My relationship with prayer has changed dramatically throughout my life. I’ve been fascinated by it for the last few years. It’s probably the most commonly practiced spiritual practice in the world, and because of this, it comes in seemingly endless varieties. I had a powerful spiritual experience, what some would call a mystical experience, in 2017 and that was when my fascination began. Before then it was not something that interested me at all. (If you’re interested you can read the full story of that experience here.)
I was raised in a religious Protestant Christian environment and prayer was something I was very used to from a young age. However, I always had a lot of anxiety about speaking in front of other people, even if it was just a small group like my own family. Because of this, and my general uneasiness with Christianity at the time, I had a very different relationship with prayer as a youth and teen. It was something I didn’t really understand and dreaded having to do.
Then, as a young adult, I felt dissatisfied with the religion I grew up with and turned away from religion and spirituality and towards a more scientific materialist worldview, as many young people do. And for most of my 20’s I had no interest in prayer or spiritual practices at all.
After that transformative experience in 2017 that changed completely. But at that time I had no framework to understand what had happened or what to do next. I had no wisdom tradition to guide me and didn’t know anyone who had had a similar experience. So I went to a nearby used bookstore and went to the spirituality and philosophy sections (sections I had never browsed before) and looked around to see what looked interesting or stood out to me.
I left with some real gems including The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley and this beautiful book called The Illuminated Prayer by Coleman Barks and Michael Green.
The Many Forms and Functions of Prayer
This introduced me to a whole new form and philosophy of prayer that I found beautiful and inspiring. I also began reading everything I could about the many mystics, sages, and saints mentioned in The Perennial Philosophy and studying their prayers and writings about prayer.
According to Huxley:
The word “prayer” is applied to at least four distinct procedures—petition, intercession, adoration, contemplation. Petition is asking of something for ourselves. Intercession is the asking of something for other people. Adoration is the use of the intellect, feeling, will and imagination in making acts of devotion directed toward God in his personal aspect or as incarnated in human form. Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.
– Chapter XVI Prayer
I wanted to write my own prayer—one which would be a powerful practice for many years to come and which would be my daily reminder of what is sacred to me and what I truly desire. I wanted to be very intentional about the crafting of this prayer because I had begun to see prayer as a powerful tool, or psychotechnology, to reshape the self. That’s why I looked to the saints and mystics for inspiration to help me craft my prayer. I aspired to be like them.
This is prayer as attunement —as a way to tune or shape the self—and a form of adoration. A much more common form of prayer is petitionary prayer. But petitionary prayer can also function as attunement. St. Francis of Assisi, one of the saints whom I revere the most, would often petition God for guidance on how to live according to “Your holy will” and to follow “Your true commandments”. We can also petition God to help us become more virtuous.
William Law understood the power of prayer to shape behavior, prayer as attunement, and wrote much about it, specifically the type of prayer called intercession. In perhaps his most succinct statement on the matter he states:
For you cannot possibly despise and ridicule that man whom your private prayers recommend to the love and favour of God.
I’ve also found this to be true, personally. If I find I’m having negative thoughts about someone I try to include them in my prayers and moments of gratitude and this really does work to quickly change the way I feel about them.
The philosopher Iris Murdoch understood this aspect of prayer as well when she stated:
…one of the main problems of moral philosophy might be formulated thus: are there any techniques for the purification and reorientation of an energy which is naturally selfish, in such a way that when moments of choice arrive we shall be sure of acting rightly?… The technique which Plato thought appropriate to this situation I shall discuss later. Much closer and more familiar to us are the techniques of religion, of which the most widely practised is prayer. What becomes of such a technique in a world without God, and can it be transformed to supply at least part of the answer to our central question?
Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love. With it goes the idea of grace, of a supernatural assistance to human endeavour which overcomes empirical limitations of personality. What is this attention like, and can those who are not religious believers still conceive of profiting by such an activity?
– The Sovereignty of Good
We’ll discuss what that attention is like throughout this post, and her conclusion, as well as my own, is, yes, those who are not religious believers can still profit from the activity.
This is the power of prayer as attunement and brings us to the first arcanum of prayer: prayer imbues meaning—we will care about what we pray about.
