Description

Prayer – a person’s request from a higher power – is discussed by highlighting fundamental differences between prayer in religion to prayer in Kabbalah.

Transcript

Perceiving Reality: Prayer

Is prayer a part of Kabbalah? What is prayer? Are my prayers heard?

Are our prayers heard? well that all depends on what you mean by prayer. Cause everybody prays in one way or another, but what are we really doing, when we start talking to what we think of as god and why is it that prayers are so rarely answered?

Kabbalah does not consider prayer something that’s done with the tongue; you know the saying of beautiful, inspiring words, that we read, praising the Creator, or even our own spontaneous words - that’s the religious model of prayer. The Kabbalists tell us that the Upper Force doesn’t listen to words, but only responds to what is actually in our heart - and that it only answers one kind of prayer: a true prayer which is a bottom line, gut level need. That’s the most powerful desire that we have at any given moment, and even then, it has to be the right kind of desire.

See, in religion a person believes in a God, who is in control, and that there are events that happen or may happen to him or her that are felt as either good or bad. If they think that something bad is happening they start praying, and ask that god change his attitude and instead be kind and take away or prevent the bad event and make it good.

In this kind of prayer a person thinks that the Creator’s attitude is completely variable and the prayer is that God should change and my life should remain comfortable. The gut level desire here is that God should serve me. This kind of prayer is never answered because it has nothing to do with why the events are happen the way they do, or with the Creator’s attitude and nothing actually changes here, not the outcome, not God and not the person. In fact this isn’t prayer at all; it’s a kind of bribery, but to no affect,

In Kabbalah we have a Creator and a person in this world and events that are felt as either good or bad. But, because the Kabbalist starts from the principle that all actions of the Creator do not change, that the Creator’s attitude is always and only good-therefore, all of the events in the person’s life are also always good, it’s just that he can’t feel it that way. So obviously the problem is with him, and not with the Creator. In that case what appeal can the person possibly make? The Kabbalist asks the Upper Force to change him! So that he can feel the event as good by altering his inner nature so that he can sense the loving attitude that the Creator has in sending him that event. In fact that is the very reason he received that event, so that he would continue to develop and truly feel the need to rise to the attitude of the Creator, to want what the Creator wants to give him. That need is his prayer. And that prayer is answered immediately and the man’s reality truly changes because he begins to live in and perceive a very different world.