Some people do feel that what is powerful and scary commands respect because they have to heed it and submit to it. But the feeling of reverence toward true nature comes not from fear but from appreciation. We feel humble and grateful when faced with how exquisite and miraculous true nature is. We can’t help but feel love and devotion as our heart bows in prayer to its majesty. We recognize that the light of true nature, its purity and goodness, is what illuminates all the spiritual experiences, insights, openings, and realizations that we have had and will have. We worship true nature because it is genuine and true, because it is all and everything, because there is nothing but true nature. If we don’t experience this kind of reverence, a door is closed. It means that our heart and our soul are not open in a way that can allow us to be touched by the goodness of true nature.

We can develop the capacities of the soul by understanding that the various techniques of religion, spirituality, and science are based on certain functions and capacities that the human consciousness possesses. For instance, the technique of meditation is based on certain human capacities. The technique of prayer is based on certain capacities of the soul. The technique of scientific research is based on certain capacities. Although we usually don't investigate or discriminate those capacities, it does not mean that they don't exist. If we are to realize the various aspects of the Essence realm or the God realm, we need to exercise and develop certain capacities of the soul. It's not just a matter of being a good person. That's what I mean when I say this path of inner work is a science. The various realms of knowledge work according to actual laws that we can discern.

So to experience the helplessness without judgment and rejection is to accept our existential situation when we are not in the condition of enlightenment. It is the acceptance that, by the mere fact of being a human individual, you are helpless. This is analogous to the religious notion that it is only God who is mighty and capable, and the experience is similar to being genuinely immersed in prayer. If you really pray, you are acknowledging that there is a much larger force than you as a separate individual. The acceptance of your helplessness has the same sense of surrender and humility, and is in this sense a kind of prayer. Accepting and feeling your helplessness is seeing that you cannot free yourself, nor can you take away anyone else’s suffering. As long as you take yourself to be a separate doer, whatever you do is not going to make a difference, and helplessness is your objective condition.

When we’re doing the Work, we’re not trying to reach a reality inside us, to have some little experience, some little sensation. We’re trying to experience what is the actual state of affairs. What is the truth? What is the reality? What is really happening? What is here? We’re not trying to climb some divine ladder until we get all this light and talk to God over there, “We pray to you, O God.” Who is praying? Who is there? God is a word. Prayer is a word. You praying is all words. What is it beyond those words? The word prayer, with all the feelings you have about it, has a lot of your mother and father in it, and the church you went to. It is all stale. Can you truly pray while you forget everything that has ever happened to you from this moment backward? What would prayer mean then? What does God mean if you forget all that? If you believe God truly exists, that he’s really there, you do not need to remember anything from the past. You do not need to remember what Christ said, or what your mother said, or what your church said. If you believe, truly, that God exists, you will be willing, right now, to just drop all your belief in your ideas and apprehend it. Let it happen. Do not tell me, “No, no, I really believe in God. I have to pray to God.” Bullshit! These are all stories you tell yourself because you still do not believe in God. If you actually did believe in God you would drop it; your belief would become knowledge. Then you would feel, “Why should I believe? I know. Why should I take what someone said in the past and apply it to God? If God is there he’ll show up.”

So to experience the helplessness without judgment and rejection is to accept our existential situation when we are not in the condition of enlightenment. It is the acceptance that, by the mere fact of being a human individual, you are helpless. This is analogous to the religious notion that it is only God who is mighty and capable, and the experience is similar to being genuinely immersed in prayer. If you really pray, you are acknowledging that there is a much larger force than you as a separate individual. The acceptance of your helplessness has the same sense of surrender and humility, and is in this sense a kind of prayer. Accepting and feeling your helplessness is seeing that you cannot free yourself, nor can you take away anyone else’s suffering. As long as you take yourself to be a separate doer, whatever you do is not going to make a difference, and helplessness is your objective condition.

