How To Pray Effectively
In order to pray effectively, you must first see yourself as a co-creator with the divine. So many people have been taught that they are helpless and that their only relationship with God is that of a beggar. Whether you hold that belief consciously or subconsciously, such a belief will dramatically influence how you perceive yourself in relationship to the infinite.
To begin with, it is important that you remember that you, too, are divine. If you separate yourself as one who is not divine, and then say that God is divine, then you are beginning your prayer with an erroneous assumption. God does not create anything unlike itself. God does not create anything that is not divine by nature. In other words, we are all made of the same thing: love and infinite worthiness.
When you acknowledge that you are as divine as the God that you pray to, you place yourself in the same ocean. The ocean of love and worthiness. Now you are positioned to make your request for help as a co-creator. The nature of prayer as a divine co-creator is vastly different from approaching prayer as a beggar. A beggar approaches prayer as though there is nothing that they can do. Such a person’s approach to prayer is dramatically one-sided. It says, “I can do nothing, and therefore God must do everything.” At first glance, this might sound very good and very humble. And indeed, if you are talking about your ego, this statement is absolutely 100% true.
But we are talking about a perspective where the ego has no say at all. It is the ego that wants you to see yourself as a helpless victim. It is the ego that provides you with the wondrous experience of utter separation from God. It is the ego that says you are not like God, you are not worthy of love, and judges you harshly as a helpless victim. And then it will finish you off by telling you that you deserve all of this mayhem in your life because you are fundamentally undeserving of God’s love. Does that sound like a good place from which to pray? Of course not. If you believe such nonsense from the ego, the distance between you and God becomes far too great.
When we say you are “like God”, we mean that you are of the same love. It means that you start from a basis of shared love. From here you can relax and be open. From here the fear of unworthiness is gone. It is very difficult to pray openly and with deep sincerity if you are a nervous wreck wondering if God deems you worthy of a solution to your problems.
The reason to function as a co-creator when praying for help is because God is by nature an active force and when you are positioned in this way, you also become an active force. The spark of these two energies ignites creative movement and solutions that are far more powerful. If you see yourself as a victim or helpless beggar, then God remains active but you are static. It is very difficult for the universe to aid a person who positions him or herself as immovable.
What are the benefits of praying as a co-creator with the divine? Firstly, in doing so you stop positioning yourself in opposition to God. You do not create an unnecessary polarity that God is good and you are the opposite, and therefore act as a beggar looking for mercy. Instead, you share the same love with that higher power and issues of worthiness no longer play into your prayers. Now you can be open and trusting, which leads to a natural state of humility. This is different from the false humility where you berate yourself as bad for making mistakes, etc… Beating yourself up is not humility. That is just the nasty ego trying to take you down by breaking your connection with God.
When you are open, trusting, and receptive you are naturally humble because there are no power struggles involved. There are no “deals” to be made with God. You begin by accepting God’s love. In fact, it could be said that the very definition of humility is a natural acceptance of God’s love where you cease punishing yourself with negative judgements. What this begets next is a willingness on your part. You show yourself to be open and willing to receive.
The second benefit in positioning yourself as a co-creator when you pray is that you show you are willing to be active in the solution. You are willing to work in partnership with the divine by evolving and expanding in order to manifest whatever it is you desire. You are willing to learn. You are willing to try something new. The fact that you are open and receptive in this frame of mind also shows that you are willing to demonstrate the courage to change. With all of these things in play, you give the universe so much more to work with. You indicate that you are flexible enough to embody whatever changes are necessary to experience the results that you seek.
It is always a wonderful thing to pray for others. But remember that their willingness and receptivity also play a role in the result. There are likely many things going on that you cannot see. So if it ever appears that such prayers are not answered, don’t blame yourself or indulge in a belief that this is a result of so-called unworthiness on anyone’s part. It may be that the person or persons you are praying for are receiving exactly the level of upliftment that they are prepared to experience. Accept the fact that you have given of yourself in the best way you can by requesting divine assistance. Prayer for others is always an act of love.
If you have unconsciously spent your life praying to God for help, yet feel as though God’s response is extremely unreliable, then you may want to try repositioning yourself in this new way. If you can offer yourself as an open-minded, receptive co-creator with the universe and with God, then you greatly expand your possibilities for numerous resolutions. Remember that the starting key to all of this is to be willing to accept and acknowledge God’s love.
Leave me a comment below and tell me what you think of these ideas. Also, please share with us if you have experienced any miraculous answers to your prayers. Thank you!
Dearest Saratoga, Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I cannot think of a more timely message in my life right now! I was just thinking about this not 40 minutes ago! I was wondering if prayer at all was something that even we should do… does it even help as we should be taking our own lives in our own hands and do we really get assistance when we pray?
