The power of prayer in your daily life

How to Benefit From the Power of Prayer

Before you attempt prayer, there are a few handy things you should know that will help you benefit from it the most:

1. Be willing to surrender your previous ideas about prayer.

As I mentioned above, you might need to go on a “detox” of your perceptions towards prayer. This might include deeply examining how you feel about prayer, and why. For me, this involved sitting down and thinking about my many mistaken beliefs. For you, this detoxing process might also involve introspection, or another tool such as journalling or meditation.

You will know when you are ready to pray when the very thought of “prayer” no longer makes you internally cringe.

2. Choose another name for “God.”

You don’t need to be religious to pray, and you also don’t need to believe in the “man above.” For prayer to be powerful, you need to think about what the highest possible good looks and feels like to you. Choose a name to replace the word “God” that feels comfortable and meaningful to you. Examples include Source, Consciousness, Love, Beloved, Divine, Goddess, Shiva, Allah, etc.

3. Pray for what you need, but also what you’re thankful for.

God isn’t a pimp. He/She/It doesn’t give you things because you are His/Hers/Its servant. This is what many of the world’s major religions would have us believe.

Surrender the idea that God is anything other than a universal source of complete unconditional love. Let go of the idea that God is there to punish, control or condemn you. The true “sin” is not in denying the existence of God, the true “sin” is believing that God is even capable of hurting you in the first place.

When you are praying to God, you are praying to that boundless, egoless source of love that is your true nature. This divine source of purity and peace wants the very best for you. Prayer is a way of communing with this divine source. Prayer is a way of allowing the Beloved to fulfil its ultimate desire: for you to be happy, whole and at peace.

Thanking God/Love/Divine will also increase your gratitude for life tenfold. The more you find to be thankful for, the happier you will feel, and the happier you feel, the more you are thankful for. It’s a beautiful cycle!

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

4. Allow your prayer to come from the heart.

This is perhaps the most important piece of advice: pray from the heart. If you don’t, if you repeat by rote old verses, if you say the same thing over and over again, your prayers will feel dead. You connection to the Divine will perish (at least consciously).

Instead, when you pray, pray from the soul. You don’t need to speak out loud. In fact, my most heartfelt prayers are said silently, and so can yours.

Making up your prayers as you go is also a much more authentic way to pray. However, if you find a prayer written by someone else that speaks to your heart, by all means, use it. There are no rules here. God/Divinity doesn’t care what you say, but how you say it, or what emotional sincerity you put into it.

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Here is a sample prayer:

Dear Beloved, all things in my life are sourced from you. Every blessing I have is because of you. My breath is yours, my mind is yours, my heart is yours, my body is yours, my soul is yours, my spirit is yours. I am yours, and you are mine. Let me embody you in my daily life. Let my life become an expression of your radiance and purity. Help me to surrender what no longer serves me. Help me to know what questions to ask and places to look when I am stuck. I give my trust to you unconditionally. I love you. Amen.

At heart, I am a mystic. So all of my prayers are mystical and have an ecstatic quality. You might have another heart: the heart of a musician, artist, architect or philosopher. Let your prayers embody whatever comes the most naturally to you.

Reflect on the Power of Prayer

In order for you to continue praying, it is important that you reflect on the power of prayer in your life. How has it helped you in times of need or want, even subtly? How has it filled you with more goodness? What changes has prayer brought to your life? The more you reflect on prayer, the more you will realise what an immense force of good it is.

So tell me, what is your relationship with prayer? Has it been tainted with your religious or cultural context? And if you regularly pray, how has the power of prayer transformed your life?