JOHN MCINTOSH
With the deepest respect, of course, pray if that is your ‘Joy’ and it is done with ‘deep reverence’ and ‘humility’. However, ‘if’ … it is through habit or hope or desperation then it is being used as an instrument of [attempted] manipulation and bargaining with what the mind believes is some superior power to itself that hopefully can be cajoled into granting requests under the right conditions. In this case there is a sense of separation between a ‘lesser and a greater’. The recognition that there ‘is’ only ONE, and you, the Real YOU is IT … is not present.
Gratitude may be considered a kind of prayer as well but in this case a communication ‘of’ the SELF … [slumbering as IT is in the grand illusion, cloaked in the conditioning of the false self], speaking to the fully Aware SELF, Who ‘is’ this ONE or Consciousness – Real YOU. When you express gratitude in this manner, ‘from’ your SELF ‘to’ your SELF, you are acknowledging that all is NOW and that you are referring only to things and circumstances as ‘already existing’ … not happening in some future ‘time’ where it does NOT exist, as with ‘some’ prayer. There ‘is’ no separation [time and space] in ONE.
When this gratitude is expressed and deferred ‘only’ to the WILL of the SELF and NOT trying to tell it how things should be, it illustrates that you know that IT Knows what is best for you in the moment. For example, “I give thanks to the God I AM, that everything that is perfect for my highest good [you could be specific and refer to a specific circumstance] is always provided in each moment”. This offers complete surrender to ITs Knowing and takes all burdens off you of trying to figure out what is best.
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