Those were my very thoughts. Now from your message, I see its a divine answer that YES! Prayer does help and it is something that we can do and that we do get help when we pray. My situation right now calls for prayer and I am very grateful for your message today.
I was hoping to get an example of a prayer that is an indicative example as to how to pray from a place of divine presence as you speak of, if that is possible, or is it something that we just state that we are willing to take any measures that come to us that are necessary to see optimal results come to fruition? I guess I have just been so indoctrinated by Christian roots of such a formality of prayer, that I don’t want to come from that place, and I don’t know how to differentiate.
I also have more questions, Can we pray too much? I mean can we pray over all our problems or is that being weak or lazy?
I am just a little confused as to how to go about this. I would appreciate some assistance. Thank you again, this message is truly a Godsend and an answer to I guess one would say a “prayer!”
with Love, Susan McDonald
These are great questions, Susan. Let me see if I can help. You mentioned being indoctrinated by Christian roots of prayer formality. I’m wondering if many of your questions originate from such indoctrination. (Having a childhood background in Catholicism, I am somewhat familiar with this.)
I think that sometimes religious doctrines approach prayer from more of a mental place instead of from the heart. Religions are so much about what you SHOULD do, which is coming from a very different place than feeling from your heart. The problem with “shoulds” is that they position you from a place of judgement or fear of doing things wrong.
Prayer is all about love. Can you imagine what would happen if you had a child that you love and you found yourself looking for an authority to tell you exactly how often and in what way you should speak to that child? Of course you wouldn’t do that because speaking to a child that you love is such a natural thing. Prayer should be that natural, too.
There is no right or wrong way to pray. Praying and being lazy or weak are two entirely different things. For example, if you were a person who believed that you were weak in some way, you could pray for help with that problem. Even though we are made to function as creators, we are not independent of infinite love. After all, that is the very thing that keeps us alive and gives rise to our very existence.
One can never be too close to God. The best way to learn to pray from a place of presence is to practice some form of meditation. This is the best way to find your inner connection to your own divine presence. From here you can relax and see the divine, the universe, God, or whatever word you choose – as your dearest friend.
Don’t let religious beliefs intimidate you about God. That makes no sense whatsoever when God is purely love. The nature of God is infinite patience, kindness, and unconditional love and acceptance. Really, it is! Our biggest problem with prayer is a broken relationship with God due to the existence of fear. God’s hand is forever extended toward us. We can heal that relationship by shedding our fearful, false beliefs and sincerely reaching out to God in return. We will be 100% accepted no matter what has happened in our lives.
I hope this helps!
Thank you .. that helps immensely .. I will certainly “meditate” on all of that and more! 🙂
Hi Saratoga; What a great message! When I reflect back at the times when I felt that nothing came of my prayers I see that I was always positioned as the needy victim – hardly a position of strength to welcome the most powerful force in the Universe – Love. Similarly when I consider the times when my prayers received powerful and immediate responses, I was always “in the love” when I prayed. This is also true of my experiences when meditating – how one meditation can be powerful and another flat. It seems we have to meet God half way (like attracts like) or we are just putting emphasis on the lie of our littleness. Actually my most powerful prayers are without words, which tend to be cumbersome and a product of the mind, when a sincere feeling and yearning from the heart is swift and direct and the divine response immediate. With this conscious understanding it need not be a hit and miss affair, so that if a response seems lacking I will know to look to myself and my positioning for the correction. Thanks so much,
Love Doug
Doug, this is a great point. The more that we acknowledge our oneness with God, the closer we are to having those prayers answered. To me, sincerity is the language of the heart. It is so pure, so unadulterated by language, that such a feeling rarely, if ever, needs to be explained. It provides a direct line to infinite love. Sincerity cannot be manufactured. It can only be discovered by relinquishing the ego and going deep within. I think that sincerity and surrender go very much hand in hand. And both are profoundly natural.
Hello Saratoga, you truly are in tune with my contemplations; for, it is this attitude shift I have just come to realize have longed stood in the way of all joyous fulfilments. This blog is prophetic.
Thank you,
Monica Palmer (T’Sheba)
You are so welcome, Monica!
This message confirms the feeling I have when I pray. When I let go of my thoughts and judgments about where I’m positioned in that moment, I feel Divine Presence at work. The more I witness myself in this process, without judgment or control, the more natural and real my prayers feel. I love this message. I pray everyday and it’s never been a “religious” experience but rather reaching in to the quiet essence where there is Oneness. Sometimes it’s difficult to get the intellectual ego to shut up, but it certainly is far more obvious to me as I continue to learn and evolve as to which is which.