My daily prayer was the first spiritual practice I ever created and shared. I ended up calling it The Prophet’s Prayer based both on those who influenced its creation and its intended effect—to attune those who recite it to the consciousness of the great prophets.
The Prophet’s Prayer
Oh mighty God, beautiful Redeemer, blessed Savior, boundlessly compassionate, boundlessly merciful. You are love absolute, peace absolute, and bliss absolute. You are the creator of all things and the perfect Unity. Yours is the pure light, source of all others.
All righteous and virtuous things that may seem to come from me do not. It is purely your light shining through me. I cannot take the credit or claim ownership. You are the Father of all lights and the sole source. All of the good that comes from this body and mind are not my own. I am merely a caretaker. My job is to maintain and keep clean the mirror of my soul, so that you may continue to shine through me as brightly as possible.
My hope and prayer is that by shining your light into the darkness others, who are lost, may be found. That by catching a glimpse of light, they may find their way out of darkness, into the pure light and glory of your presence. I must do my best to show them how to do their job as caretaker, so that the light of God may shine brightly through them as well. I pray that all of mankind will come to know you in this fashion.
May everyone come to know your love and your peace that transcend all circumstances and come to live in your eternal presence. Amen
(You can learn more about my daily prayer and how to create your own in my book Foundations: Building Sacred Habits, Rituals, and Mindsets for Inner Transformation!)
That prayer has served me well for many years now and has been picked up and used by spiritual seekers around the world, but I want to return to those who inspired me and what they have to say about prayer, starting with the other Great Mystic I’ve written about François Fénelon.
François Fénelon
To Pray is to Desire
True prayer is only another word for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire-but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks for what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays. Let him spend days in reciting prayers, in meditation or in inciting himself to pious exercises, he prays not once truly, if he really desire not the things he pretends to ask.
O! How few there are who pray! For how few are they who desire what is truly good! Crosses, external and internal humiliation, renouncement of our own wills, the death of self and the establishment of God’s throne upon the ruins of self love, these are indeed good; not to desire these, is not to pray; to desire them seriously, soberly, constantly, and with reference to all the details of life, this is true prayer; not to desire them, and yet to suppose we pray, is an illusion like that of the wretched who dream themselves happy. Alas! How many souls full of self, and of an imaginary desire for perfection in the midst of hosts of voluntary imperfections, have never yet uttered this true prayer of the heart! It is in reference to this that St. Augustine says: He that loveth little, prayeth little; he that loveth much, prayeth much.
On the other hand, that heart in which the true love of God and true desire exist, never ceases to pray.
– Christian Counsel, On Diverse Matters Pertaining to the Inner Life, IV. On Prayer & The Principal Exercises of Piety
For Fénelon the inner life was of the utmost importance. To him, our intentions and the desires of our hearts are what truly matter. He reminds us that prayer doesn’t have to be spoken, or even thought. True prayer comes from the heart—it is inspired by love and desire—it is love and desire!
This is both shocking and, in some ways, obvious. If God, Source, the One is omniscient then it makes perfect sense that he “knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him.” But the consequences of that are profound. And this is the second arcanum of prayer: true prayer is to desire what God would have us desire, and we constantly pray for that which we desire.
If you remember the first arcanum, then apply the second you can see that a reinforcing loop can be created within. By one form of prayer, you can shape what you desire in your heart to be that which “God would have us desire”, then the deep prayer of the heart kicks in and constantly prays for that which you desire, this, in turn, deepens the desire, and on it goes.
Be Careful What You Pray For
Aldous Huxley
I want to return to Huxley and what he had to say about prayer and its various procedures in The Perennial Philosophy:
Petitionary and intercessory prayer may be used—and used, what is more, with what would ordinarily be regarded as success—without any but the most perfunctory and superficial reference to God in any of his aspects. To acquire the knack of getting his petitions answered, a man does not have to know or love God, or even to know or love the image of God in his own mind. All that he requires is a burning sense of the importance of his own ego and its desires, coupled with a firm conviction that there exists, out there in the universe, something not himself which can be wheedled or dragooned into satisfying those desires… Meanwhile we shall be well advised to heed the warnings of folk-lore. Those anonymous realists who wrote the world’s fairy stories knew a great deal about wishes and their fulfilment. They knew, first of all, that in certain circumstances petitions actually get themselves answered; but they also knew that God is not the only answerer and that if one asks for something in the wrong spirit, it may in effect be given—but given with a vengeance and not by a divine Giver… Hardly ever do the Three Wishes of our traditional fairy lore lead to anything but a bad end for the successful wisher.
