The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
I do not pray to God and I am pantheistic.
What about you?
What about you?
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Do You Pray as a Pantheist?
- Thread starter The Sum of Awe
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I personally don't. Although I suppose meditation or Puja could count, right?
Treks
Well-Known Member
I hope you don't mind me answering from a panentheistic point of view.
I do various things:
1. Commune with the divie by meditation, chanting and song.
2. Ask for things in general terms (like chardi kala for all beings), but I'm not really sure who I'm asking, and I don't really expect an outcome.. it's more like formally voicing my good wishes. It's a rather selfish action and done out of spiritual immaturity on my part, I think. Even if I tell someone I will keep them in my prayer, I remember the person and wish goodness for them, but rarely do I ask for their problem to be solved, because I don't think the Great It would/could care.
I'm actually rather disturbed by this question as it's one I struggle with often. I want to pray, and I think there might be something there to hear my prayer, but I feel like it would be akin to shouting at the wind.
I do various things:
1. Commune with the divie by meditation, chanting and song.
2. Ask for things in general terms (like chardi kala for all beings), but I'm not really sure who I'm asking, and I don't really expect an outcome.. it's more like formally voicing my good wishes. It's a rather selfish action and done out of spiritual immaturity on my part, I think. Even if I tell someone I will keep them in my prayer, I remember the person and wish goodness for them, but rarely do I ask for their problem to be solved, because I don't think the Great It would/could care.
I'm actually rather disturbed by this question as it's one I struggle with often. I want to pray, and I think there might be something there to hear my prayer, but I feel like it would be akin to shouting at the wind.
I don't pray in a conversational sense, because I don't believe in the kind of God that will respond, or the kind of God that controls things. The reason for that is because I believe everything is dependent on myriad other things. Not pre-ordained or pre-destined, but "dependent arising". So if a fully loaded 80,000 lb tractor trailer is headed in my direction, no amount of "oh God! oh God! please don't let me die!" is going to keep me from dying if other factors are set in motion to make that tractor trailer slam into me (or me into it). However, I do say some prayers to deities on the outside chance that maybe they have some influence on events. Just as if I pull a person back from stepping off the curb into on-coming traffic at the last minute. That could all be part of the swirls and eddies of events, but it never hurts to grease a divine palm. 
psychoslice
Veteran Member
When you realize your part of all there is, not separate from the anything, then who are you going to pray to?.
Amechania
Daimona of the Helpless
Spinoza?
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Me Myself
Back to my username
I generally am more interested in awareness. It feels like "listening" as opposed to prayer being "saying"
Very rarely I do pray, when I feel it helps me get in better contact with a bigger reality.
I also chant Om Namah Shivaya to Lord Shiva , that helps me in my spiritual realization
Very rarely I do pray, when I feel it helps me get in better contact with a bigger reality.
I also chant Om Namah Shivaya to Lord Shiva , that helps me in my spiritual realization
That which is yours, but not realized in you yet. Through prayer to that, however symbolically you wish to access it, it transforms the current mind into that higher mind. If all was static as is, and there were no growth of individual, then yes there is nothing more that what you know now.
Praying is just god talking with himself. The point would be to turn the words and desires into a acts of will power where possible. It is then one will.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Yes it is when you are in the so called higher mind, not really the mind but in higher Consciousness, this is our true home, this is our connection to all there IS.
True, but with a minor technicality. I would also recognize it as higher mind in that our reasoning, cognitive mind is transformed in its type of awareness through exposure to that which transcends mind. If you follow the traditional great chain of being, from matter, to body, to mind, to soul, to spirit, the higher levels affect the lower levels directly below them. The more exposure to and development of spirit, resting in causal emptiness, or Consciousness, the more the development of soul reaching into spirit. The more development of soul, the higher the development of mind reaching into the subtle domain of soul, and so forth. So there is an active relationship and influence, rather than simply separation from mind. You move beyond mind, but mind is transformed along with the development of soul, so to speak. In that sense you are accessing "higher mind" as well.
Aside from that model of involution and evolution, something I find important is the means and methods to accessing those higher, and highest states of awareness. This is where the act of prayer plays a role in what I mentioned before. I see acts of prayer as a form of meditation, whether the person praying recognizing it as such or not. Even when tied to a literal belief of a deity outside themselves literally holding the power to move earth in its hands, it is still a visualization of that higher, spiritual domain fixed within the mind.
Even though they are developmentally still seeking for a "gift from above" in an ego-facing "I want" mind, that continued connection to that deity form through an act of devotion has an effect on the mind towards a recognition of that higher mind, the subtle mind within themselves, in the exercise of that visualization. In time that may open to internalizing that realization and moving into in actual personal development. They become that deity, and realize Grace and Compassion in themselves. This is the effect of devotional practices, a bhakti yoga. This is what most rituals of offerings and prayer illicit in the practitioners in its highest forms.
There is a wonderful quote from Ken Wilber that expresses this well. It's a specific practice in Tibetan Buddhism as well that I feel is captured in this quote.
"But this is not God as an ontological other, set apart from the cosmos, from humans, and from creation at large. Rather, it is God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness. ... By visualizing that identification 'we actually do become the deity. The subject is identified with the object of faith. The worship, the worshiper, and the worshiped, those three are not separate'. At its peak, the soul becomes one, literally one, with the deity-form, with the dhyani-buddha, with (choose whatever term one prefers) God. One dissolves into Deity, as Deity - that Deity which, from the beginning, has been one's own Self or highest Archetype."
~Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, pg. 85
So then prayer becomes an access to first person realization through second person devotion. To surrender the lower, egoic self to the "Holy Other", the higher Self symbolically personified, is to open to that God within, and to become that in yourself, moving up that great chain of being.
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Twig pentagram
High Priest
Yes, I pray through the universe / deity.
Contemplative Cat
energy formation
As long as there is me, there is God. When wisdom dawns only God exists, its as if I'm talking to my self that is not inside the body.
By praying, all you see is God.
Meditation can also be considered silent prayer.
By praying, all you see is God.
Meditation can also be considered silent prayer.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
No. I don't pray in the traditional sense. I consider my living to be a "prayer" or communion with the world. Breathing, eating, talking, doing things, all is a "prayer". It's more of the state of being, being in constant "prayer".
As a Christian, I spent a couple of days here and there trying to be in constant prayer throughout the day. It was a matter of being in that mode or mood and being aware of it. I brought the idea over to my new life.