Many of you, I'm sure,
are confused about the underlying philosophy of prayer. Consequently, often
your prayers are not answered. Here, I attempt to provide some insights into
the success of prayers.
Why We Pray
To begin with we must understand as to why do we pray?
There are basically 12 reasons for prayer:
1.
We pray to depend on God for help in
distress.
2.
We pray for asking God for
enlightenment.
3.
We pray for communion with God through
single-minded devotion.
4.
We pray for asking for peace from God
when the mind is restless.
5.
We pray for surrendering ourselves to
God completely.
6.
We pray to God for giving us the ability
to comfort others.
7.
We pray for thanking God for his
blessings.
8.
We pray for expecting God to decide what
is best for us when we are in a dilemma.
9.
We pray for making friendship with God.
10. We pray for melting the mind and ego in
silence in God.
11. We pray for requesting God to give
strength, peace and pure intellect, e.g., the [a
href="http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/aa061003a.htm"]Gayatri
Mantra[/a].
12. We pray for asking God to purify the
heart and make us abide in Him forever.
Two Parts of a Prayer
In essence, what the above 12 reasons convey to us is
that a prayer has two parts: one is soliciting a favor from the Almighty and
the other is surrendering ourselves to His will. While the first part is
practiced by most of us on a daily basis, the second part is the real and
ultimate goal because it implies dedication. Dedication means feeling the light
of God within your heart. If your heart is devoid of divine light, you will not
be happy, cheerful and successful in your lives.
Guard Your Selfish Desires
Remember, your success depends on the inward state of
your mind. Your mind will create hindrance in your work if it is not in
communion with God because He alone is the permanent abode of peace. Yes, I
agree that most of us want to have riches, healthy lives, nice children and
prosperous future. But if we always approached God with a begging attitude then
we are treating Him as our bearer to supply the things required by us at once.
This is no devotion to God but devotion to our own selfish desires.
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