Sunday, June 22, 2008

Charity's Views on Prayer

In 1995 I had a series of conversations with Charity, a Professor CIE and my spiritual mentor. This is one regarding the usefulness of prayer.

Ralph: We are now at 12-15-95 with Charity talking about the TV program "Miracles and the Extraordinary." All right now, these are questions that came to mind. I just want them on record. They talked in this program with one priest, Marianne Williamson, another preacher and a doctor, and they all seemed to agree that there was a power of prayer to help heal people. Now you are laughing already, which indicates that you don’t agree with them. Is that correct?

Charity: Correct.

Ralph: Well, we will drop that subject. Then we go on to why should so many people believe in a power of prayer if something hasn’t been demonstrated by experience?

Charity: The avenue is that you have humans that are in a group that is praying for another human being who is ill, but the avenue is designed for that human being, their charge, to exist or to become well. This will happen no matter what. We have a question for you. What is prayer?

Ralph: Well, I think that is usually defined as a spoken or non spoken thought directed towards a higher power, usually God, asking for some particular intervention in human life.

Charity: First of all, humans don’t need to do that. The Essences already know what needs to happen.

Ralph: Well, our religions have taught us we need to do that.

Charity: So by prayer, it is a request?

Ralph: That is one type of prayer, yes. A prayer may also be a praise and a thank you.

Charity: Why do they call it a prayer instead of a request? What is the difference?

Ralph: A prayer is always devoted to a god. I say "a god" because you can have cultures with many gods.

Charity: Correct.

Ralph: It is not to another person that a request would ordinarily be. It is a request in a prayerful way to somebody who doesn’t physically exist.

Charity: A reverent request?

Ralph: Yes, a reverent request, to a non physical being.

Charity: We understand. So it is a request for an interaction of a higher level of existence, as in our realm.

Ralph: Yes.

Charity: Correct?

Ralph: Yes, and the other questions they ask there is "can God refuse to answer a prayer and give a NO answer instead of a YES answer?"

Charity: Well first of all we have again that the Essences know what needs to happen. Just like with knowing what is going to happen with your Life Plan. We had stated to you that you would cease.

Ralph: I would cease? You certainly did that get that message over, yes, I remember that.

Charity: What happened – Michael went in and talked to The Creator. It was deemed that it was not an appropriate time and things would continue on the way it was supposed to continue on. That was an instant where we have now a different time. Correct?

Ralph: So we could say – I remember what happened there in that I didn’t make a prayer to anybody about that.

Charity: No, you asked Michael.

Ralph: It was my attitude was not one of emotions or – it was more a comment that it would seem to be a waste of my efforts and abilities to shorten it, to cease at that point. I think I could be of more use after that, too. I had something more to offer. But I wasn’t asking to be relieved of that problem. I didn’t even think I could ask to be relieved of that problem. It wasn’t anything I felt I had any charge over. If it was going to be, it was going to be.

Charity: But Michael came up to ourselves, and we had a discussion on the matter.

Ralph: So therefore that would –

Charity: Just as you remember.

Ralph: Right, so that would be equivalent to the purpose people might have. So who could say that when there is something that does change what the pattern has been made out to be, that the Essence has done the appeal, shall we say?

Charity: Correct, they can also be denied.

Ralph: With all the factors.

Charity: Just as Becky has been denied.

Ralph: I heard that on the phone once, about a husband, yes.

Charity: Yes.

Ralph: All right so, but we have, actually we have a problem, in our studies of these things, we do all kinds of studies of associations between this event and that event. There are more of these and more of these in the same group at the same time, but everybody jumps to a conclusion that one is causing the other.

Charity: Which it is not.

Ralph: Now it may be causing it in some indirect way through six other connections, but we don’t know that. Or they both can be caused by the same phase of the moon or something external to both of them. But that is a human frailty in logic. Now they made also a great deal of to-do about the faith of the sick person helping them get healed. It was a common comment.

