Redefining Prayer

It is time to redefine prayer.  Prayer, in its usual definition, presupposes an external God or gods, which are alternately or simultaneously bowed down to, beseeched, or even the subject of anger and resentment.  The “New Age” alternatives to this external God are

1. God is a principal
2. God is in everything and
3. God is in us.

But all of these alternatives are really rationalizations rather than abandonments of the external God.  What we need is a total reversal, a figure ground shift.

This is subtle and difficult to grasp.  It can be best summed up in the phrase, “we are all God having human experiences.”  God is universal consciousness, and we as humans, and arguably all sentient beings, are embodiments of that universal consciousness, which can also, but misleadingly be termed the one God.  In other words, God is not in us, we are in God.  This is the figure ground shift I am calling for.

It is also a form of monotheism, but shorn of the theism.

If we are in God rather than God being in us, what does it mean to pray?  To pray to oneself is meaningless.  Instead prayer merges with intention.  It is beyond absurdity for God to pray to himself, but it makes perfect sense for God to intend.  As a matter of fact the power of intention can only be realized when we realize our true identity as God.  This is why we must get into still mind, the portal to the God state, in order for our intentions to bear fruit.  (I am using the word intention intentionally, in order to distinguish it from emotions and or actions, like wanting, willing, being goal directed etc.).  Intention, although it frequently leads to action, needs no action.  Rather it is automatic, like walking or peeing.  We intend it and it just happens.

But, and this is the rub, we, as God’s embodiments must ask, not necessarily in words but in our own intentions.  In a sense God must ask God; God the embodiment must ask God the universal– for what?

To intend to make us whole, to intend to heal us, to intend to guide us, and most of all, to intend to make us, his embodiments, realize that they are just that!

This then is “prayer” redefined.

Jeff Eisen, Ph.D.