PRAYER
by Dr. Lawrence Wilson
©
July 2015, L.D. Wilson Consultants, Inc.
Prayer is an
ancient, simple and very effective method of healing, and for achieving
anything else you may desire provided it is something wholesome that you
actually need and will benefit from.
What is more, everyone can use this method daily at no cost. This article discusses which prayers
are powerful, how to meditate and pray, and why it works so well and so easily
in most cases.
THE
MEDITATION EXERCISE TAUGHT BY MR. ROY MASTERS
I recommend
this exercise because it is one of the most powerful, safest and simplest of
all the prayers or meditations I have seen. These are all important concerns when picking a meditation
or prayer to do on a daily basis.
The Roy
Masters exercise or system of prayer is discussed in much more detail in the
article on this website entitled Meditation. This is an important article on this
website, and this exercise is a key for healing at many levels.
Is
meditation Òof the devilÓ?
Some churches discourage meditation as being Ònew ageÓ or Òof the
devilÓ. This exercise is
neither. Roy Masters is a devout
Christian, even though his teachings are somewhat controversial among
Christians. The system he teaches
is simple and non-denominational.
It will give extremely good results when done correctly, as explained in
the meditation article mentioned above.
Moving
energy downward through the body.
The Roy Masters exercise moves energy in a downward direction, from the
head toward the right hand, and eventually down into your feet and beyond. While this seems simple enough, it is
in fact the basic energetic direction of many healing prayers and
meditations. This is an astounding
concept that is explored in another detailed article on this website called Etheric Energy, Downward Motion and Healing.
Many people
use prayer and meditation without realizing this fact, but it is the
truth. Not all prayer and
meditations move energy in this way, and those that do not are far more
dangerous and not nearly as healing for the body.
Emptying
the mind rather than filling it with new thoughts, sounds or emotions. Emptying the mind of your
thoughts and ideas is another key concept for the effectiveness of prayers and
meditations. It is somewhat
analogous to emptying the energy of the body downward toward the earth.
Once again,
many prayers and especially affirmations do not empty the mind. Instead, they substitute new thoughts
for the ones that are in the mind.
This can work, but is not as safe, generally, and can lead one astray,
at times. The reason is that the
thoughts one desires, such as to be rich or famous, may not be what one really
needs. Therefore, filling the mind
with such thoughts can cause a deep conflict in the mind. Empyting the mind of thoughts creates
no such conflict and simply opens the mind to higher thoughts of many
kinds. It is the same idea as
asking for Òthy will be doneÓ, rather than trying to impose your own will on
your mind.
Healing.
Unlike some other prayers and
meditations, the Roy Masters meditation is very healing, and not just because
it reduces stress. Moving energy
downward activates the bodyÕs deepest energy centers to promote deep healing of
the mind and the body. Emptying the
mind is also very healing for most people, since improper thoughts and emotions
contribute subtly to diseases of all kinds.
A
safe way to meditate daily. Safety should be everyoneÕs primary concern with all
meditation and prayer. This may be
an odd statement. However, most
meditations and many affirmations are not that safe, in my view. For example, some types of prayers and
meditations cause odd phenomena such as visions to occur. While this may be benign, sometimes it
is not.
Some prayers
can cause a person to become detached and spacy. This is also not as safe. Some cause a person to want to die, in fact. Many prayers are good for a while, but
then they seem to lose their effectiveness. That is because they have achieved their purpose and can
take one only so far on the path toward health and mental clarity. Others require a teacher and paying
large fees to be guided.
Still others
must only be done with supervision in a group and are only safe when done for
short periods of time. So safety
concerns are important. The Roy
Masters exercise suffers from none of these flaws, and has other advantages as
well.
OTHER
POWERFUL AND SIMPLE PRAYERS
The
LordÕs Prayer. This famous
prayer I find less powerful than the purely energetic Roy Masters
exercise. However, it is always an
excellent prayer as it teaches one to honor and respect Òthy will, not my
willÓ. This is a powerful
principle of prayer that helps empty the mind and keeps one from going astray,
at times.
The concept
is that by emptying oneÕs mind of oneÕs own desires, the will of the Creator
can enter the mind, and this is far more wonderful than anything one can even
dream of by oneself. This does not
mean that one should have no will of oneÕs own. This is not the intent of the prayer at all. It simply means that one should
repeatedly ask to have oneÕs personal will in alignment with a higher or more
enlightened will of the Creator or God.
For more, please read The LordÕs Prayer on this site.
The
23rd Psalm of David in the Old Testament. This is another famous and effective
prayer or affirmation. When I was
ill, I used this prayer, along with the Roy Masters exercise, many times each
day to help stop negative thoughts and retrain my mind to think
differently. It is described in
more detail in a separate article on this website entitled The 23rd Psalm.
