As I indicated in the October Ah-Man Newsletter, my blog discussions this month focus on expanding/improving our conscious contact with the God of our understanding. Prayer is one of the vehicles that can do just that.
As with many things life, prayer took different forms to me as my life changed. Many of us first learned about prayer from our parents…praying before we went to bed and/or at the dinner table. Then as we grew, we learned more. At church, temple, school or Sunday School, we might have been taught different prayers, as well as the appropriate time to recite them. For many of us, as we left school and became more engrossed in life apart from our homes and religious beliefs, prayer moved down on the priority scale, except when painful things happened or when we wanted something.
In the newsletter, I mentioned the things we need to do if we want to improve our relationship with someone. Well, imagine if our only contact with someone is when we want something?
Let me remind you of something most of us forget: our Divine Mother is always there with open arms, no matter when we decide to talk to her, or whatever it is we want to talk about. Mother God, Father God (whoever your relationship is with) will never abandon you. But on the other hand, we can shift our perspectives and energy surrounding God, (consciously or unconsciously) when we are predominately in this type of prayer mode.
When the only time we communicate with God is when we want something, it is our hearts that change, not God’s.
As we begin reconnecting to God, we begin to talk more regularly with Him. At first, it may be just those prayers we remember from our childhoods. Eventually, those prayers take on more of a personal trait. Maybe we add to those traditional prayers or just start to communicate through our own words.
Feeling the connection (for a lot of us, this might mean feeling more balanced in life, more secure, not as easily bowled over by life’s events), we begin to look forward to that quiet time when we “pray;” the time when we thank God for everything good that we have in life, and also let God know that we might not know why certain things are happening, but we know that it will eventually pass. We also might use that time to reflect on others and ask God’s guidance for both them and us.
We begin to understand that our relationship is not all about asking God to give us this…give us that…help me here…remove that person or obstacle from my life…but to ask for God’s guidance so that we accept whatever is in our path. Not that we become doormats for others, but so that we do everything we can possibly do, and leave the rest up to God.
I have heard it said:
Pray as if everything depends on God
Work as if everything depends on you
As we come more from our heart, we begin to soften and realize that God has always been here for us. It’s we who have drifted and prayer is one of the vehicles that allow us to continue to open up that beautiful connection/relationship with the God of our understanding.
Please share with me your experiences surrounding the expansion of your relationship with God.
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