A human being has two faces. Most people know one face, what is called the face of the day. Human beings also have a secret face, the face of the night. The Guest has arrived when the face you face the world with is the face of the night, the face of mystery, magic, and passion. The Secret, the Guest, will not arrive unless everything kneels in prayer to it. Everything has to kneel in prayer—your mind, your heart, your body, your soul, your essence, the universe, God. Everything has to kneel, ready to be vanished. And you don't pray to it for anything for yourself; you can only pray to it absolutely. You pray only for annihilation. That is the only prayer. The prayer is a passionate love, so passionate in its sweetness that it will burn you up completely.

The question of prayer is profound and vast, and many traditions are built upon it. I can only address it partially here, as it relates to our exploration today. As long as you take yourself to be a separate ego, prayer is good. Prayer could help you to eliminate the separateness. Prayer, then, is not for you to be blessed or rewarded by God. The objective prayer is for you to be taken in, to dissolve in God. Prayer is obviously a powerful method for bridging that gap of separateness. Some people could use it more than others depending on their background. But not everybody can use prayer. You need the right attitude; otherwise, it is just words. Prayer needs the involvement of the heart, indicating that you are willing to surrender, to let go. Ultimately, prayer is like any other method: it is a boat that at some point you will need to abandon. Your life itself will need to become the prayer, or the meditation, or the inquiry. You may practice whatever works for you—pray, meditate, inquire, take aims—until you realize that none of them work. Because as long as you do these practices you are acting from the perspective of non-reality. All of those methods assume that you are a separate individual who needs to get someplace. At least that’s how most people begin these practices. The practices have deeper bases in the truth of reality, but that is difficult to see until we actually arrive at this reality.

Essence Comes from the Presence of Being that is Everywhere

The heart of the religious approach is prayer. Traditionally this has meant kneeling, with palms together and bowing one’s head. But prayer can take different forms including chanting, invocation and dance. What is essential is the attitude—that as you pray, the prayer reveals the truth about the one that is praying—that as a separate individual, you are not the source of any goodness. The source of goodness is being itself, true nature itself. We’ve discussed before the question of where essence comes from—how some people might see it as coming from inside them, others as coming from outside. But it’s really coming from the presence of being that is everywhere—whether we call it divine being, supreme being, or true nature.

Letting Go of the Sense of “I Know”

As we pray, the attitude of prayer is one of humility, a relinquishment of arrogance, a relinquishment of pride, a letting go of wilfulness, a letting go of the sense of “I know—I know what to do.” It means accepting one’s helplessness, recognizing that I can’t do it by myself. Because it’s true, the separate soul cannot. The separate soul gets all its qualities and goodness from essential nature. The moment we take ourself to be a separate soul, we disconnect ourself from our source, and then we’re deficient. And prayer shows that; it exposes this inherent deficiency of the ego. So you’re acknowledging that as you pray.

In Prayer, the Soul Takes the Attitude of Humility

In prayer, the soul takes the attitude of humility, an objectively humble attitude that is taken with sincerity, praying to a reality that it knows is bigger than it and is the source of all possibility of nourishment, love, transformation, release, and redemption. Grace comes from true nature; acceptance comes from true nature; love comes from true nature; forgiveness comes from true nature; support comes from true nature. And we can put true nature outside—project it outside and pray to it as God as some people do—or we can see it as something within us, to be realized. In truth, it’s in both places, because it’s everywhere, and is always one and indivisible.

Prayer Works when You Objectively Recognize Your Position

That’s the basis of why prayer works when you really engage in it. Prayer works when you begin to objectively recognize your position. As you pray, you recognize your situation and your helplessness more and more, and you recognize it in an emotional way that melts your heart. It involves a recognition that is like an unfoldment, unfolding you in just the same way that inquiry unfolds you. True objective prayer unfolds you until you see the truth. And the more you see the truth, the more you get into the prayer, and the more there is surrender from a very deep, heartfelt place.