Other
prayers, affirmations and meditations.
Other
prayers include the 91st Psalm of David of the old testament of the
Bible, as well as many others, of course, from many traditions, both Western
and Oriental. Some of these
prayers can be powerful and most helpful at various times. However, in nutritional balancing
science, I recommend only the Roy Masters type of meditation as it appears to
be the most powerful. Each of us
only has so much time for prayer and meditation, so if you are using many
different ones, you may seriously dilute your results by using some that are
not as powerful as the pure downward motion of the Roy Masters exercise.
The next
section discusses how prayer works on the mind.
HOW
PRAYER WORKS ON THE HUMAN MIND
Mechanisms
of prayer:
1. Prayer works by engaging the mind in a
certain activity, exercise or direction. This is the first principle of
prayer. It is based on the fact
that the mind is somewhat flexible and open to new ideas and thoughts, no
matter how fixed or close-minded a person may appear.
2.
Some prayers and especially affirmations work because of the power of
suggestion. By suggesting
certain things to the mind, it helps shift the mind away from other thoughts
and ideas that are more harmful.
This may be considered a form of brainwashing or propaganda.
Make no
mistake about it, some prayers are designed to engage the mind in a certain
direction to achieve a certain goal.
There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact any intelligent person
engages his or her mind in certain pursuits in order to keep oneÕs mind from
engaging in either random or negative thinking, emotions and other
activities. There is nothing wrong
with saying you wish to brainwash yourself with positive ideas, for
example.
The only
caveats are that those ideas must be absolutely true, and not wishful
thinking. The problem with some
affirmations and even prayers is if they involve wishful thinking. This is decidedly dangerous for your
mind because if the thought is not true, even at some times, then it sets up a
conflict within your brain that cannot be resolved without some kind of mental
crisis.
If you
intend for a mental crisis to occur and are prepared for it, that is fine. But if you think you can brainwash
yourself any way you want and get away with it, watch out. You may be in for a nasty surprise when
the affirmation conflicts with reality.
Perhaps a
few examples would be helpful. If
you keep affirming you are rich or you are loved when it is not the case,
reality will catch up to you and you will be sorely disappointed. If, however, you are willing to just
acknowledge that you want to be rich or loved, then it is fine. Be careful what you say, in other
words, to avoid fake or wishful thinking.
Even common affirmations such as ÒI am better each dayÓ or something
similar, may be somewhat fake unless you are really working on yourself each
day. There is no substitute for
working on yourself daily.
Another way
to say this is there are no shortcuts to reprogramming the mind that I know
of. There is only doing the work,
as they say, of weeding your mental garden, watching your thoughts and actions,
and making corrections whenever you see that your mind is veering off course
with negative thinking, self-pity, harmful emotions, etc.
3.
Some prayers can help condition the mind to think along certain lines, and not
in others. This is not
the same as the brainwashing or propaganda idea above. This is more about learning how to think
rather than what to think.
Prayer can
be used, for example, to remind one that God is in charge, not anyone
else. Prayer can be used to remind
oneself that whatever happens may be (but not necessarily is) the will of
God. This is a type of thinking
that is helpful in a difficult situation when you donÕt know what to do and
canÕt stop worrying about the situation.
If you can train the mind to let go and let God, as they say, it can
reduce anxiety tremendously. It
also helps in situations in which you cannot control the outcome, no matter how
hard you try.
4.
Some prayers are about wishing in a positive way. This may sound strange, as I mentioned
above to avoid wishful thinking.
Learning to wish in a positive way is not the same, however.
Wishing in a
positive way is about asking for help, not affirming something that is not
true. It is about asking for the
best in your life, even when you havenÕt the slightest idea what that might
be. It is about looking for the
best in your life, rather than affirming what you think would be best when in
reality you do not know what is best.
For example,
to wish for the best in your life you can suggest to yourself that Òthy willÓ
is best, or you can ask for the best outcome of a situation rather than affirm
that you will win. Wishing for the
best for all parties is a powerful method of prayer that is somewhat embodied
in the LordÕs prayer and others.
5.
Some prayers and meditation direct one to more truth or awareness. Truth is not relative, as many people
today claim. The schools today
teach that you may have your truth, and I have mine. This is sometimes called moral relativism. Please learn to question and hopefully
reject this false notion.
What some
people mean by it is that each person will come to know certain aspects of the
truth. For this reason, one person
believes one thing and another believes something else. However, truth tends to converge. This means that as you learn more, you
should come to the same conclusions as your friends and neighbors.
