Praying Wrong

(5-Minute Read) – I can’t even tell you how many times I heard, “We’re praying for Gina.”

But my wife still deteriorated. She still couldn’t seem to find peace, and she died too young after ten years of suffering.

Were all of us praying wrong?

Does God answer prayers?

I’ve heard the argument that God may not answer your prayers, not because he loves you any less, but because it’s his choice and only he knows his reasons. That’s not a very satisfactory answer. It implies there is something that qualifies one to be answered, for whatever reason, while another is unfortunately denied. There’s no all-loving ring to that.

It sounds more like a lotto. A game of chance. You could get answered, if you’re fortunate. Or maybe not if the dice doesn’t fall right.

Or God decides based on some criteria that we don’t know, but somehow must grade or rank people and their requests in some way. It all sounds a bit contrived and juvenile. Surely God is a more nuanced and awesome concept than that. Surely we cannot judge whether God answers prayers like we would judge how a person responds to a question. Isn’t the question ‘does God answer prayers’ ridiculous to begin with?

Making God in our image

Many people seem to believe in a god who blesses this one and doesn’t bless that one. In their schema, God just never gave Gina his blessings for some reason.

That’s not fair. That sounds too human – to subject to our human type of biased judgement.

Surely, a loving God is above this differentiation. Surely he either spreads bliss to all, or he gives it to none. Or, he simply has nothing to do with that level of creation.

A God of infinite love would not ‘approve’ of any petitions since they’re all made by ego-consciousness. Praying is asking for blessing in one or another form for ourselves, our families or our communities. It is always based on personal emotions and thoughts, on judgments of what is right and wrong, good and bad. It presumes to know God’s mind, and appeals to him as a judge hearing our case.

The focus is all wrong

It suits many people to think of God as the judge. The almighty one who is generous to those who beg. Some have discarded that ‘white-haired old man’ image of God for a more sophisticated reward system. These more contemporary, humanistic perspectives think of God as within us, a generous synchronicity in the universe that rewards those who manifest what they want through their own positive thought.

It doesn’t matter how we frame it.

What it boils down to is that many of us think we deserve something and that we’ll get it if we beg, and if we do A, B and/or C. If we don’t get it we’ve done something wrong that has put us out of favour with the giver, or we’re doing something incorrectly that’s causing un-manifestation.

The problem is we’re seeing the world and our place in it from a personal ego perspective. We are wanting things, asking for things and believing that we will have things. Our attention is habitually turned upon ourselves and our lives. We think our problems and challenges are priority number one in absolute terms, and we think the solutions we seek are significant in themselves beyond our lives.

But this is not true. Our problems and challenges are not priority number one to anyone but ourselves. The solutions we seek are not very significant in the grand scheme of things. Our perspectives are highly limited at best, and totally incorrect, at worst.

Thy will be done

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s only one ‘how to pray’.

It is, “Thy will be done.”

And what it really means to me is there is not an answer to prayers in the sense of some assessment of a request and decision on whether to grant it or not. There is merely nature with all its imperfections. There are people with all their glory and their darkness. What will be, will be. And everything is as it is meant to be.

“Thy will be done,” means I have no desire to ask for anything. I want nothing. Instead I am totally accepting. It means I have no desire to have anything my way. I have no ‘my way’.

Paradoxically when we discard prayer from the perspective of self, we discover contentment. Everything is nothing and nothing is everything. We forget ourselves and become instead vehicles of compassion for the world and the suffering in it. We become truly God-like in our self-sacrificing solidarity with creation. A connected life evolves – a life of involvement in the imperfections, and gratitude for the perfections. A life that is free of blessings and curses. An experience of beautiful emptiness that can only be filled by the divine.

In the words of Khalil Gibran:

And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.

But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,

And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,

“Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.”

The way it is

Gina had a genetic mutation. She was not loved less. She was not cursed. Not all the prayer in the world, nor the ‘miraculous’ waters of Lourdes could change her faulty genes. She couldn’t manifest a change if she’d had ten lifetimes to try.

There is no God in the sky, or within us, or anywhere that received her petitions and decided whether or not to intervene with a miracle.

What there is, is Love beyond us and within us. We learn the infinite beauty of this Love through pain, suffering and imperfections in this world, not through all the things our egos desire. We learn this Love through a selfless and ego-less relationship with it. This Love, call it God if you like, is not definable, not nameable and not knowable in any symbolic way. We know it only through silence. Through letting go. Listening not talking. Accepting not asking.

Gina died and went into the metaphorical arms of Love. Her suffering – what some adjudged to be her curse – was her salvation.

I don’t pray much anymore… there’s no need. Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything, in the arms of Love.

My novel “On The Fifth Night”  takes you into ‘the arms of Love’. Click here to get an e-book or paperback.