Part 5 of 6

The Deep Pool of Your Being

Effective Prayer  –  (A student)

Only those who experience a deep, inner spiritual contact or realization can pray effectively. This may, at first, seem a shocking statement to those who have been brought up in the old teachings that we must turn to God, pray to God, ask, beseech God for this, that and the other thing. However, as we meditate and ponder this subject of effective prayer, we find that if we do not receive what we pray for, we pray amiss. Certainly we are all well acquainted with the sort of prayer that is “praying amiss.”

In The 1954 Infinite Way Letters we find this quotation: “Praying is a spontaneous unfoldment of Truth from within our own being. Prayer is a spontaneous revelation of God in action. Prayer is our degree of receptivity to Truth. Prayer is the avenue opened within ourselves to receive the Love, Life, Truth, and the unfolding Wisdom of God.”

“Prayer, then, is the spontaneous flow from the Father within, to our outer consciousness. Prayer is the recognition of the nature of God as fulfillment. Prayer is the realization of our inseparability from God. ‘I and my Father are one,’ is the relationship established in the beginning. One-ness with God is the divine state of our being, but only prayer can reveal it.” Through different states and stages of development we have been taught various concepts about the nature of God and the nature of prayer, but suddenly we come to a point in our experience where we realize that no longer will any of these concepts suffice. We come face to face with the realization that nothing has been given us on the nature of God or the nature of prayer that is of any value whatever in this particular moment; and it is then that we must begin to strip away the centuries of false beliefs and ideas that have built up in our consciousness through being subjected to the world’s concepts concerning these two great points.

No one can tell us anything about the nature of God or the nature of prayer. We come to realize that no matter what we knew yesterday or this morning—in fact, if the realization we had at those times would literally raise the dead, now we must be renewed. In this moment we must come to a deeper realization of the nature of God and the nature of prayer, and as we go within our own consciousness we realize that we must give up any idea that there is a God to whom we can pray; that there is any God who can be cajoled, wheedled or influenced to bring about any personal desire, or desired effect.

We must consider carefully all of the different concepts that have pressed in upon us. It is true that at certain stages of our development we have been taught to pray for things, for ideas, and then for spiritual realization, and there was nothing wrong with those prayers at the particular time. But now, today, this very minute in this moment in eternity, none of the old ideas or concepts are of any avail, and they must be weeded out and cast from us. As we turn within in stillness and in silence, with an utter lack of old conceptual beliefs and old ideas, we begin to realize, even in a small measure, the fact that there is a God that is “Closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet”; and that we live and move and have our being in that Infinite, Invisible Spirit. We become conscious of it the moment that no old ideas or concepts, no desires or wishings interfere with the listening that is going on within us.

As we sit in this silence, listening, attentive, waiting for the Word of God to well up in us, we find a new dimension coming into our experience regarding God, the nature of God and the nature of prayer. Surely this experience is prayer in a sense that is more real, more definite than any we have heretofore known; surely in this moment we are developing to a higher degree that inner listening ear that is the reality of communion. And so in this stillness, in this lack of mental and physical effort, in this moment of peacefulness, of letting go, of relaxing, we reach that point at the center of our being, and make contact with the Infinite Invisible that is within us. It is then that a transformation takes place, be it great or small in our eyes, and where once there was concept, erroneous concept, now there is, in some degree, knowledge of reality—calm, confident, serene knowledge in the realization of the nature, the activity, the essence and the being of that which we call God, in this moment of contact, in some small measure we have really, truly, experienced God, and it is this experience and this alone that constitutes effective prayer.

Only in the depths of an inner contact within the consciousness of an individual who has been sufficiently attuned to this Infinite within can one arrive at effective prayer. Only in the degree in which we, as individual consciousness, lose ourselves and become one in conscious awareness of the Infinite Invisible within us, are we able spiritually to transcend, to see through the things in our experience. There is no other type of effective prayer as we know it. The reason the prayers of saints and sages and practitioners seem more effective than ours is that they, through Grace, and through a process of inner development, have arrived at a state of spiritual consciousness which permits of constant, continuous contact, communion or union with the Father within. This is the test of our prayer: if we make our inner contact, if we gain our “click,” if we fill the gentle warmth within, we know that we have been experiencing effective prayer. Whenever this inner contact is not made, our prayer is in the realm if the letter of Truth, rather than in the realm if the Spirit of Truth, and it does not bear fruit of a spiritual nature. Again I quote from The 1954 Infinite Way Letters: “When we hear the still, small voice of God, when we receive the inner impartation or the feeling of the Presence of God, we are receiving the benefit of prayer, and whatever may be the necessary form of demonstration will take place in our experience.”

(A student)

End Part 5