Prayer
By, Brother Bob ©1996

We were created by Love (God) as perfect expressions of Love. Thankfully, there is nothing we can do to change Love’s Creation. However, we can dream about being separate from Love with our own separate will. Happily, nothing of a dream can have any validity or consequence. What seems to be happening in our dream is what we have decided to let happen just for a taste of separateness. Fortunately, Love cannot be aware of this dream, since Love did not impose this illusion. In this dream, we see Love as separate and distant from us. As such, we blame Love for all conditions that seem to be happening. We think that Love imposed some penalty on us because of our dreaming. It then seems that our only recourse is to pray to this distant Creator to intercede and thus rectify what we have made in fantasy.

How can Love reach into our illusion if it is only a dream? Love continues to view our Wholeness as the perfect presence that Love Created. Love cannot see or participate in what we are dreaming. Therefore, to pray to Love to make any correction is foolishness. This would be no different from going to sleep at night and then awakening in the morning to ask Love to heal something in the dream we thought we experienced while we were sleeping.

The dictionary says that a prayer is a petition to God. This petition can be in the form of a request, adoration, confession, supplication, or thanksgiving. In reviewing these alternatives, it would seem the only valid choices are adoration and thanksgiving. Although Love does not need our adoration and thanksgiving, it is our way of expressing our appreciation and remembrance of unity. If Love has given us everything as a result of Creation, what is there to ask for in any form of request? Since Love has given us the abundance of Creation, there is only a prayer of thanksgiving for this affluence. Since Love Created us as Love’s perfect expression, what is there to confess? It is impossible to be the sinner that some religious organizations want to impose on us. If we can be sinners, then Love did not Create us from the essence of Love’s Being. In order to be a sinner, I guess they believe we were created from something other than Love. Finally, a supplication is a humble and earnest plea or persuasion to God. Why would we need to beg or persuade Love to do what Love has already done? We only need to persuade ourselves to be thankful.

Many prayers seem to be a request for a physical healing for ourselves or others. Bodies that get sick, age, decay and die cannot be the essence of Love, and therefore, cannot be anything more than fractions of a dream. Since these bodies do not represent who we are in truth, why should we be concerned with physical healing? The only real healing that we are capable of accomplishing is that of a healing of our perception and awareness. One of the essential ingredients of true prayer is the expression of thanksgiving for what we have already received. At those occasions of perceived physical disease, our only true prayer to Love is, "Thank you for Creating me from the essence of Your Being." In reality, this prayer is an essential reminder of our Creation combined with our expression of gratitude. Any prayer that does not acknowledge the fullness of creation cannot be valid. To pray that another gets better, is to misperceive what Love Created. To see another as less than whole can only be a judgment that what Love Created is less than the fullness of Love’s Creation. If it is necessary for our sanity in the moment to utter words of prayer for another, we can say, "Love is the perfect presence, and you are that presence." Essentially, that is the perfect prayer for any occasion whether we just Know it for ourselves or another, or we express it orally.

The one prayer that is totally judgmental is if we pray that another sees the light so they can be saved from hellfire and damnation. This is the ultimate in projection. If I am seeing another as less than the fullness of what Love Created, I am the only one that could benefit from a prayer to correct perception. Since everyone and everything Love Created is perfect and forever embraced within the Being of Love, there is not anyone or anything that needs to be saved. The only one who could see another as in need of saving is the one who judges appearances as valid, which, in essence, judges Love as incapable of Creating perfection. Whenever we judge by appearances, we will be incorrect. In the infinite Creation, Love is the only power and presence. Within this infinite Creation, there is complete unity without exception. In this unity is the Oneness of Love. What can possibly exist outside Oneness? In Oneness, we are the fully innocent, perfect presence of Love.