– Chapter XVI Prayer
Prayer is powerful, whether it’s the prayer of the ego or the prayer of the heart, and it’s likely to be answered but it might not be the answer you want. Or you may get what you wanted but it comes with dire consequences.
Much of that will depend on whether you’ve realized and put into practice the first two arcanums. You will receive what is spiritually, morally, and sometimes even materially good for you to the extent that your will coincides with the Will of God, in other words, to the extent that you desire what God would have you desire.
Picture God as saying to you, “My son, why is it that day by day you rise and pray, and genuflect, and even strike the ground with your forehead, nay, sometimes even shed tears, while you say to me: ‘My Father, my God, give me wealth!’ If I were to give it to you, you would think yourself of some importance, you would fancy you had gained something very great… Before you had it you were humble; now that you have begun to be rich you despise the poor. What kind of good is that which only makes you worse?… Ask of Me better things than these, greater things than these. Ask of Me spiritual things. Ask of Me Myself.
– St. Augustine
As you can see, there are some potential dangers to prayer which leads us to the third arcanum of prayer: be careful what you pray for.
The Path to Communion
Prayer can also be taken much further than we’ve discussed so far. It is considered the ultimate spiritual practice, the path to communion with God. This usually involves a crossover between the different procedures of prayer Huxley delineated. The fourth procedure, contemplation, is actually a name for non-dual mystical experience, in other words, union or communion with God. Remember how he defined contemplation:
Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.
He explains further in the next paragraph:
Psychologically, it is all but impossible for a human being to practise contemplation without preparing for it by some kind of adoration and without feeling the need to revert at more or less frequent intervals to intercession and some form of at least petition. On the other hand, it is both possible and easy to practise petition apart not only from contemplation, but also from adoration and, in rare cases of extreme and unmitigated egotism, even from intercession.
– Chapter XVI Prayer
I’ve added the bold lettering to highlight each time he refers to a procedure of prayer. Here you can see examples of what I meant by “crossover” between the procedures. He states very plainly that adoration is practically a necessary prerequisite for contemplation with intercession and petition also very likely being made use of to reach that state. I want to highlight this because I think it is important not to demonize or neglect any of the different forms or procedures of prayer. They are all important. They form a cohesive ecology and, as Huxley warns us, practicing petition apart from the rest can actually be dangerous. Remember the third arcanum.
But let’s return to the prayer as the path to communion with another perspective on prayer from a 17th-century Benedictine mystic:
Now prayer, in its general notion, may be defined to be an elevation of the mind to God, or more largely and expressly thus: prayer is an actuation of an intellective soul towards God, expressing, or at least implying, an entire dependence on Him as the author and fountain of all good, a will and readiness to give Him his due, which is no less than all love, all obedience, adoration, glory and worship, by humbling and annihilating the self and all creatures in His presence; and lastly, a desire and intention to aspire to an union of spirit with Him.
– Fr. Augustine Baker
He too says that adoration is what can lead us to contemplation which he speaks of in terms that sound very much like a mystical experience. And in another passage, he writes:
The soul elevates her will towards God, apprehended by the understanding as a spirit, and not as an imaginary thing, the human spirit in this way aspiring to a union with the Divine spirit.
But while his language is more conservative and talks of aspiring to union, Huxley had no such reservations and states very plainly:
Adoration is an activity of the loving, but still separate, individuality. Contemplation is the state of union with the divine Ground of all being.
This is the fourth arcanum of prayer: adoration is the path to contemplation. But this leaves us with something of a conundrum because adoration powerful enough to lead to a mystical experience or state of contemplation is not something that can be faked and it’s not something that abstractions are capable of inspiring. We can’t love an abstraction. It has to be spirit to Spirit.
The Foundation of Prayer
For some guidance on how to cultivate that state of adoration, I want to turn back to François Fénelon the archbishop and tutor to kings was considered one of the greatest educators of his time and he has much to say on the subject.
