A Reader's Excellent Comment on Prayer

The anonymous Comment on my December 4 entry is very wise:

“Perhaps ‘prayer’ is actually simply acknowledging the Source and Its power, and seeking to align oneself with that.”

Those words suggest to me that in my analogy of the individual acting as a lens to focus the power of the Source, the individual must be in some sense aligned with the Source. The words also bring to mind the phrase often used in the “I Ching” – that the “superior person” must be “in harmony with Heaven”. It also calls up the idea of “centering”.

The Source and the natural laws of “Heaven” are superior to all human endeavors and cannot be evaded or defied, and yet our chattering monkey-minds regularly scamper far from the path of harmony with Heaven and make it impossible to focus the Source until there is realignment.

The Source can never NOT be where we are, but we can obscure it and become unatuned to it in the same way that clouds can hide the sun, or a puddle which reflects the Moon can be muddied so that the Moon seems to disappear. The Source, the Sun, and the Moon are always there, but our own perceptions can be obscured. That is the greatest sadness and challenge of our human state.

I’m sure I’ve gone beyond what the author of the Comment intended, but I think it all fits together. The subject was prayer, and the Comment suggested “that prayer is simply acknowledging the Source and Its power, and seeking to align oneself with that.” Prayer means many things to many people, but the Comment describes the highest form of prayer, which is probably completely wordless.

I like the saying that prayer is a state of mind rather than a monologue. That also fits with the Comment, in which prayer is a process of seeking change in ourselves which will bring us into alignment with the Source.

Thank you for the Comment, Anonymous .