The bible
states: ÒKnow the truth, and the truth shall set you freeÓ. This implies that truth carries a power
with it that few appreciate. So
using the Roy Masters exercise or another prayer or meditation to bring you
more of the truth about yourself, others and the entire world we live in is a
wonderful exercise.
One way the
Roy Masters exercise does this is to reduce the chatter of the Òmonkey
mindÓ. Most peopleÕs minds just
flit from thought to thought all day long in a mostly unconscious manner. It can be frightening to realize this,
at first. The mind is on
autopilot, some say. Roy Masters
says most people are like hypnotized zombies.
Another way
his exercise brings in more truth is that by moving energy downward the new
energy that enters the body brings its own truths to your mind in subtle ways.
Learning
more truth is not difficult. All
you need do is ask. The Christian
bible states in Matthew 7:7-12:
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you
will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to
him who knocks, the door will be opened.Ó
Most people
simply do not ask often enough for what they really want. Most are distracted, and often
unconsciously ask for that which they donÕt say they want. For example, one may really want peace
in oneÕs life, but distractions cause one to fume and argue over silly things
that destroy oneÕs peace. In other
words, until you control your mind, finding the truth is difficult. However, just learning to ask for it
will often bring it to you.
Rather than
ask, however, some people waste their time affirming that they already have
something when they do not, or they ask in a half-hearted way. Really getting down on your knees and
asking – almost demanding - to know the truth about something, will bring
it to you faster. This must be
done thousands of times.
Asking
fervently and repeatedly day after day seems to set in motion a process of
discovery or tuning in that always bears fruit, in my experience.
Timing. Beware, however, that you may not
receive answers when or in the way you might wish. The biblical quote above does not say that if you ask hard
enough you will get your answer in the next hour, next week or even next
month. It might take years of
asking, but I have found the concept works, over time.
6.
Prayer is a way to bring things to you that need resolving. Prayer has a way of making one
receptive to all that needs attention.
The mechanism for this is complex, but it has to do with maintaining a
posture of asking for truth and guidance in all things.
7.
Prayer is a way to bring things to you that you need, even though you may not
want them. This is
directly related to the idea above.
Somehow opening oneself to guidance will bring that which one needs,
even if it is not exactly what one believes one wants.
8.
Prayer is excellent to increase a personÕs ability to focus and concentrate. This is why if you have difficulty with
meditation, especially, do not despair.
Just stay with it. It is
just that you need practice in concentrating and focusing your mind.
Detractors. Today some
people, especially those in the media, actively attempt to discredit the value
and power of meditation and prayer.
Anyone who states or even suggests that prayer doesnÕt work or is silly,
is trying to keep you in the dark and to be shunned. This is important, as schools often teach that prayer is
old-fashioned, illegal in school, or part of an old religion that is no longer
relevant, and so on.
None of this
is true. While prayer and
meditation are used by all religions, prayer is a technology that is not owned
or controlled by any particular group or teaching. It is just as effective today as it was thousands of years
ago. Nothing rivals it, in fact,
because it is a basic methodology available to all people everywhere.
ELEMENTS
OF PRAYING OR MEDITATING
Many people
are not sure how to pray. It is
not hard at all. However, certain
procedures make it work much better.
They include:
1.
Set aside a specific time each day.
Possible times are:
á
When you first wake up, if you do not need to get out of bed
immediately.
á
At bedtime, before settling in to sleep. However, if you fall asleep during your
prayer time it will not work. This
is why kneeling at your bedside is used by many people, as it is harder to fall
asleep this way.
á
After
breakfast or another meal. Having
some food in the stomach is good, provided it is not too much. Too much food can dull the mind and
often causes sleepiness.
á
During a worship
service or other type of community meeting where are you sitting still. You will not be listening to the
service, but will just Ôdo your own thingÕ during the service. The service provides the atmosphere and
quiet, and may help you stay focused on your prayer.
á
When you are a
captive audience, or somewhat trapped.
This might be at a quiet concert or other musical event, or sitting on a
train, bus or plane and cannot easily move about.
á
During a slow,
gentle walk, providing you will be safe and will not be too disturbed by noise
or traffic. This is often an
excellent time for prayer with a friend or partner, for example. A side benefit is youÕll get some exercise
as well. Be sure, however, that
you are not so engaged in your prayer that you ignore car traffic or other
dangers.
á
At home, any
time you wish. The important thing
is to remember to pray and meditate.
á
While driving
on a quiet road, but only if it can be done safely. This is not best, but many people find driving on a quiet
road a good time to pray.