There are two principal points of attention necessary for the preservation of this constant spirit of prayer that unites us to God: we must continually seek to cherish it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it.
In order to cherish it, we should pursue a regulated course of reading; we must have appointed seasons of secret prayer, and frequent states of recollection during the day; we should make use of retirement when we feel the need of it, or when it is advised by those of greater experience, and unite in the ordinances appropriate to our condition.
We should greatly fear and be exceedingly cautious to avoid all things that have a tendency to make us lose this state of prayer.
– Christian Counsel, On Diverse Matters Pertaining to the Inner Life, IV. On Prayer & The Principal Exercises of Piety
As usual, Fénelon gives us some really good advice here. Firstly, to read and he gives further instructions on what to read. He says we should read books that:
…instruct us in our duty and in our faults; which, while they point out the greatness of God, teach us what is our duty to Him, and how very far we are from performing it; not those barren productions which melt and sentimentalize the heart…
We should read books which promote humility and love of God. And, secondly, he says we should have regularly appointed times for secret prayer, which is alone time with God, and that these:
Seasons of secret prayer must be regulated by the leisure, the disposition, the condition, and the inward impulse of each individual.
Everyone desires and needs different amounts of prayer and meditation time depending on their personality, natural temperament, and “inward impulse.” Don’t push yourself to try and do more than what feels right for you. In the very next line, he reveals the next arcanum:
Meditation is not prayer, but it is its necessary foundation; it brings to mind the truths which God has revealed. We should be conversant not only with all the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and the truths of his Gospel, but also with everything they ought to operate in us for our regeneration; we should be colored and penetrated by them as wool is by the dye.
Here he tells us the secret of how to know what to pray for and how to incorporate our reading into our inner life through prayer and meditation so that we are “colored” or transformed by it. This is the fifth arcanum of prayer: meditation is the foundation of prayer. It is through meditation that we gain the awareness and clarity we need to know where our opportunities for growth are and, therefore, what we should pray for. Now, according to Fénelon, our prayer “begins to be real and fruitful.”
Invoke Often! Inflame Thyself With Prayer!
Israel Regardie
Invoke often! Inflame yourself with prayer! These are the instructions passed down to seekers throughout the ages from the Chaldean Oracles to The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage through Israel Regardie to me and now through me to you. Regardie, one of the most important figures of 20th-century Western esotericism and the man responsible for conserving and passing on the profound knowledge of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and bringing a valid branch of their initiatory lineage to the United States ends his book The One Year Manual with a chapter of the same name. A book that guides the reader through an intentional series of spiritual exercises that includes some rather elaborate rituals. After all of that, even the prior chapter titled “Unity—All is God,” he ends the course of instruction with the ultimate spiritual practice—prayer.
Which might be surprising to some of you. It certainly was for me. But the reality is that prayer is so vital to our spirituality that it is at once the most basic and the most profound of spiritual practices. According to William James:
…petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
– The Varieties of Religious Experience
And Auguste Sabatier, the 19th-century French Protestant theologian, agrees:
Religion is an intercourse, a conscious and voluntary relation, entered into by a soul in distress with the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon which its fate is contingent. This intercourse with God is realized by prayer. Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. It is prayer that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar or neighboring phenomena as purely moral or æsthetic sentiment. Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulæ, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence, it may be even before it has a name by which to call it. Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or of doctrines, we have living religion.
– Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion (Outline of a Philosophy of Religion)
If the spiritual life consists of a effort towards ever greater intimacy with the divine or sacred then we can see how prayer, as “the very movement itself of the soul” towards the divine, can be at once the most basic and the ultimate spiritual practice. Here we see how prayer can lead toward communion or union with the divine as well.
And Regardie reminds us:
There are higher goals to aspire towards and through the exaltation of prayer and invocation, [you] may, God willing, reach these goals, unitive and mystical.
– The One Year Manual Step XII Invoke Often! Inflame Thyself with Prayer!
And prayer, specifically adoration, is the path. There is one last aspect and technique of prayer that we need to cover, and one final arcanum. It should be apparent by now that invoking, in other words praying, often has many benefits from the ethical, to the creative, to the spiritual. But what does it mean to “inflame” yourself with prayer?
