Conditions of Effective Prayer
Prayer in its simplicity is beautiful. It is an expression of the soul to the Father. It is part of true worship.
Prayer has many functions. Consider this list.
196:0.10 (2088.5) Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the greatest of all offerings: the consecration and dedication of his own will to the majestic service of doing the divine will. Jesus always and consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father’s will. When you study the career of the Master, as concerns prayer or any other feature of the religious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Jesus never prayed as a religious duty. To him prayer was a sincere expression of spiritual attitude, a declaration of soul loyalty, a recital of personal devotion, an expression of thanksgiving, an avoidance of emotional tension, a prevention of conflict, an exaltation of intellection, an ennoblement of desire, a vindication of moral decision, an enrichment of thought, an invigoration of higher inclinations, a consecration of impulse, a clarification of viewpoint, a declaration of faith, a transcendental surrender of will, a sublime assertion of confidence, a revelation of courage, the proclamation of discovery, a confession of supreme devotion, the validation of consecration, a technique for the adjustment of difficulties, and the mighty mobilization of the combined soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayerful consecration to the doing of his Father’s will and ended his life triumphantly with just such a prayer. The secret of his unparalleled religious life was this consciousness of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship — unbroken communion with God — and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices.
Although Jesus had extended times for prayer, I can only imagine that the functions of prayer listed above were often accomplished in very little time. How is this possible? Please give a minute to think of your answer now. We will come back to this question after we examine the conditions of effective prayer. First, simply read through the section.
Conditions of Effective Prayer
91:9.1 (1002.6) If you would engage in effective praying, you should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:
1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.
2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.
3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values.
4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
5. You not only recognize the Father’s will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the Father’s will.
6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the Paradise ascension — the attainment of divine perfection.
7. And you must have faith — living faith.
Note any ideas that occur to you or questions that arise for you as you in your experience of reading through the conditions. It is important to spend some time doing this before we go to the next step, in which I will pose questions of my own.
9. Conditions of Effective Prayer
91:9.1 (1002.6) If you would engage in effective praying, you should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:
91:9.2 (1002.7) 1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.
Questions: What aspects of reality make the problem that you focusing on difficult? In what way do they call for stamina? What is cosmic stamina and how might we develop that?
91:9.3 (1002.8) 2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.
Questions: What can you do to deal with the problem that you are bringing into the prayer process? What meanings can you associate with the phrase “human adjustment”? What does it mean to exhaust the human capacity for human adjustment? How do you know if you have ever done that? Is there a sense in which we should regard it as consistent with the laws of prevailing petitions to pray while we are exhausting our capacity of human adjustment?
91:9.4 (1002.9) 3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values.
Questions: What wishes of mind do you have regarding the outcome of the situation about which you are praying? What cravings of soul? Notice that among in these conditions of effective praying it is nowhere said that you have to receive and recognize the divine revelation for what it is. Rather it simply speaks of an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values. Is it reasonable to assume (according to 91:8.11/1002.3) that when this happens, we are receiving an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness? Note: neuroscience confirms the revealed teaching that we are largely electrically and chemically controlled (110:4.5/1207.5); in fact, the motor cortex of the brain is often prepared to launch the action before we are even conscious of making a decision (Benjamin Libet, Mind Time). As I interpret the various kinds of evidence, it is rare to surrender our wishes of mind and cravings of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth.
91:9.5 (1002.10) 4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
Question. Sometimes we have done a certain amount of work with the prayer process but have trouble achieving a wholehearted decision. What are our options for further progress?
91:9.6 (1002.11) 5. You not only recognize the Father’s will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the Father’s will.
Question. Assume that condition #4 has been satisfied. Why is condition #5 still important?
91:9.7 (1002.12) 6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the Paradise ascension — the attainment of divine perfection.
Question. When we are out of work, it is common to pray for a job. When they are hungry, we may pray for daily bread. What is the importance of the redirecting of prayer as indicated in this condition?
91:9.8 (1002.13) 7. And you must have faith — living faith.
Question. What is living faith, and how do we cultivate that?
Clearly, each of these conditions could become the focus for considerable study, discussion, meditation, and experiential discovery. Consider creating a project on one or more of these conditions, if you have the time and interest.
For the moment, I wish to close this phase of the discussion by sharing two answers to the question of how the thorough teaching at the end of Paper 91 is consistent with the way of simplicity in prayer. First, many of the functions of prayer listed in 196:0 are different from the function of petition discussed in 91:9. But even more important, the conditions of effective prayer are stated in terms of virtues. Once acquired, these virtues are constantly on call, ready to become active whenever the situation calls for them as part of a unified character. Thus the multiplicity of conditions enhances the simplicity of the true prayer of the soul.
July 9, 2016