In Answer to Your Prayers

In prayer we open ourselves up to an exchange between our personality in life and the divine within us that is the source of All life. We achieve this opening by being emotionally raw. That is to say whatever we’re going through in life, whatever is on our hearts, we turn within and lay it all out, without pretext. It is by dropping our personal facades that we are able to experience our connection to the Grand Whole (and the limitless resources therein) more freely. But on the otherside of this exchange we often turn around and become unreceptive to really listening to the wisdom that comes back to us through this connection. It’s like opening one channel only to block the other.

The way God expresses His responses to your prayers may take many forms. The response may come to you through the words of another person, it may be shown to you through the demonstration of some life experience, it may simply “occur” to you from within… No matter what form the reply comes in, however, there is one distinct quality which is indicative of all forms of divine responses. That is you will experience an out of the blue, out of character,knowing-feeling in your reaction to all divine responses.

Let’s say, for example, that you are in the midst of a situation which has left you feeling like someone has just pulled the rug from underneath you. It’s a moment in your life experience where everything seems very much up in the air and unnerving. You’ve been contending with feelings of angry, fear, stress, and many manner of other ill emotions. You’ve hit an emotional bottom and don’t know where else to turn so you find private space, you go within yourself and breakdown. You let everything out. All that has you afraid, all that has you angry, all that has you stressed… You stop worrying about saving face, you stop being concerned about making a favorable impression, and you open your heart to something larger than your personal self. And as you do this something odd begins to happen. A feeling of comfort begins to come over you; a sense that in spite of how bad things look at the moment, everything is truly okay. It’s a feeling that seems to spring out of nowhere because it is inconsistent with the mood of the life outlook you, even now, find yourself carried away with. You can’t make sense of this inner change because nothing in your world has changed. Your personal perspective is still the same. The situation you’re faced with still looks bad. But the anger, fear and stress you feel, though not gone, is quieted. It’s inexplicable to you. So what’s going on here? What’s going on here is that God is responding to your prayers. And this is indeed a response.

The challenge you’re facing right now may not find resolution in the way you may be dictating in your prayers but that does not mean your prayers are going unanswered. God is responding to you. It may not be in the way you were expecting or even hoping for, but that doesn’t mean you should be dismissive of it. You need to be open to whatever divine response you receive. Forget what you were expecting; be appreciative of what actually is. Remember, it is your inner witness you are talking to. This silent observer knows you better than you even understand yourself. Your prayer is being answered exactly the way it best needs to be answered for your greatest benefit. Don’t allow your clinging to an expectation of how God should respond to your prayers make you unreceptive to how God actually responds to your prayers. As honest as you are in laying out whatever is on your heart in prayer, you have to be just as honest with yourself in taking to heart whatever you get back from prayer.

Your prayers are being answered not just some of the time, but all the time. And you will know you are receiving an answer to your prayers not because the response you receive satisfies any particular expectation you may have, but because you will sense a feeling within yourself which differs from the mood of your personal thoughts at that particular moment. It will be a mood which will feel out of character for you, and for good reason, because this mood won’t come from your character (which is to say your persona / your soul). It will come from someplace deeper within you. So deep, in fact, it may seem as if it emerges out of nowhere. This won’t be an intrusive feeling, mind you. It doesn’t overthrow your personal mood, but simply peaks over it for some moments. When the Higher Self speaks to you the goal is not to take over your personal thoughts, your personal mindset, but to simply offer you something (wisdom, comfort, encouragement, direction…) which you may either accept or reject to any degree you choose. The divine counsel you receive through prayer is merely offered to you, it is not enforced upon you. These are the qualities you should look for in any divine response no matter what form the expression of that response takes. (Again, it may come through the lips of another or through an intuitive impression, through an emerging life experience or whatever else have you).

You might find it interesting to keep a prayer journal to account for your divine dialogues. Every time you pray, or you can even do this while you pray (sort of like letters to God), write down a little summary of your inner conversation with the Higher Self. After each entry leave a blank page where you can later record the response you received from that prayer and how you’ve come to interpret its meaning. This exercise has several benefits: A.) It will help you to be attentive to really listening for a response to your prayers. B.) It will help you to see more clearly the different ways the Higher Self is constantly speaking to you. And C.) Months from now, or even years from now, when you look back on your prayers and the responses you receive from your prayers, you will marvel at how well these response bear out. And having these consistent confirmations will make you more aware of your connection to that Something divine within you.