Why pray at all?

 

Prayer is a vital tool to improve your life. It also nurtures values like integrity and honesty. Prayer happens in two situations, or in a combination of situations: when you feel grateful or when you feel utterly helpless.  

If you are not grateful and prayerful, you will be miserable. In either case your prayers will be answered. What you can do, you do. What you cannot do, you pray for.  

It is said the divine dawns in you when you pray for it, when you sing for it. The divine is only waiting for you to dig a little deeper into yourself, because it can then fill you with much more nectar.  

Divine wants you to create more space in you. Cry from your soul for help. This is for those seekers who are weak. Those seekers who are strong with the power of knowledge can sing with that joy of what they have achieved. 

The moment you sing in gratitude, in glory of the divine, it immediately dawns in you and fills you up again. One type of people are grateful for all their growth. The other type are helpless and weak. Both will be helped.  

Spirituality is not some ritual, or doing something. It is a very pleasant, uplifted state of being and seeing the whole world as all spirit or consciousness. Use prayer to bring integration to your personality. Whatever you do, know that the higher power has the final say and it will always be the best.

Making short term and long term plans

 

At any given point of time, our mind is oscillating between the past and the future. Either it is angry or sad about the past or anxious about the future. Whatever actions you do in this state of mind, you regret after sometime.  

Does it mean that you should not plan your future? No. You should plan your short and long term goals. Then, and only then, life gets a channel, a direction to flow. When the mind is totally in the present, the right planning happens.  

Not only should you plan your goals, but plan the means and methods to work towards them. Where would you like to see yourself after three years? After 20 years? After 40 years? Don't be feverish about the result. Give your 100%.  

If you are feverish about the results, it will lead you to disappointment. Do not make a list of all the things you want to achieve. Select few things that really matter.  

Once a teacher brought a glass jar to the class and a bag with some big stones, some small stones and some sand. He asked the students to put all the contents from the bag into the glass jar. Some students put the sand first, then small stones and there was no place for big stones.  

The teacher later explained that had they put the bigger stones first, then the smaller stones, there was always space around the stones for all the sand in the bag. This example teaches us an important lesson in prioritizing things.  

If we put the things that will give us maximum fulfillment in the long term, smaller things will automatically fall into place. Among all the planets in the solar system, the earth is privileged to host life in its many forms, and among all the species, humans are most privileged, for they can host knowledge.  

Again and again, remember that you are peace, you are love, you are joy.