Example of answered prayer in my life not due to coincidence

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

[Indigo Child]

I am not sure what comment you are referring to Prowag, if it is mine, I am not saying
that good things only happen to people who pray. What I am saying is how and why prayer
works and does not work for some. Moreover, what is a "good" thing is really subjective,
what we say is good today, may later turn out to be a bad thing, and what we say is a bad thing
today may later turn out to be a good thing. Suppose you pray to god for a job you really want,
but you do not get it, it may seem like a bad thing, but later you land a job which is even better
than the job you wanted, and you would not have got it, if you had got the other job you wanted.
So how god's will works is mysterious, it guides you in life, without you actually being aware it is
guiding you.

The best way to become a child of god is to die to yourself, so you can be born again in spirit. Then god
will guide you, look after you and you will feel his presence. This means your ego must die, you must stop
thinking you are the doer, because you don't actually do anything. You are simply a witness in god's divine
plan watching it unfold. If you let go completely and just let yourself flow with the unfolding of creation, all
that you need will manifest in your life of its own accord. I know this is true, because things manifest in my life
when I most need them. I don't even have to pray for them. I just submit to god and it all happens by itself.

[ProfWag]

Why does anyone have to pray? If there is a god and He/She is so good and all-knowing, then isn't your future pre-determined by Him/Her regardless of what you pray about? I mean, if I'm Atheist but there is a god, then didn't that god know a few decades ago that I was going to become Atheist? Or...is this god not all-knowing/all powerful?
Hopefully, this isn't off-subject...

[ciscop]

Again scescop is talking and referencing personal experiences
that means nothing!!
thats no argument at all


there is a book by Maeterlink.. nobel litterature price..
is called before god.. is philosophy
is awesome..
it is really high literature, so i dont think believers could understand it
not sure if there is a coloring book version of the book yet..

[Indigo Child]

In fact what I was saying is in intention is needed. I recall an interview I was reading of an
Indian guru who gave a very interesting explanation for what intention is, it is in-tension he
says. Whenever you feel you have to act to do something, to change the outcome of something,
you are exerting an effort which is going against things as they are, what taoists call the "way"
Moreover, you assume again that you are other than what you are trying to change, without realising
that you and what you are trying to change are the same. The idea that we have that we are separate
from anything else hinges on the idea of a personal and individual self suspended within space, when in fact
that is not the case, our body, mind, identity is interconnected with everything else. So once you let go
of the illusion of doership, rather than going against the flow of life, you will flow with it. This is god's will.

So where does this leave the question of free will? If there is no doer, then question of free will vanishes.
All is just life, and we are all just fragments of life, through which life expresses itself. So once you stop
being the doer(die to yourself) you will let life express itself(born again in spirit) and then things will simply
manifest in your life of their own accord based on your needs. Everything that you need will happen by itself.
This is what the Taoists mean by doing by not doing.

That is not to say there is no power in prayer, there is, but whatever you pray for has to be inline with god's will for it
to happen. You can use the power of your intention to do many things that are not in line with his will, but this binds
you to karma. The secret of the masters, whether that be the Taoists masters, Christian masters, Hindu masters,
Buddhist masters, Sufi masters is that thy surrender completely to the divine, they lose all sense of doership, and a result
they allow the divine to manifest through them.

[ProfWag]

[NinjaPuppy]

[Indigo Child]

[NinjaPuppy]

Very nicely put Indigo.

[Scepcop]

Indigo,
What do you think of Creative Visualization, such as in the book about it by Shakti Gawain? She says that you can visualize healing energy going to another person to heal them, during your meditation. And that you can manifest things that way. Have you ever tried it? Is visualization similar to prayer?

[Twain Shakespeare]

My most statistically unlikely experiences were getting the same answer three times to variants of the same question with I Ching and Tarot. My tarot story is on that blog. Can't find where I put my I Ching account.
It was stated above...
As far as prayer goes I always apply this saying:

"Be careful in what you ask for. You might just get it."
That fits my experiences. I gave up prayer as a child, after a couple of tries, since I didn't like YHWH, rather he listened or not, so it felt hypocritical.
When I was thirty two and suicidal, I decided I had nothing to lose but my “sanity”, and I wasn't enjoying that, so from the depths of my atheist dark night of the soul, I “prayed” for meaning and love. Then I met my ex-wife. She had been told that her next husband would be the first man she had met who had read CS Lewis “Till We Have Faces”. That was me.
When I was born again, I proposed to my wife while in what might be described as a state of prophetic possesion, or a psychotic breakdown, or perhaps some Jungian state of archetypical activation, but my perception was I was in a prophetic state and being guided in my every word and action to say things and behave in a manner utterly unlike me in order to accomplish God's will and bring us together.
"Be careful in what you ask for. You might just get it."
I don't remember misses, but I know that the larger number of prayers I made did not have any obvious answer, but enough did to keep me in a freaky state until my wife's prayer for a wake-up call to America was answered on September 11, 2001.
"Be careful in what you ask for. You might just get it."
My last prayer to God was to inspire me to write. I spent six days in jail, denied access to a lawyer. The fifth day was my birthday. I said, “If this doesn't inspire me, nothing will.” It worked.
"Be careful in what you ask for. You might just get it."
Peace, love, wisdom