Thank you for loving us and sharing in this way, Saratoga.
Such great teaching and insight. What a blessing you are in my life. Everything you share is so fraught with truth and meaning. It seems as if we are ready for this message and willing to accept God’s love and acknowledge who we truly are in the Universe. It’s a very different perspective for me, and I’m still working on it as I do get pulled away in my patterns. But less and less as I listen to my real voice.
Love to all who are tuning in… thank you to everyone for your incredible insights! Sharing your experiences gives me a greater perspective into my own experience. Someone once said to me that we are all students and we are all teachers.
Leigh
I agree, Leigh. I love to read what everyone is sharing on this blog. You are all such wonderful contributors, sharing from the heart. Thank you for this, because I believe that you are all helping each other.
Leigh, I know what you mean about prayer not being a religious experience. To me, that is the best! It’s like the difference between having someone tell you about eating an orange versus eating that delicious orange yourself. We really do need a direct experience of God.
And why shouldn’t we have that? It is what’s keeping us alive and lives behind our very breath. That energy is the most intimate, constant thing in each of our lives. It’s time to give up our collective guilt and unworthiness. That negative stuff is really silly and unnecessary when you think about it. What’s it supposed to do? Punish us? Why? What good would that do? These are the kinds of questions that I like to ask 🙂
Hi Saratoga,
I like to ask those kind of questions too! Like anytime the ego says anything. One of the best questions I find myself asking is something like “What good is that going to do me or anyone?” or maybe “What’s the point of (saying/thinking/feeling) that? That doesn’t do anyone any good!” The nice thing is that you pretty much always get silence after asking that kind of question. 🙂
I really love what you say about prayer being co-creative. I agree with what some of the others have written about past experiences of prayer when coming from a position of unworthiness – not very effective. It’s not just unworthiness but unwillingness also. This gets to the heart of being a creator – being willing to take action to bring my prayer to life in connection with God. That means not listening to that voice that says something like “you can’t do anything about this, you are powerless so you need help”.
Again, what good is listening to that going to do me? None whatsoever. I’ve done that enough times before that it’s pretty much a scientifically proven fact that nothing constructive is going to come into my life from buying into that particular lie, or any lie for that matter.
I’ve heard it said before that “There are no problems, only solutions” but maybe it’s more like “There are no problems. You keep taking action until you achieve the result you are seeking.” And it seems to me that this isn’t static – that it’s a continuously changing process because your vantage point changes as a result of your actions and you get greater clarity about what action to take next.
What I see more clearly now from what you have written is that consciously bringing that willingness to take action with God through prayer supercharges you with possibility. What I also realize is that I could do this more often than I have been doing. So I will. Maybe it’s the best way to approach anything important. Or maybe anything, at some level!
Thank you so much for this wonderful message!
With Love,
Avalon
Great comments, Avalon! It’s interesting what you say about the ego. The ego is always negative – whether it’s about yourself or about someone else. Thus it tends to offer very bad advice. You are right that it is very interesting to question the results of taking that advice, rather than just reacting to it automatically. It’s a great way to become more conscious and in greater command of yourself.
I also like what you said about unworthiness and unwillingness because these two things go hand in hand. Unworthiness will always make you unwilling because if you don’t believe you deserve something, you will be very unwilling to take action on it.
Here’s something else to think about: Does it seem reasonable that God would create an unworthy creation? Does it seem reasonable that God would deliberately create something incapable of reaching its full potential? Of course not. Unworthiness is simply a belief that is inaccurate. We are not born unworthy. If we think this way, it is only because we have been convinced of it by someone else.
Thank you for this beautiful, clear explanation of the beauty and power of prayer when it is offered from a place of surrender and truth. Wow, how different your approach is from every conventional offering in the world at large! For some time now my prayer has been for clarity and knowing. I feel that I have come a long way in those areas.
It has been my experience that the more I open to accepting the truth of the divine in me, the more divine grace is able to be visible in my life. In other words, the more easily my life flows over the bumps and boulders. As I am learning to meditate, I find that meditation is wonderfully supportive of my experience.
I see my breath as a metaphor for an open prayer with God and when I accept this knowing, I feel a profound love and connectedness with light. It’s like having an open telephone link through which my heart can converse.
I have been trying to expand this experience into everyday aspects of my life. For example, I try to remember my breath as I interact with the world around me. When I can accomplish this, I relax more and I begin to see and feel a natural flow in how to proceed. I also feel a profound love throughout my being. And, best of all, I begin to see the love and light in all I meet.
Yes, the ego will try ‘piling-on’ but I am also learning to differentiate sooner and I have found that it is becoming easier to recognize its ‘modus operandi’ as I become more and more accepting of the truth of who I am. I am focusing on developing a pattern of prayer through my breath and heart whenever I face a challenging situation.
