the imperfect and the limited, the land of darkness and death. They alone can give us the strength and incentive to move forward to the uplands of spiritual illumination where, one day, we will stand beholding the country where there is no night. We are still weak and deluded in so many ways. But the idea will sink in, and ideas alone are the things that change us. This idea, grasped in part, ardently believed in, and dwelled on as much as possible, will change the character of our prayers and will start a process of spiritual growth whose conclusion can be—and sooner or later, will be—divine illumination for every one of us. See also Words of Wisdom: Meditation
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ys to? Many people in all ages have prayed as if this was true, and
with such an attitude it was logical to pray for things, for the
satisfaction of desires. Or is it a soul that prays? A living and 