This refers to the realm of emotion and the building of emotional energy. There are essentially two different directions of spiritual practices. There are calming, quieting, and stilling practices which turn inward and down into the Ground of being. This is enstasy. And there are exciting, inflaming, overwhelming practices that turn outward and up to Source or God. This is ecstasy. And prayer can be both!
But even more strange is the fact that both paths can lead to the same realizations! As the anonymous author of the great tome of esoteric wisdom, Meditations on the Tarot, states:
Ecstasy to the heights beyond oneself and enstasy into the depths within oneself lead to knowledge of the same fundamental truth.
Christian esotericism unites these two methods of initiation. The Master has two groups of disciples—”disciples of the day” and “disciples of the night”—the first being disciples of the way of enstasy and the latter those of the way of ecstasy. He has also a third group of disciples “of day and night”, i.e. who possess the keys to both doors at once, to the door of ecstasy and that of enstasy.
– Meditations on the Tarot, Letter VI The Lover
Both methods, ecstasy and enstasy, are valuable and, as we see, can be sufficient for a spiritual path on their own. I share techniques for both methods here on my blog, in my books, and elsewhere. But for this post, we are going to focus on ecstatic prayer. This is what it means to “inflame thyself with prayer.”
Most people associate ecstasy with substances or maybe music or dancing (I have an ecstatic singing practice), so it may seem strange to talk about ecstatic prayer, but by this point, we’ve already heard many people attest to its reality. And prayer may actually be the most powerful and effective form of ecstatic practice!
There are many techniques of ecstasy. Human beings have been discovering and perfecting them for as long as we can tell. Many scholars believe that this is the very origin of all religion and spirituality.
But the reason I believe that prayer is the most powerful is because of its specific orientation, the mood or set in which it is performed. This is because ecstasy is simply the experience of being lifted to the “heights beyond oneself” but there are many different heights to which one can be lifted. This is a form of self-transcendence but there are many levels to which you can transcend. This was perhaps most beautifully articulated by the Rabbi and mystic Abraham Isaac Kook:
There is one who sings the song of his people. Emerging from the private circle of his soul—not expansive enough, not yet tranquil—he strives for fierce heights, clinging to the entire community of Israel in tender love. Together with her, he sings her song, feels her anguish, delights in her hopes. He conceives profound insights into her past and her future, deftly probing the inwardness of her spirit with the wisdom of love.
Then there is one whose soul expands until it extends beyond the border of Israel, singing the song of humanity. In the glory of the entire human race, in the glory of the human form, his spirit spreads, aspiring to the goal of humankind, envisioning its consummation. From this spring of life, he draws all his deepest reflections, his searching, striving, and vision.
Then there is one who expands even further until he unites with all of existence, with all creatures, with all worlds, singing a song with them all.
There is one who ascends with all these songs in unison—the song of the soul, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, the song of the cosmos—resounding together, blending in harmony, circulating the sap of life, the sound of holy joy.– The Essential Mystics
Because of prayer’s specific orientation as the movement of the soul towards divinity, the level of transcendence to which it brings us in moments of ecstasy is the ultimate level. We become the “one who ascends with all these songs in unison” when we lift our hearts in prayer to God. We include and transcend the lower levels of the soul, the family, the tribe, the species, and the cosmos. This is the power and promise of prayer.
But we must be careful to always remember that communion with divinity is always dependent upon grace. We lift ourselves up and open our hearts and souls towards the divine but it is grace that comes from divinity to illuminate us. Luckily for us, we are like the prodigal son from the biblical parable and God the loving father who is waiting to run to us and embrace us as soon as we turn towards Him. As Israel Regardie reminds us, “For every step we make in His direction, he will take two,” towards us.
Now it’s time to get to the practical technique of inflaming oneself with prayer and here we return to Regardie’s manual of spiritual practice and a beautiful summary of everything we’ve covered so far.
Prayer does have the effect of stimulating the mind to function in an entirely new way. It creates, when successful, a revolution within the psychological apparatus, a turning around of the mind. It becomes ecstatically uplifted so as to function in a new way, to perceive new and more spiritual ideas, and experience a hitherto never before experienced life of divinity and high consciousness. The entire object of prayer is to exalt the mind to an indissoluble unity with God. It must lift the mind on the wings of ardent aspiration—thus the phrase “inflame thyself with prayer”—in an unrestrained flight of love to a sense of kinship and unity with the whole of life.