Marianne, I love your metaphor of the breath as an open prayer with God. That is so beautiful! It is like an open prayer of creation, as the breath embodies the yin and the yang of all that is. It embodies giving and receiving. On the exhale we give and on the inhale we receive. Together the cycle is complete and we are one with our creator. What a fantastic way to connect with a much deeper, more authentic experience of prayer. Thank you for sharing this. It’s brilliant! 🙂
Hi Saratoga,
This is SO WONDERFUL!! It is so interesting that after so many years of “working on myself”, that it never occurred to me that I was taking this position in prayer. But I was. It was such an unconscious, disconnected request, and an act of being a total victim.
Realizing this Truth in prayer is so helpful. Just contemplating this truth opens my heart. Being an active participant as a Co-creator with God is so powerful. I love what you said about having courage, being an active participant, and not taking the role of a victim. This is truly wonderful.
Every word in this blog is a jewel. Thank you so much.
Kathleen
You make an interesting point, Kathleen. The more you position yourself as a victim, the more unconscious you will be of God’s existence. Victimhood invokes separation from the divine because by definition it represents abandonment. If we believe we are abandoned by God it immediately steers our thoughts into those of unworthiness. Thus the negative cycle is perpetuated.
There is simply no advantage to seeing ourselves as victims in relationship to God. God does not abandon us. That intelligence and love is what keeps every molecule of our being vibrant and alive. Our job is to restore our experience of that oneness by challenging and discarding our false beliefs. It is our false, negative beliefs that separate us from that divine power and love.
Hey, everyone, I was just thinking that a wonderful approach to prayer is to consciously decide to heal our relationship with God. Isn’t this what we human beings struggle with the most? We are so fraught with a collective anxiety around prayer. Does God hear us? Does God care? Will our prayers be answered? Are we collectively abandoned?
These are all symptoms of a separation that needs to be healed. These are all signs of a oneness that needs to be restored. Why not pray for help in restoring that beautiful relationship of shared love with God, where we can relax and stop questioning our collective worth as a humanity.
Hi Saratoga,
I love this idea. It’s so direct! When you think of it, this is the whole issue, isn’t it? Everything that I can think of that’s important and that I would want to co-create with God would flow out of restoring oneness and healing the separation anyway. And that would be true individually and collectively.
I think these are really powerful points that you make about humanity’s collective worth and unworthiness and victimhood actually creating separation from the divine. It feels to me that combining this awareness with a willingness to accept God’s love that you mention in the article is “where the rubber hits the road”, so to speak. 🙂
Thank you for this additional valuable insight!
You are most welcome, Avalon! There seems to be a very deep, almost primordial belief on a collective level that the nature of humanity is to be both good and evil. This is the source of all of our collective and individual confusion, and why we believe we should be judged by God. This is the main, underlying source of our unworthiness.
The fact that humans are capable of evil is proof positive that there is something wrong here. And the fault does not ultimately lie within our human nature. Our divine nature is purely love. It is time that we acknowledge that and accept it.
The fact that we are capable of evil is why we are so confused. It doesn’t make any sense and it in no way matches the truth of who we are. We need to stop saying that good and evil is just “how we are” because it’s not true. There are conditions here that make the existence of evil possible. Those conditions are the problem, not us.
In the real world of infinite love, there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever that something such as evil can exist. It is time that our planet be restored to those infinite conditions and rejoin the universe of infinite, divine love. And this is why prayer is so important. If we continue to pray from a platform that we, as humans, are inherently good and evil by nature, we are actually affirming our problem to God.
As Telstar, we seek to help people shift their platform of prayer from one that is erroneous to one that beautifully aligns with the truth.
It is wonderful how this subject continues to expand and expand. Your latest reply is so clarifying and really reaches to me in a meaningful way.
I have felt the confusion you refer to about humans being capable of evil very deeply before, especially when related to some kind of personal experience or observation. This would often be exactly what would bring me to want to reach out to God in prayer in the first place, usually in some hope of finding some kind of a meaningful answer. Now I can recognize in these experiences the truth of what you say about prayer coming from a platform of humans being inherently good and evil actually affirms this problem to God. It feels like the communication, though seemingly heartfelt, was incomplete or cut off somehow. More and more, I am remembering how vital it is to side with the truth of who I am and who we are as humanity and this is one more very important example.
As I write this, I notice something else. Perhaps my prayers were answered after all, in that I have read and received the communication of this message and I ultimately have received many of the answers I sought so many times before.
I cannot find words to convey how important this is to me. I can only say thank you, again.