Consciousness and Prayer Part 7
July 5, 2025
Consciousness and Prayer Part 7
At first blush, the words “prayer changes things” make us think that prayer causes things to happen. While change is often the result of prayer, it does not manipulate circumstance or wave a magic wand. Prayer does not necessarily change things to be how we want them to be. If that were true, everyone would pray for what they want and receive it. People could pray to win the lottery, to find their true love the next day, and be healed at once from all sorts of maladies, and they would get their wish just because they prayed for it.
We know by experience that reality does not work that way, regardless of our prayers. Sometimes, our prayers are answered exactly the way we hoped. But if we talk with enough people about this, they tell us that overwhelmingly, answers to their prayers do not appear on demand or in the form they imagined.
The reality is that life is an organic flow with many multifaceted and moving parts. Therefore, we cannot anticipate all the aspects that must change synchronistically to bring about our answers. Because we cannot know the complete backstory and the human complications that make up the churning wheels of life, it is best we trust that these things, known and unknown, will be transformed accordingly. Therefore, the truest prayer comes from surrendering to the mystery of reality.
This leaves us with the question: if things unfold as they will anyway, why not put our energies into trusting reality instead of prayer? The answer is that we pray because we are sensitive to something that needs to be healed, righted, forgiven, renewed, restored, salvaged, and more. However, we cannot accept the answer to the prayer unless our perception of the issue and level of consciousness about it also changes. So, we surrender our expectation that we will receive the best answer to our prayer. Surrender readies us to see the issue with different eyes by lifting our level of consciousness out of egocentricity into trust.
Conscious Prayer does not include the notion that we know the answer and that God needs to see what we see and do something about it. Instead, in surrendered, conscious prayer, we are transformed to see the situation through the eyes of spirit rather than the eyes of our wishes, regardless of how noble they are. By shifting our perception of the problem, our hearts are receptive to the many other ways the situation can be helped other than our ego’s desires. The miracle of prayer is the change in ourselves from expecting what we want to being open to a higher way.
But the higher way may include suffering.
I recall that during our son Ben’s lengthy illness, my constant prayers were that he be healed. What could be a more ideal prayer than for the healing of a young man just beginning his life, a young man who was needed and loved so much? But my prayers were not answered the way I wanted them to be. After Ben’s death, I thought the bottom of our lives had dropped out and that we were in a dark abyss. But the soul arose, and the bottom held. Due to our support and the love surrounding us, we rejected despair and bitterness. Eventually, by relinquishing our concept of how things should be, Lark and I could now accept that no matter how much pain we endure, there is a higher order of life and death that we cannot comprehend.
Though I cannot agree with undeserved suffering, I must surrender to he fact that it is reality. When we think about it, even Jesus relinquished his will to the higher power: “Father, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
Spiritual practice: Is there a prayer you make that never seems to be answered in the way you hope it will be? Try relinquishing your concept of what is best. How does this affect you?
Self-inquiry: What desire you pray for, would you never relinquish?
Dear God,
I pray for the strength and courage to surrender and be open to a higher way. And if that higher way sends me into grief, I pray my soul receives what it needs to make it through and to grow. Amen