There must be this ardor. An attitude of cold objectivity and lack of feeling during prayer is, so far as my understanding goes, quite impossible. I cannot conceive how the student who has pondered over a classical invocation and understood it to the extent of employing it as his personal means of exaltation, can refrain from being strongly moved emotionally. A prayer, to be successful, should have the effect of bringing about an inner crisis. More often than not, as the student proceeds, he will be bathed in a deluge of tears—tears not of sorrow, nor even tears of joy, but tears which are the sign and symbol of submission to and union with, the Source of All Life.
An ecstasy may result, a thoroughgoing standing out of the mind itself and all its concerns with the body and its problems, from neurosis and inner turmoils. It should raise the individual above all temporal and personal matters so as to realize that the heresy of separation is ended for all time. He and God are one!
The whole secret of prayer lies in this direction. Invoke often. Inflame thyself with prayer. It aims at moving the individual in ecstasy to transcend himself. In short, prayer consists of a complex of psychological and spiritual gestures—all of which should prove relatively easy, after the prolonged discipline engaged in for the past several months or more—designed to enable us to recover our true identity, which is God.
– The One Year Manual Step XII Invoke Often! Inflame Thyself with Prayer!
The technique of ecstatic prayer then is the building up of emotional energy through “spiritual gestures” such as recitation of words, postures and hand gestures, lighting of candles or incense, etc. to the point of “inner crisis” which once passed through surrender brings on an ecstasy of ultimate transcendence opening us up and orienting us in such a way that we are most likely to receive and recognize grace. This grace can be described as a mystical experience and often results in powerfully positive transformative effects and is usually accompanied by insights and epiphanies, a “turning around of the mind.”
This is the final arcanum of prayer: prayer is the alpha and omega of spiritual practice and experience—Invoke Often! Inflame Thyself with Prayer!
Choosing A Prayer
I’ve now provided you with all the keys or arcana of prayer of which I am at this point aware. I am almost certain there are more that I am missing. However, there is one point that remains to be covered. The matter of what words to recite, what invocation to make use of—how to choose a prayer.
In my book Foundations, I cover how to write your own prayer based on the formula I used to write my own Prophet’s Prayer which I’ve presented in this post. You can feel free to make use of my prayer if you like it and it feels right to you, or can always write your own if you feel up to it. Otherwise, you can make use of other prayers, poetry, or Bible verses, specifically the Psalms. As long as it has the right orientation of reverence and adoration and helps you build up emotional energy.
Israel Regardie provides us with many beautiful and inspired examples of invocations in his many books so I am going to leave you with one which he recommends for evening prayer after one has “completed the preliminary relaxation techniques.” (You can check out this guide video for an example of one such technique.)
From Thy hand, O Lord, cometh all good. The characters of nature with Thy fingers has Thou traced, but none can read them unless he hast been taught in Thy school. Therefore, even as servants look unto the hands of their masters, and handmaidens unto their mistresses, even so do our eyes look unto Thee, for Thou alone art our help. O Lord our God, who should not extol Thee?
All is from Thee, All belongeth unto Thee. Either Thy love or Thy anger, all must again re-enter. Nothing canst Thou lose, for all must tend unto Thy honour and majesty. Thou art Lord alone, and there is none beside Thee. Thou doest what Thou wilt with Thy mighty arm, and none can escape from Thee.
Who should not praise Thee, then, O Lord of the Universe, unto whom there is none like? Whose dwelling is in heaven, and in every virtuous and God-fearing heart. O God, Thou vast One, Thou art in all things. O Nature, Thou Self from Nothing—for what else can I call Thee? In myself I am nothing. In Thee I am Self, and exist in Thy Selfhood from eternity. Live Thou in me, and bring me unto That self which is in Thee.
– The One Year Manual Step XII Invoke Often! Inflame Thyself with Prayer!
And with that, we’ve come to the end of this letter on prayer. I hope it has expanded your view of prayer and possibly inspired you to pursue its practice more passionately. I know the rewards will be bountiful for you if you do.
Love,
Justin
❤️🙏☀️