2023-10-02-Daniel on Prayer

Session

Dialogue

Q1: Question about whether prayer is effective. Understand worship and being with God, but it seems that prayer is just an exercise in asking for something and it only really affects the prayer. So what is the purpose?

Daniel: My friends, dear students, I am Daniel. I would ask you to consider what it is like when you yearn for something, for some change in your life, or for some transformation in the lives of others who may have some difficulties, or if you can recognize the place where you are seeking answers or hoping for a solution to manifest. This is the place or state where prayer is effective. By the time you have formulated the words, you have already made your petition. God answers the attitude, the yearning, the desire to know, the desire for change.

All too often the verbalization of prayers are a sort of rudimentary exercise. In many group situations the verbalization of prayer can often be either self-serving, to express in a way that others can recognize eloquence, or prayer can be utilized as a mechanism to feel a sense of connection and participation with others. When you are in private, the practice of recognizing what you yearn for, what you desire to happen, bringing these into words, helps you to focus, but make no mistake that our Father hears the petitions of your soul long before you have brought these ideas to the point of verbalizing them. When you recognize your feelings of compassion and sorrow and pain for another’s misfortunes, these elements of petition are wholly satisfactory, for they are the yearnings of your soul for justice to manifest and no greater petition can occur to our Father.

We often do not spend an inordinate amount of time trying to correct these practices, for every effort to come into connection with God has its level of benefit to the degree that there is some sincerity in those desires. On a world of distortions such as Urantia, the practice of petitioning is a sort of stepping stone to developing a more mature attitude with regard to your relationship with the Divine. But know that nothing you say influences God to respond any faster than what the attitude of your heart and soul is manifesting. No set of words put in any order influences the Divine, for it is your attitude and your intentions that are heard, not how you vocalize.

This is not to say your words have no meaning, for of course they do in your efforts to communicate with one another in higher conceptual patterns, but you have been at this for a significant amount of time, such that we feel confident you can understand the intention behind the blunt nature of our response regarding how you view prayer.

But also make no mistake: your yearnings, your desire for change, your feelings of empathy and hope for transformation, these are not falling on deaf ears in the halls of Paradise. What you desire is heard. How you vocalize it helps you to understand, perhaps, what it is you are feeling.

I don’t know if this completely answers your query this evening, but I did want to take this opportunity to discuss prayer from the perspective of intention in contrast to verbalization.

Q1: I do appreciate that Daniel. I guess I’m still left with the recognition that prayer is helpful for ourselves to understand, and when you say our yearnings are heard in the halls of Paradise, I’m still missing the link of how that changes anything. If God hears our prayers before we are aware of them and he’s always working for our higher good, then my takeaway is that this really is all about our personal transformation and growth. When we have compassion for others and we want transformation for them and we see them struggling, our petitions are heard, but those people still have free will and God is already trying to work and transform them, so our prayers for them don’t add to God’s. They just make us aware of our own yearnings. So I guess I’m back to the attitude of prayer is good for us and doesn’t do anything for anyone else. That’s kind of my take.

Daniel: Thank you for further expressing. I would review the conditions of effective prayer from the Urantia papers as a suggestion, and also point to the statement - what a true child of God desires and the Father wills, is - to let you know that prayer is not merely for the self, but that an energy transference occurs occasionally within the desires and yearning of the pure spirit. In some ways, this also is part of why it is recommended if you would pray for another, to let them know you are praying for them. For then a circuit can be created, so to speak, which allows for the transference of energy, both from your desire to aid and their recognition that you are offering care and concern.

The mysteries of how energy flows throughout the universes are not all answerable at your level of existence, but when the alignment is there by all parties, the ability for transference of energy occurs, sometimes in miraculous ways, at least to the human eye, even if it is rational and scientific and process oriented on the spiritual level.

Q1: Thank you. That was the answer I was looking for. I was wondering if circuits were created and energy was transferred. Otherwise it felt like prayer was really just about changing God. But God doesn’t change. God’s love and desire and knowing what we need is constant and that was where I was having trouble. Petitioning God doesn’t change God, but how does caring to pray for others have any effect, if any? I think of energy very often as being material energy, but I realize there are spiritual and mindal energies. But thank you. You’ve given me partial answers and areas to ponder in.

Daniel: Yes, my dear, and recognize that our Creator does recognize when you yearn for his presence, either for yourself or for others. It may not change the changeless nature of Deity at the center of all things, but recognize that even at the beginning, the potential of you here in this universe on the outskirts of the cosmos, and your yearning, was most likely foreseen as a probability, and your desire for helping another likewise seen as a potentiality.

Therefore, the element of circuit building that we referred to is, in some sense, manifesting a potential that was already foreseen. The transference of the energy of God happens based upon all of these multitude of recognitions and realizations that predate or pre exist all that we are, so you shouldn’t feel that you, a child of the very Creator of all things, cannot, by your sincere desires, influence that reality, no differently than if you, as a babe, many years past, were to reach our your hand for your father and mother hoping they would take it and provide you some solace.

The recognition of these potentials should inspire you to know that God does not sit changeless without mercy and compassion for his children, merely that all has been foreseen as possibility and potential, and our Father responds nevertheless in ways we may not always be aware of or understand. It is your effort to bring about those connections that provides opportunity within your sphere of influence. But it is always the attitudes, the yearnings and your sincerity that are heard, not simply the words you recite.

Q1: That was incredibly helpful Daniel and fits with my reading.

Q2: I also think about our free will and yes, God is not changing, but every time we make a decision it adds to the Supreme. He won’t beg us to pray or put the words there. That’s up to us with our free will.

Daniel: Yes, exactly. You have the ability to influence your outcomes in your environment, knowing that it influences the evolutionary universes and the response from the stationary parts outside of time and space are in correlation to the various attitudes and ideas and actions being expressed.

Just recognize that the very core realization of the simplistic words - truth, beauty and goodness - is that they are actual manifestations from this changeless presence at the center and not merely concepts to throw around as though they have fleeting meaning. Our limitations of word usage can sometimes bring you to a place where you begin to think of these terms too commonly and without the same impacting energy that is behind each of these realities. This changeless presence has brought reverberations throughout the universes, knowing all that is possible, and yet it does not diminish the energy of the truth, beauty and goodness contained.

Closing

So I would encourage you to recognize that you are integral to the outworking of the highest reality to the extent that you bring yourself into alignment with that core piece within you, and this is not impersonal, lacking sensitivities or emotion or the deep feelings of love engendered from a parent to its child, but that it is able to both recognize your place at the fledgling status of humanity and to still manifest all of the power and majesty throughout the universes for all beings in all places.

Thank you for sharing this evening, my friends. I know that the time is getting late so I would conclude with maybe a simple last thought to hopefully recognize how truly loved and cared for you are, not merely by that piece of divinity within you, or those of us who are merely a couple steps ahead of you in the journey, and even those diminutions of divinity that have been placed throughout the universes to manifest and create and serve and build, but that you are truly and deeply loved by the very source of infinity that has manifested all of this, and more.

Q1: Thank you Daniel and that last statement might be the core behind my questions about prayer. So thank you for revealing it to me. I appreciate all of the conversation and I love you.