Читать книгу Manifest Your Destiny: The Nine Spiritual Principles for Getting Everything You Want - Уэйн Дайер, Wayne Dyer W. - Страница 17

In the matter of prayer it seems that we often view God as a gigantic vending machine in the sky who will grant us our wishes when we put in the proper tokens in the form of prayers. We expect to insert prayers, then pull on the knob and hope that God will dispense the goodies. The God vending machine becomes the object of our veneration. We tell the machine how good it is and how much we worship it and expect it to be good to us in return.

The basic premise here is that God is outside us and therefore what we need and want is also outside us. This form of prayer is like practicing the absence rather than the presence of God. If we believe that we are separate from God, the vending machine approach to prayer reinforces and deepens that belief.

I prefer to promote the idea of prayer in its essence as a communion with God. Praying at the spiritual level then becomes communing with and knowing that God is as close as our breath. What we seek in prayer is the experience of co-existing with God. Prayer is our communication of readiness for the desires of this sacred energy to manifest through our human form. No separation, no absence of God within, simply the presence of this force within ourselves.

Therefore, the true experience of God does not change or alter God, but it changes us. It heals our sense of separation. If we are not changed by prayer, we have denied ourselves the opportunity to know the wisdom that created us.

The search for happiness outside ourselves rekindles an idea that we are not whole and relegates prayer to the status of a plea to a boss/God. We are then asking for favors rather than seeking a manifestation of our invisible, inspired self.

Prayer, at the spiritual level I am writing about, is not asking for something any more than the attempt to become a manifester is asking for something to show up in your life. What I call authentic prayer is inviting divine desire to express itself through me. It is a prayer for what it is that is for my highest purpose and good, or for the greater benefit of all mankind. Prayer at this level expresses my experience of oneness with the divine energy.

This may sound like a radical or even blasphemous notion to you, but it is the source of all spiritual traditions. Here are a few examples.

Christianity: The kingdom of heaven is within you.

Islam: Those who know themselves know their God.

Buddhism: Look within, you are the Buddha.

Vedanta (part of Hinduism): Atman (individual consciousness) and Brahman (universal consciousness) are one.

Yoga (part of Hinduism): God dwells within you as you.

Confucianism: Heaven, earth and human are of one body.

Upanishads (part of Hinduism): By understanding the self, all this universe is known.

Overcoming your conditioning in this area is crucially important. At first, you may be able to accept this idea on an intellectual level, but be unable to make it your authentic experience. So, I suggest you make prayer your experience by using it to replace the random, continuous thoughts that you have all day. Use your trust to commune with God rather than to be in a constant state of chatter.

Replace thoughts about your experiences with the experience of prayer. For instance, praying in this sense can be a sentence such as “Sacredness guide me now” or “Sacred love flow through me now” silently recited instead of thinking thoughts. Prayer in this form is tilling and clearing the inner self of ego chatter so that what you desire and what desires you can grow. My personal practice of prayer is participating in a communion with God wherein I see God within me and ask for the strength and the inner awareness to handle whatever confronts me. I know that I am not separate from this vital force that we call God. I know that this force connects me to everything in the universe and that by placing my attention on what it is that I want to attract to myself I am really doing nothing more than manifesting a new aspect of myself.

I then let go of the results and let the universe handle the details. I retreat in peace and keep reminding myself that heaven on earth is a choice that I must make, not a place I must find. It is my choice to live with the God force flowing unrestricted through me, and it is the way of co-creating my life at this moment. Trust, then, is the cornerstone of my praying, and with it comes the peace that is the essence of manifesting.