Charity: We don’t understand that.

Ralph: Exactly, I'm sure you don’t understand it because I don’t understand it. Now, does the Creator answer prayers yes or no? Well, we have already said it doesn’t work that way. Except that it can go up through the Essence making an appeal like you mentioned. But we are not aware of that as a conscious prayer that we are saying in public.

Charity: Why do you humans have to make requests? Why is it important to voice a request? Why?

Ralph: Well we do it at the Rotary club every noon, as part of the ritual at every meeting. Basically it is a thank you for having this wonderful food and this lovely place and we appreciate God for having given us this opportunity to be with our friends.

Charity: So that basically is thanking everybody for what has been done, correct?

Ralph: Yes. We are not asking for something with that. We are simply thanking them for having us.

Charity: Why are you humans beings into always having to ask something for themselves?

Ralph: I'm just saying, that’s only one type of prayer, the kind we have in Rotary Clubs is the thank you prayer.

Charity: But most requests are they not, asking for something?

Ralph: If you are sick, you want to get well. So you pray to God to do some miracle to you to get you well. That is the rather human appeal.

Charity: Then you also have the humans who have a request to cease -- to cease to exist, correct?

Ralph: I'm sure some who have a terminal illness and are in pain will do that, yes.

Charity: Becky’s charge, one of the false fronts, used to always do the request that she be taken away from the pain. Then you have "help me deal with this child."

Ralph: Or get us a new husband.

Charity: Or help us lose weight. Let us as a human look better. Let us as a human make more monetary gains.

Ralph: I heard a good one. He was in some kind of difficult jam, where his life was at stake, and he said, "God, if you will get me out of this jam, I will stop smoking." He got out of the jam and he has never smoked again because he was so thankful to God. That is a very common – this is a common type of human behavior.

Charity: Again, why is it that the humans think that the Creator is concerned on the avenues about – the Creator has designed your plan and the plan is for the Essence to be involved first and then to go to move up, as you state, the chain of command.

Ralph: They pay full attention to that one person. Because The Creator has to look after everything.

Charity: The Creator is there, to be the planner and director

Ralph: There is good delegation of authority. To give you the power and authority to do the job. And He has designed that system quite well.

Charity: The Creator does not create chaos.

Ralph: Well, unfortunately we were not aware until recently that you were there available for such direct intervention, so they have all had, we had the two messages, one the shamans had that you go directly up to The Creator, or to your spirit guides or whatever format that tribe and that culture had that were other names for you. Or you could go to the church where they would say, "We have a God we approve or, Yahweh, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or whichever, and if you do these little rituals, he will listen to you. If you don’t do these rituals as prescribed, he won’t pay attention to you." Now that exerts control as to who gets there. Which is always in church. Why would a church exist if they didn’t have control? They would have no purpose in being there if they couldn’t moderate these contacts with God.

Charity: Correct.

Ralph: "The reality of this presence is experienced most profoundly through the state of prayer known as contemplation."

[Here Becky, Marie’s ISH, replaces Charity.]

Becky: That is not incorrect. It’s an avenue, it is basically how we operate, which is intuition.

Ralph: Well, I think contemplation is a more neutral term.

Becky: Contemplation is when you are sitting back

Ralph: Being reflective.

Becky: Correct

Ralph: We knew that when we are trying to come up with answers to big problems.

Becky: And did you not state that prayer is basically asking or reflecting inside or asking for something on a higher plane to help you with the problem?

Ralph: I think that depends on how you are trained in it by your church. Obviously some churches lead you to believe you can pray miracles into existence, if all you get together in a prayer circle and heal somebody. We have heard about those, right?

Becky: Of course, many times.

Ralph: And then you have others, like Thanksgiving Dinner, when we are praying to thank God for having us still alive at Thanksgiving, which is what the Pilgrims were doing that day. So that’s a little more neutral, but sure we have been taught that we can appeal to ask for something that is not likely to occur.

Becky: Correct.

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