What is the purpose of prayer? Well, one thing prayer is not for is to change the Universal Presence of God. That is not only an impossibility, but if everyone's prayer could change God, we'd live in a chaotic Universe. God, which is another name for the first order of the Universe, is changeless. The reason for prayer is to change us. We seek to adjust our point of view, our positions, and our opinions to be in alignment with the fundamental harmony of the Universe.
Prayer is your Spiritual Remote Control. When you use your remote control to change the channel on your television, you can sit on the sofa, point it at the TV set, and the channel is changed. Many people go through their everyday life without realizing they have a personal clicker at their disposal to change the experiences and even the trajectory of their life. Many are stuck on a particular channel in their mind. And thus, stuck in their life.
Imagine you’re in your house, and your television stays on one channel. It’s the doom and gloom station, and you’re watching it over and over again. And because you have no remote control, you can’t go to another channel. That's how many human beings are living, without recognizing they have a life clicker that can take them out of their channel hell. They're not surfing to find the unlimited thoughts available, which are in alignment with the qualities of God and the true nature of their being. But we have the ability to change that by using our spiritual remote control. In order to put our spiritual remote control to use, we must not believe every thought that we think, every opinion that flows through our mind or everything that bubbles up in our awareness.
I remember a time when I went to a workshop for folks and organizations who have a message to share with the world. We were there to learn how to use today's technology to get our messages out. I stayed at the local hotel, and when I got up in the morning, I looked for a shirt I planned to wear that day. But the shirt was gone. I looked for it on the spare bed where I left it the day before. I searched around the room. I looked in the closet, the bathroom, and went through my suitcase. I even looked under the bed. The shirt was nowhere to be found.
I started thinking and asked myself, "Why would the cleaning person throw my shirt away?" I believed the person who cleaned the room disposed of my shirt. I was disturbed. Once I finally accepted that the shirt was gone, I decided to look inside one of the dresser drawers. I knew it wasn’t there since I never use those drawers while on short trips, I keep everything in my suitcase. I opened up the drawer and bam! My shirt suddenly appeared. I forgot that I had put it there the day before.
As I reflected on that experience, I remembered how often we think thoughts that have nothing to do with what's real. It further reminded me of the value of stopping and periodically asking throughout the day, “What and whose thoughts am I thinking? What is the origin of that thought? Is it coming from infinite possibility or from the channel that's the sea of mental garbage?" We all have the capacity to change the channel of our mind at any time. We have to be aware of every thought that emerges from our minds. Then we should not necessarily believe them. When we stop believing every thought that we think, we access our spiritual remote control and reset the direction of our life.
Peace and Blessings,
James