Praying

So many people in this world today tell me they don't believe in God especially young people. My point of view is that spirituality is important because it is how you treat others and yourself. Actually, in the end it isn't ultimately important whether people believe in God, it is mostly about how they treat others and themselves in the end.

Because what you do to yourself you do to others and what you do to others you do to yourself. But, what you do to both others and yourself affects your mind, your body and your health the most. So, if you are not kind to others then you aren't really kind to yourself. And, conversely, if you aren't kind to yourself what you do to others can create all sorts of negative ramifications.

So, honesty with yourself has to come first. Because if you aren't honest with yourself everything you do or say to others is a lie because you are lying to yourself and how can you lie to yourself and be truthful with others? It just doesn't work that way.

So, praying is about telling the truth to yourself (whether you tell the truth to others or not).

And when you actually tell the truth to yourself before life and (God) this becomes the basis of what prayers are.

They are telling the truth. When someone is praying often they are crying because the truth can be very painful to face in oneself and others.

So, praying becomes a catharsis and a new birth in one's life.

When I grew up I was taught a type of rhythmic prayer that reminds me now of doing the rosary or doing mantras and that works as people sort of move into a trance and convince their subconscious minds that something is true that they want to be true.

It works for the people it works for.

So, mobilizing in prayerful ways often depends upon the background of the individual. Because how one's subconscious mind has been programmed by experiences both good and bad might affect how someone can be successful praying or not.

Though my Grandfather (my father's father) didn't go to church but sort of worshipped nature instead, (as many men do) who are out of doors men. My father became religious during his teens and twenties because he needed to to emotionally stabilize himself to give more purpose to his life. So, he was an Electrical Contractor and he and my mother also ran a church in Los Angeles (my father only on nights and weekends when he wasn't working at the business he owned). So, I grew up with people praying a lot and singing spiritual songs a lot. So, I watched a learned a lot about this.

I found that most people were not emotionally stable with all this. Often religious people go to extremes sort of like alcoholics and drug addicts. But, instead of being addicted to drugs or alcohol they are addicted to their religion instead (which can be just as bad in some ways as a drug addiction or alcohol addiction).

It made me get to the point where I sort of saw "Balance in Everything" rather than going to extremes. Too little religion or spirituality in one's life could be bad but too much often made people really crazy especially if they had been physically, mentally or emotionally abused as children or young adults.

So, balance in everything became one of my mottos. But, at the same time I found I was very spiritually gifted in that my relationship with God and spirit was very very strong and this was one of the reasons I realized I had to move towards enlightenment and ways to help all beings to benefit God who gave me this gifts. However, I saw that becoming a minister was obsolete in the present world we live in.

People are going to have their own  personal religions more and more now since people started getting college educations so much during the 1960s. So, people aren't just going to buy into any old fairy tale any more for the most part. So, this means people have to learn new ways to find out who they are because more and more religion has become sort of like being a Californian or a New Yorker and rooting for your sports team more than anything real for most people on earth now.

And very few people are actually spiritual in any religion because it is all politics or fear based (one or the other and sometimes both).

But, the essence of prayer (honesty with yourself and God and Life) is still absolutely necessary to stay sane and alive and for life to have meaning enough to stay alive.

So, in this way prayer is necessary to keep going through whatever may come in your life.

And it really doesn't matter whether you believe in God, Life, Yourself or anything. Without prayer (being honest with yourself) and if possible being honest with others) and God if you believe in God) It is unlikely you will live much past 30 if that.