Oliver Twist
Member
I only set aside 15 minuters for prayers each Day. 15 min for meditation each day. 15 min running each day. And 15 mental training each Day. The rest of the day I do paperworks and work.
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Well, it´s all just sharing until you start trying to evaluate yourself in an objective manner. Since you want to shoot for maturity and spiritual brilliance, perhaps you can clarify the relationship between your prayers and Burlington, VT´s achieving 100% renewable energy and Utah´s decision to provide housing for all its homeless. Conversely, socioeconomic inequality and environmentally unsustainable conditions continue to worsen as the US-led profiteering business model continues to enchantingly indoctrinate large numbers of the world´s masses of consumers. Now, the originally Catholic-based Liberation Theology has taken interesting directions in places like Brazil in South America where it has been associated with a land-occupation movement, the MST Brazilian Landless Workers Movement has established itself quite broadly and become successful with co-operative and agroecological practices.My only technique I suppose is that I ask for things within reason and with a grand sense of humility and a genuine hope that I act according to god's will.
I've said like 30+ prayers this year and all of them have been answered positively by god.
I must have really good karma or I'm really mature or spiritually brilliant or something.
I don't know what's going on.
In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said:
When you pray, don’t be like hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners so that people will see them. I assure you, that’s the only reward they’ll get. But when you pray, go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is present in that secret place. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you.
(Matthew 6:5-6 CEB)
But let’s bring it all out into the open...
Let’s talk about prayer!
(In particular personal private prayer, as opposed to mass prayers said aloud in a place of public worship)
Some questions to get going:
What is your religion?
Who do you pray to?
How do you pray?
What do you pray about?
What do you pray for?
How do you address The Almighty?
Do you feel any closer to God when you pray?
Why do you pray?
What do you get out of praying?
Have your prayers ever been answered?
Basically, tell us all about your prayer life!
(I’ll follow this OP up with an account of my own prayer life)
NT speaks about two types of prayers supplication and meditation, Jesus speaks about meditation prayer ( with mantra) in Matthew 6.I am not a christian but is it not only needed to pray is the Lord's prayer? Did not Jesus teach it like that?
In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said:
When you pray, don’t be like hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners so that people will see them. I assure you, that’s the only reward they’ll get. But when you pray, go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is present in that secret place. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you.
I don’t pray. There is however, a secret place I can go within myself into solitude to tune out everything and any noise that comes with a natural guiding faculty. If there is anything good in me or with me that is at least minimally knowing of my thoughts, desires, intent.... I’d imagine that prayer it futile.
Thanks for sharing Matthew 6. I did not know that the Bible was speaking about the importance of "opening your third eye". Nice surprise.NT speaks about two types of prayers supplication and meditation, Jesus speaks about meditation prayer ( with mantra) in Matthew 6.
I also think that being thankful is bad selfishness, at least for me.
Should I be thankful for health while another’s health sucks? Thankful for food while others starve? Thankful for shelter while others have none? Thankful for something good happening to me while bad happens to others? Thankful I’m not attracted to something vile while another got the genetics never asked for to be attracted to something vile? Thankful for talents while others have little to no talent? Thankful for any liberation to things while others are enslaved to things? Thankful for being an employee(slave) while others aren’t? Thankful for having a decent lot with more freedom while others have garbage lots and very limited to no choice? Thankful for appearance while others not so?
I can’t, in a sane sense of being... bring myself to be thankful for many things.
Only, thankful for others for their genuine and sincere assistance with anything.
"If your eye is clear"...knowledge that comes through clear eye .Thanks for sharing Matthew 6. I did not know that the Bible was speaking about the importance of "opening your third eye". Nice surprise.
If you have this power, why haven't you used it to eliminate disease, hunger, homelessness, war, etc.?I started praying for stuff around February this year.
I'm a lapsed Catholic so I started with the sign of the cross and spoke to god as if he were a person then closed with the Lord's Prayer.
Literally EVERYTHING I prayed for this year was given to me!
And not just do all my prayers get answered and have I been getting everything that I ask god for, but the level of detail is astounding.
I even prayed for something this week and it happened.
My only technique I suppose is that I ask for things within reason and with a grand sense of humility and a genuine hope that I act according to god's will.
I've said like 30+ prayers this year and all of them have been answered positively by god.
