How To Get Your Prayers Answered
This short excerpt is from the chapter
How to Get Your Prayers Answered
in the book Reincarnation Through Common Sense
I feel a little uppity and out of place entitling a chapter “How to Get Your Prayers Answered.” Everyone who has ever lived has asked this question at least once. It is unlikely that a person like myself could find any important information about getting prayers answered while rooting around through decades of deep intoxication and a few layers of insanity—and rarely saying a conventional prayer or even believing in the concept.
It seems I may have gotten lucky.
There are three steps to getting your prayers answered. They are:
~1~
Set your hope, wish, prayer, aspiration, desired intent exactly where you want it, worded so that it is short, focused, and sticks to basics.
If your wish includes doing harm, or is of no benefit to others, restructure it. For a first step example, “I hope that nasty bastard dies painfully and that I never meet another asshole like him” probably won’t work too well. “I hope to never meet nasty people from now on and that everyone else has the same good luck” is a much better fit, but not quite good enough. The desired result needs to always be framed in present tense positive achievement. The “I hope...” sentence should be structured to say something like, “I meet nicer people and am one. I welcome help with this.”
If you really want to make big points within this system, say something like the following, and really mean it. “I meet nicer people and am one. I hope that all people, especially that one who has recently acted so nastily toward me, become decent and happy. I thank everything in existence for help in making this happen.” Use whatever you feel comfy with in place of that “everything in existence” bit. God, any representative or representation of God, The Universe, The Force, The Collective Unconscious, Nature, Fate, The Field, The Buddhafield, The Laws Of Physics and the Quantum Field, The Void, Great Spirit, Great Beyond, or whatever name you have for your Bigger-Than-You thing.
The language of positive direction and a benevolent intent are extremely important! Use them. The potent effect of positive language can be seen in Mother Teresa’s comment, “I won’t go to your anti-war rally. If you ever have a peace rally, call me.”
~2~
Empty your mind of everything else.
Don’t treat this step lightly! It is not as simple as it sounds. Most folks can’t sit for a single minute without having an unsolicited thought pop up. Clearing mental clutter will take some work, but it can be very enjoyable. Relax through any initial bits of impatience.
Here’s why this step is so important.
Everything comes from nothing. Whatever you want to put anywhere starts with it not being there yet. Consider that nothing always comes before something. That’s why it can truly be said that there is no thing as real as nothing.
Any background is the birthplace of whatever stands out from it.
Then consider that there can only be 100% of anything and so there can only be 100% of your mind. If 90% of it is rattling around on things other than those that you want in your line of focus, other than fulfilling the prayer—well, you can do the math. The percentage of random thought prattling around in your head needs to be reduced as thoroughly as possible in order to have most of consciousness available for getting your sought after on-purpose intentions fulfilled.
Thoughts will arise, but don’t pay attention to them. Pay attention to the awareness that is recognizing them. To stabilize this ability will take patience, confidence, and consistent effort—especially at first. Practice makes perfect. The more you do it, the easier it gets. There are tried and true methods that have been proven to work. My Temple mates and their ancestors have been using some of them for thousands of years. I strongly recommend a tried and true method because employing your own unassisted mind to clean out the clutter spawned by that very mind would be similar to hiring soldiers to end the concept of war. The cemeteries are full of dead soldiers who would like to tell you that this logic is fatally flawed.
Finding a good teacher with whom a good working rapport can be established is extremely beneficial to your mind-clearing process. The quality of attention paid by the student is more important than who the teacher is—but not by much. Finding a knowledgable, dedicated teacher and bringing all of your attention to the learning process are both very important.
Being overanxious can work against a person who is picking a coach, teacher, or guide. It’s a wonderful thing to get help with this mind-clearing part of the prayer-fulfilling process. But just because one is well motivated and anxious to start doesn’t mean that the first person to come along with a robe, divinity degree, or crystal ball is the right teacher. Try a few sessions each with as many teachers as you care to, and with an open mind. It may take a week or years. When the right time, person, and system for you arrive, it will be obvious.
“We should be very careful who we establish a relationship with as a teacher. First we should check him or her out and allow him or her to check us out. If this doesn’t work out, don’t push it. It is always better to develop a relationship that we can trust, rather than getting into one we are not sure of. This is essential advice. The student and the Lama have to have a strong faith and trust in each other.” Lama Karma Rinchen
~3~. For step 3 and the thread that ties everything together, see Chapter 72 in the book Reincarnation Through Common Sense.
