LIFE AND THE LAW - USE OF PRAYER

THE USE OF PRAYER:

The process of prayer, to many people, is the process of beseeching God to do something. It involves abasing oneself, and crying out for help in an attitude of pleading, if not desperation. In this manner, most peoples' view of prayer is just like Bill Talliaferro says; cry for the cavalry to come riding in. It is a plea to please, please save our miserable rear ends from the savages of our misfortune.

Here are the BELIEF systems which often underlie that kind of prayer:

1) God is a power outside of ourselves. That is, we are separate from God.
2) We are powerless, miserable creatures; not empowered beings.
3) We are in a state of misfortune; victims of circumstance beyong our control, and when we cry for help, we may not get it, unless our begging is loud enough to be heard. In other words, God is not just distant, he is deaf, too!

None of those beliefs are valid, according to the teachings of Mental Science. They amount to a denial of the good which we are (at the Conscious level) supposedly asking for. The Science of Mind proposes the following approach to prayer, known as SPIRITUAL MIND TREATMENT:

1) There is no Power but the One Power, the first Cause. All things are manifestations of that power.
2) There is no Life but the One Life. All life is a manifestation of that Life.
3) If that is true, then that is the source of our power, and our life. This means that we are one with each other, and we are one with the Universal Power that created us. There is no separation. There never was, except in our own BELIEF system. And as we believed, so it was DONE to us. The only separation was created in response to our belief.
4) Therefore, as we believe in our success, our healing, our fortune, our good in any form, it WILL be done for us.

Notice that an erroneous belief works exactly like a negative prayer, to get us into difficulty. Though it may be unconscious in origin, it works effectively, over and over, till we substitute a conscious process to unseat it.

This is not designed to convince God of anything. God does not need to be convinced of our wholeness. Prayer treatment is done to create a movement of thought in our mind, to bring about our belief, our faith, in the desired outcome. Then, by the universal mental principle, our good is brought about.

The belief in our Unity is the key. Our opportunity as human beings is to explore that Unity, till we not only know it in our minds, but can feel it in our hearts. We should treat our alienation as we would treat to heal an illness. Hence the name, prayer treatment.