Much studies and debates have been done on the efficacy of prayers. Almost everybody concluded saying that an intercessory prayer could have a measurable effect on the health condition of another person. After a thorough research and study, Washington Post said that prayer is the best compliment for medicine, far more effective than many holistic healing streams. But knowledgeable persons like Dr Fred Rosner doubt that prayer could ever be subject to a perfect empirical analysis.
Prayer, perhaps, is the most misinterpreted process on earth. A Prayer always has a wish, a goal or a need/want, added to it. The quality of embedded intentions and the nature of the ongoing thought process … all adds to decide the final manifestation quality. When it comes to fervent disciples hanging around any quality guru, the rules change.
Universe is still growing. In my boyhood, my understanding of prayer was that it is a process of repeating some japas. Eventually, I understood that it is sorting our woes and problems and assuring divine interference, every time. Later, I grew curious and began raising questions – struggles in and out were the result. To me it was inappropriate to personally disturb a God who is supposed to be all knowing and ever caring.
As years passed by, my idea of prayer changed again and I began to think that only praying for others stands theologically and practically correct. But my teachers did not allow me to settle there. They questioned our right to interfere in other’s karma, which they themselves are to fix. They taught that we need to allow them to continue on their choice healing tracks.
It is true that each and everybody here has their own individual purposes. The environment in which one lives, those aptitudes in him, those habitual patterns in him, the friends/ relatives one has… all might reveal the purpose, the universe has assigned one to handle. Every religion agrees to the rule that there is an order for everything in this universe. It again reminds us that we are not allowed to change anything here, unless the universe wants it to be done.
Even if we are permitted to pray, how are we going to settle those possible struggles that surface within? Suppose we are praying for a very old bedridden man. Deep within we have the reality that he is destined to die any moment even though our words say that he will be saved. When what we intend within and pray in practice oppose each other, what is going to manifest first? Take prayer help only from those who actually know to pray.
My prayer slowly changed to an expression of gratitude to the universe, and now it is more or less ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. It only means that it is not the human wish but always the divine Will that is to manifest everywhere. Now my prayer is letting appropriateness reign over the universe, as it has ever been.