Please
be extremely careful when driving. All driving is hazardous, as there are so many tired and ill
drivers on the roads. Never turn
up the volume on a CD or the radio, even if it makes you feel wonderful, as it
may block out road sounds that could warn you. Never pray out loud so loudly that you cannot hear other
drivers horns. Always stay wide
awake when driving.
2.
Find a suitable place to pray or meditate. This can be equally important. It does no good to set aside time to pray if you are
continually interrupted or face any other distractions. Find a comfortable, fairly quiet, and
safe place where you can be alone or with others who at least are not
disturbing your peace.
This might
include your home, of course, your office if it is quiet and you are not
disturbed, the places listed in the paragraphs above, or other more unusual
places such as in the sauna, or even sitting on the toilet. If you work in a busy office, for
example, the bathroom may be the quietest place to go periodically if you
having a difficult day and need to be by yourself in a safe environment where
you can do your meditation or pray.
3.
Develop routines and perhaps use reminders and gimmicks to help you along the
way. Most people
need a routine and reminders to keep them focused on daily prayer and
meditation. This is sometimes the
most important consideration, especially if you are ill with brain fog,
confusion or forgetfulness.
Any routine
can work, and any is better than none.
Ways might include setting a clock radio or cell phone alarm at a
certain time, putting up smile buttons around the house or office, or making a
note in your day planner, calendar or computer. A helpful partner might also remind you gently, though it is
best to do it on your own, if possible.
Good places
to put reminders are on your bathroom mirror if you want to remind yourself
when you arise in the morning, next to your plate where you eat, on your desk
if you go there a lot, on your computer keyboard, perhaps, or anywhere you will
see it.
4.
Do it each time as if it were the first time. One must apply will and energy
each time you pray or meditate.
Try to think consciously about why you doing it.
If it
becomes rote or mechanical, it will not work nearly as well. This is particularly true of the Roy
Masters meditation. You must do it
each time with a little more effort or energy. The same is true of most prayers. If it becomes just a mechanical exercise for you, stop and
try to fix the problem. Maybe you
donÕt like the prayer you are using, or you donÕt understand it well
enough. Correct the problem,
whatever it is, rather than waste your time.
5.
Repeat your prayers and meditation often for an extended period of time. This is often not stressed enough in
churches or even in meditation classes. It is not enough to do it once or twice. The mind is stuck in its rut and it
often needs to be kicked in the pants many hundreds of times before it begins
to wake up and listen to your prayers or other efforts.
Do not be
discouraged if you get no results for months. The mind is truly like a lazy beast in most people. It needs a lot of shoving and pushing
to get it going. Once going in the
right direction, however, it will develop better habits and things will become
easier.
6.
Do not expect perfection.
Like training an animal, your mind will have its good days and its bad
ones. Try to flow with this. On some days, you may not be able to
concentrate for even a minute or two.
This is okay. Just tell
yourself you will do better tomarrow.
Do not be upset with the ups and downs that will occur when you try to
control your mind and its activity.
The mind may be thought of like a wild animal and one must bring it
under control or domesticate the animal so it becomes useful and responds to
your commands.
7.
DonÕt fall asleep or allow other distractions to upset your prayer or
meditation session. Oddly, the
mind may try to trick you into stopping your practice of prayer or
meditation. Do not fall for this
trick of the monkey mind, or mechanical mind.
This can
happen many ways. For example, you
may become very sleepy. Other ways
it happens is your body starts itching or squirming, or you become extra
sensitive to sounds or sights around you.
This might be a signal from the body that you need to move. However, it can be a trick to stop you
from progressing, and it must be resisted fully. Another trick is just when you relax to meditate or pray,
you think of all the things you need to do that day. Just stop and write them down, and go back to your session.
These tricks
of the mind cause most people to quit meditation, especially. They find it Òhard to doÓ. It is not hard, but the mind resists,
like an old dog who does not feel like learning new tricks. So persist and do not be
discouraged. Reread this article,
or other articles or books to keep you convinced that you want to move
ahead. The mind can be retrained,
no matter how old or ill you are.
Illness can be a benefit, in fact, because you are not as tempted to run
around and are more willing to sit still.
If falling
asleep is your problem, you must find another time or place to pray or meditate
so this wonÕt happen. You can use
a prayer to help you fall asleep at night or when you nap. However, in this case, find another
time to meditate fully when you wonÕt fall asleep.
In this way,
you will slowly gain control of your mind and realize what an amazing computer
it is. I am convinced that this is
a secret of all genuinely religious people. They know how to use their minds to achieve what they
desire, providing those desires are wholesome and in alignment with the higher
will. This is the ultimate goal
and benefit of prayer and meditation.
It is one worth wrestling with for years, if needed, in order to be and
do all that you were designed for and can do.