Jagat

Sadhaka's prayer: May God bless us with pure devotion and love for Him, friendship with the community of devotees with whom we can share that love without fear or inhibition, and the opportunity to serve the less fortunate. And may He keep us free from the evil -- within and without -- that makes us forget Him and creates obstacles in our service to Him, the devotees, and the world and humanity at large. Why is it important to pray? Why is it important to pray correctly ? Prayer is an expression of our innermost desire, either as description or as prescription. It is what we want, presented in purest self awareness to the Self.

[This is a late posting from 11-01-2008, so there may be erroneous references.] Once again, a commentary on religion at the Guardian Comment is Free page ( Let us Pray ) has sparked hundreds of commentaries. Theo Hobson has a liberal approach to Christianity, so his comments on prayer are an attempt to understand it spiritually and in a psychologically progressive manner: The atheist account of prayer has very little connection to the reality. The believer does not pray in order to try to influence God's will. Instead, he's trying to influence his own will , to make it conform to his worldview. Prayer is essentially a matter of saying "Help me, God, to be what I should be." The believer acknowledges a conflict between what he is naturally inclined to be, and what he feels he should strive to be. I suppose such a conflict is totally unknown to the atheists, who feel that they effortlessly realise moral perfection in their daily lives. Also, the believer reminds h...