I must have really good karma or I'm really mature or spiritually brilliant or something.
I don't know what's going on.
I can identify as Christian if it's relevant, but not limited to traditional notions. God is more than any one religion. I prefer to identify more in that area than within a particular form.I’ll go first:
I’m a Protestant Christian
I found your thread intriguing as it brings up past practices and beliefs for me, having been important and asking what are they now to me. What do I do that relates?I try and pray every night before I go to bed, I’m trying to cultivate a ritual of doing so and I normally do unless I’m massively tired
I used to do this many years ago. This changed into a sitting meditation practice on a cushion for quite a few years. That has changed into physical movement such as Tai Chi and qigong meditation. I also do a great deal of other physical activities, and it seems now my whole body becomes a prayer, a form of worship of God without and God within.I put my pillows on the floor and kneel on them by my bed, resting my arms on the mattress
I often put on some ambient, soothing music to get me in the mood
You know, this is not a bad practice as it teaches one the basics of self-reflection. "Who am I to others? Who am I to myself? Who am I to God?" I think for myself today this is just a simple automatic "letting go" of my separate self, that is my clinging to being soley inside of my ego and not seeing Reality beyond it.I then think out loud something like “hey God, it’s me again”
I then thank him for everything and pray for the people in my life who are important to me. I then pray for the disadvantaged and the oppressed. I then reflect on how much of a good or bad person I’ve been.
Amen to this! This is meditation. Not a lot of people do this in their prayers. This moves into the deeper forms of prayer. The more you do this, the more you allow yourself to enter this, the more you will begin so see the Truth in ways you never realized. In here, you can meet God "Face to Face" and "Know even as I am known". (1 Cor. 13:12)But I also practice mental silence too. I sometimes go for long periods with complete mental silence in which I empty my mind of all activity. The more I do this the better I get at it and it feels blissful.
Yes, you are letting go of the day in a ritual form, handing it off to God, and taking that thought of God with you to bed. Good practice. That would result in being more rested than carrying it all with you into bed.I then say “Amen” and go to bed.
I’ve found that having prayed helps me get off to sleep.
I think this is the first time I've really looked at where I am today quite in this light as a continuous, or evolution of form over my lifetime. It's important I think for others to hear that it doesn't have been done "this way" forever. I think of these forms as training exercises now, to a much more living form of meditation or prayer.I hope others will share details of their prayer life, and not just me, that would be embarrassing
Yeah, I'll be interested in hearing you comparing your thoughts to these things I've shared here.And no, I don't think comparing notes violates the rule regarding "showy prayer"
Well, it´s all just sharing until you start trying to evaluate yourself in an objective manner. Since you want to shoot for maturity and spiritual brilliance, perhaps you can clarify the relationship between your prayers and Burlington, VT´s achieving 100% renewable energy and Utah´s decision to provide housing for all its homeless.
Conversely, socioeconomic inequality and environmentally unsustainable conditions continue to worsen as the US-led profiteering business model continues to enchantingly indoctrinate large numbers of the world´s masses of consumers. Now, the originally Catholic-based Liberation Theology has taken interesting directions in places like Brazil in South America where it has been associated with a land-occupation movement, the MST Brazilian Landless Workers Movement has established itself quite broadly and become successful with co-operative and agroecological practices.
I know of Spain´s Basque priest Jose "Arizmendi" who inspired what has become the huge multinational Mondragon Co-op Corp industrial complex. The US had Dorothy Day of the Catholic Workers, and more recently Daniel Berrigan in Vietnam War protests. I recall working with a nun in social services who was an anti-nuke protester. Perhaps there is some relatedness in kind between these events and what you perceive in response to your prayers. Then we can hope to distinguish issues surrounding the Prosperity Gospel and its issues with the Social Gospel. Maturity and spiritual brilliance aren´t to be underplayed.
If you have this power, why haven't you used it to eliminate disease, hunger, homelessness, war, etc.?
Fair enough. Unethical and devoid of compassion, but logically consistent.Because they've got nothing to do with me and I don't care about those things.
If you get a chance, see my reply to the same. I think it´s above.If you have this power, why haven't you used it to eliminate disease, hunger, homelessness, war, etc.?
I don't care about that.
Don't care.
Agreed. Good post.