Human beings are continually and unconditionally supported by benevolence, made manifest in the cosmic laws. Nature is governed by these immutable laws that are relevant everywhere and at all times, and on which we too, as human beings depend. However, we rarely sense the love and wisdom embraced by these laws. We can only truly experience this through the exertion of our spiritual core of being, which expresses itself in intuitive perception, the inner voice that accompanies every human being. Our spirit has become lethargic and walled in from inexertion. Our over-cultivated intellect has created an imbalance, causing the finer coverings around the spirit to become dense and thereby dimming its radiance. As a result, today we only rarely hear the whispered warnings and guidance of our inner voice. The world to which our spirit spark belongs has become alien to us and almost unattainable.

We imagine that what we see, hear, touch and feel with our earthly senses constitutes the reality of the entire Creation. We saunter along indifferently through life, with only small earthly aspirations and goals in mind. The sacred duty to investigate the real purpose of our existence hardly touches us. And if it does, we tend to think there is no answer.

We extol individual freedom above all else, together with the potency symbolised by the new gods of market ideologies and the engines of a science that has presumed to give definitive answers to the big and small questions of existence. On the one hand, human attitudes seem more tolerant under the principles of democracy, yet intolerance grows. Atheism spreads with dogmatic intensity, along with the view of life as a fluke in a vast cosmic lottery of chemistry, side by side with fundamentalist caricatures of faith with their footprint of atrocities.

Ideas about God come in many forms; seen as all knowing, all-loving, ever-just, yet also vengeful, jealous, terrifying and even merciless towards the disobedient. Like the Greek deities, the Biblical God seems much like us except that He is more powerful, one who in the manner of pagan gods must be propitiated with sacraments, penance, sacrifices, obeisance and prayer. Plainly this is anthropomorphism of the highest degree. These notions, though understandable as human projections, exemplify very primitive thinking.

Devaluing, menacing and inadequate are the conceptions we habitually hold of God and His Creation, in the end never getting away from the human standpoint.

Yet ever-present help surrounds us in the working of the perfect cosmic laws woven by God into His Creation from the beginning. By observing these Laws we vaguely perceive a glimmer of His stupendous magnitude. No need is so great as to be without hope, no pain without a blessing! The only times we fail are when we want to force our own will, without regard to the eternal order, and when we do things half measure and rely solely on our earthly intellect. But we choose to stay tuned to the confused noise of the world and do not hear the awakening voice of the spirit. It speaks to us deep within, having first to penetrate many walls, surmount many obstacles, before it can reach our ego. But it does not give up.

Nevertheless we are in a quandary, not knowing how to access this help that is so close to us. We don’t even realise that we can do so by prayer. Nor do we really know what it means to pray, even when urged to do so in times of great joy or deep pain. Praying is not pleading and begging in anxiety and need, not habitually babbling empty phrases in dull submission.

In a serious and heartfelt prayer a human soul opens itself before his Lord and Creator. He kneels at His feet in the greatest fervour he can command. He is uplifted by virtue of the magnetic power of the ray of love that has flowed to him. New life, new energy flows through the spirit that looks up to God in humility.

It is really through our gratitude for the love inherent in the automatic activity of the cosmic laws that we can get to know and learn to experience the real power of prayer. Help can reach us at all times by adjusting to the Will of the Most High manifest in the cosmic laws. And even if we bring forward a particular wish in prayer, benefit can only reach us lawfully in return through reciprocal action.

To kneel down in wordless, fervent prayer before the greatness of God and beseech Him in a boundless longing to bring to deed the object of our prayer according to His Will, is to get to know the blissful answer that comes from on High when the supplicant is selfless and humble.

He who has never experienced within himself the glorious majesty of God and the grandeur of His Creation, he who has never perceived his own smallness deep within, does not yet know what it means to pray: a profound self-surrender, a single jubilant soul seeking to connect with God. The power of prayer is transforming. Luminous threads are attracted to the person who seeks this connection. These threads can finally reach him and become the firm anchor he can hold on to in every distress. He must then tend and maintain the path that leads to the Helper. The way thereto for the human spirit is a voluntary adjustment to His Will. It is like an earthly path: if we travel on it every day, it will become familiar to us, it will begin to appear shorter and ever easier, even in the dark of the most excruciating experiences.

A tremendous power lies in the inner life of human beings! If it is developed and used for the good, it uplifts our surroundings; if it is used for evil intent, it presses us into the depths of darkness. If humanity were united and completely filled with good volition, then the earth would rise upwards again to the place the Creator had chosen
for us from the beginning but from which humanity choose to stray.

So great is the power of prayer, that it can open gates to higher realms and draw on the power of the Light that is God.

We can wrap ourselves in this Light energy and protect ourselves against base interests and temptations. If we were to live completely in it, we would wondrously transform everything around us.

How often do we desperately struggle to help somebody who is on the wrong track? However, oftentimes he closes himself to us. He thinks he is misunderstood, misjudged and does not see his mistake. His intellectual reasoning hinders the recognition of his spirit.

If we turn instead, in prayer, to his spirit, and ask for help, it is wonderful to experience how the person, himself unaware, can be transformed. A web of luminous threads envelops him and keeps debasing forms at bay. One inhibition after the other, to which he is still clinging erroneously, can fall away from him under the influence of these light energies. He becomes brighter within himself because his environment has grown brighter.

We often feel an inner radiance emanating from a complete stranger, whose language we may not even know. We understand, as it were, without understanding. We are simply experiencing psychic radiance, popularly known as 'good vibes'.

A prayerful life, in all simplicity and naturalness, connecting us to the radiant power of the Most High, is happiness and bliss! And this happiness is within reach of every human spirit. In striving upwards to the Light, all that is base, dense and evil is left forever behind us!

Jide Adefope

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