A Practitioner’s Perspective

with Randy Southerland, RScP

I attended various spiritual communities and centers before I realized that I had gotten it wrong. Each place taught a different way to bring god into my life. In other words, what most people call prayer.

Prayer is a vital part of every religious tradition.

In New Thought we call it affirmative prayer or spiritual mind treatment. What I liked about this teaching was there’s no beseeching, begging, or registering a request for divine consideration. It is about allowing the power of life to come forward. In my past, prayer focused only on the desired result and not current conditions.

In the first class I took in this philosophy,  people talked about manifesting parking spaces and moving on to more substantial accomplishments. And it worked. People did often find parking spaces, among other things.

But as I went deeper into the practice, I began to realize that getting “things” was only the beginning.  This was a discovery that many others have made, but it was new to me.

What I learned is that the real purpose of prayer is not to change an eternal and unchanging god, but to change me -  the person who is praying.  What I found was that consistent prayer began to change the way I think.

In “How God Becomes Real,” anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann explains that those who pray “step back from their everyday way of thinking to examine their thoughts, as if seeing from a god or spirit’s point of view. They look back on their thoughts as if from outside and ask whether those thoughts are in accord with a world in which gods and spirits matter.”

Those who pray think about how they are thinking, and as a result, their thinking changes. One benefit of prayer is emotional management. Over time,  we begin to think of the world as a place in which the divine is real, and our thinking and acting is guided by that faith.

This type of prayer works because it cultivates gratitude for what already exists. As I began to give thanks for the good in my life, that good began to increase. The frowns were still there, the parking space was taken by someone else, but those things were no longer the focus of my attention.

It wasn’t just that I recalled the smile rather than the frown, but by focusing my attention on gratitude, the good things I desired became more plentiful. In other words, what I focused on increased. 

Gratitude is a central part of most, if not all, religious traditions. It arises out of a belief that God is good and this power has created an orderly universe, governed by understandable laws. As a result, it is a universe that is biased toward the full expression of life.

Of course it is not just about the present moment. Through prayer we are also cultivating a new future. A time to come will be better than the moment in which we find ourselves. This world is shaped by how much we see ourselves in faith that the power of the divine will move us toward this new future for us and others.

Ultimately, prayer is not a one-way street. I realized that it was more than just my telling the universe what I wanted. It was also about being quiet and listening to the flow of life and all that it offered.

You don’t have to stop asking for parking spaces. They are important.  Just slow down and instead of asking for spirit to bring you something, listen. And be grateful.