The essence of daily prayer: Why I pray everyday

I pray three times everyday and it is the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning. Daily prayer has altered my life for the better, hence I want to share with you why I pray everyday and what I have understood about the true essence of daily prayer.

My attitude towards prayer changed about 1 and a half years ago and ever since then, I have been praying every day. 

Before that I used to think prayers were useless. The only time I thought I prayed was during the day of my exams, that too I later stopped because I felt guilty of being selfish and felt bad that I was remembering God only at times of need.

But when I started praying and noticed the shift in my thinking and behavior for the first time, I realized how even in a country where everybody prays, we still don’t understand the true essence of daily prayer.

We are a reasoning human being, so for you to understand the essence of daily prayer, I want to tell you

• Why to pray.

• How to pray &

• Who to pray. 

The essence of Daily Prayer

To pray I believe is our natural human tendency. Even if you may not believe in God or you think you never pray, you simply cannot live your life without the natural tendency to pray. 

When you wish someone a happy birthday and wish for their good year ahead, you are praying. 

When your loved one is ill and you wish for their health to improve, you are praying. 

When you plan for an eventful day but the weather doesn’t seem to be in your favor and you wish for the weather to improve, you are praying.

And when doctors lose all hope, even doctors ask us to pray because they know that when all else fails, prayer is the last resort for humans to turn to.

Prayer is simply an earnest wish. It is simply a calling from our heart, it is a wish from our heart. To pray is actually the most natural thing for us humans and it is something that no one but only we human beings are able to do. 

Why to pray?

There are countless reasons why you must pray, but I believe you must pray for these three reasons:

1. Pray for your dreams:

If you have dreams, then you must pray.

What dreams do you have? You certainly have some dreams for yourself even if you think it may be unachievable for now. At the back of your mind, I am certain that you are also wishing to do something significant in life. This is our inherent urge.

But your dreams need to be in the forefront and not in the back of your mind. Your dreams are waiting for you to give time to it.

But our everyday hustle and bustle makes us forget about our dreams, our hopes and ambition. And instead they come to us at odd hours making us feel anxious and overwhelmed.

But if you cultivate the habit of daily prayer, then you will never forget about your dreams and ambitions. Through prayer you specifically give time for it, you regularly renew and be in touch with your dreams. 

I pray because I have dreams and because I pray I am clear about my dreams, my goals and my intentions.

In the morning when I pray, I am able to think of my dreams first thing in the morning. And in the evening, when I pray I am able to give thanks for what was achieved in the day. This I never forget.

Also, as you pray you will learn how to embrace the joy of not knowing.

2. Pray for accessing your inner reservoir: 

I do not know what dreams you have but all of us know that dreams require hard work, determination, persistence, perseverance, confidence, consistency and all such virtues for it to be fulfilled.

And most often it is because we feel that we lack these qualities that the possibility of achieving dreams seems too far away. And most of us don’t even have the courage to dream big.

But you must know you don’t have to build all these qualities. There is no need for you to become, because you already are and you already have. You only need to bring it out!

In you there is a vast inner reservoir of strength, courage, wisdom, hope and everything you think you need. 

There is no difference between you or the very successful satisfied and happy man, except the fact that he/she enters this inner reservoir often and most of us hardly ever enter there. 

So how do you enter this inner reservoir of limitless strength, courage, determination and wisdom? 

The only known way is through prayer. When you pray, you are in touch with your inner self and your inner self has this inner reservoir. 

Through prayer you enter your inner reservoir, your inner sanctuary and you can draw forth from it whenever you need it.

Prayer does not give you strength, but it helps you tap into the strength that you already have. 

The true essence of prayer lies in knowing that you always have free access to all of it all the time.

• My daily prayer time has enabled me to connect more with my inner self.

• I gain strength, I gain confidence, I gain courage and I gain motivation even when I didn’t have it in the first place.

• It has enabled me to have more courage and less fear and be more confident in myself. That is why thinking of any difficulty or obstacle no longer worries me for now I know I have the power of prayer and I can access it any time.

3. Pray to help your subconscious mind:

Your subconscious mind is always working on bringing your beliefs, your thoughts and your intentions into reality. So give your subconscious mind something good to work upon, something good to manifest. 

Through prayer you can impress the right thoughts to your subconscious mind. 

Through meditation, I listen to the voice of the Universe, and through prayer the Universe listens to me. 

How to pray?

Daily prayer can change your life, but to really gain the benefit from prayer, you must know another main essence of prayer, that is, how to pray.

Prayer is an earnest wish but prayers must be more than simply wishing. 

Here are my simple understandings on how to pray, if you have never prayed consciously before:

1. Just be your truest self when you pray:

Pray in a manner that feels most natural to you. Give yourself time. Slow things down. Silence yourself. Silence your mind. And sit down for prayer. You are you and no one else. You know yourself better than anyone else.

Speak to yourself. Share earnestly whatever you feel and pray from your heart whatever you wish to achieve.

2. Always have goals and dreams:

Never pray without a dream or a goal in mind. One simple way is to finish this sentence, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if…………’
Then pray for that.

P.S Remember: When you pray for yourself, for your dreams, for your desires, don’t think you are being selfish. To pray is the first step towards compassion- both for yourself and for others. 

You can pray for anything. Pray by believing that you are worthy of receiving all of your dreams and desires. There is no harm in asking for your happiness, for your well being.

Only when you are happy can you make others happy. Only when you are successful, can others really believe in you. So your happiness, your success and desires is of utmost importance.

3. Focus on your ‘why’ and expand your prayers

You can pray for whatever you wish as long as it benefits you and as long as it doesn’t harm anybody. But the true essence of daily prayer lies in expanding our prayers to include others and the world.

Whatever it is that you hope to achieve, pray that you will be of use to another too in anyway possible.

If you are praying to get a job, then focus first on why you want to get that job. Don’t just pray to get a job because you want to be employed and start earning.

No work happens in isolation. Pray to get a job because you want to provide value and benefit through your job in whatever field you to go to in whatever way possible. Pray to get a job you because you want to take better care of your family and make your parents proud and happy. I personally had really prayed for all these.

If financial success and freedom is what you pray for, pray that your financial success and freedom will be an example to others for how you were able to change your current situation and bring in abundance in your life. Visualize your success, believe and pray for it.

One of my prayer is for this blog to grow, but I am not simply praying for it to grow because I want to gain followers, high traffic or for monetizing it later.

Of course I want it too but I want it so that I will be able to reach and help as many people in any little way possible through what I share in this blog. I really want you to live a simple happy and satisfied life too and I pray for that.

Maybe that is the reason why I have gained the determination to wake up at 5 am and write this post. Because its was not only for me.

Make your why strong. When you start praying this way, your life will start expanding and you will gain all the courage, strength and confidence to do whatever it is that you wish to do.

4. Pray with determination and affirmations:

Your prayers should not simply be a wish. It must be determinations. The essence of daily prayer lies in renewing your determination.

You will fail many times. You will be discouraged many times. But when you pray, pray with the pledge to restart again, to persevere, to be consistent, to gain strength.

When you are facing any obstacle, maybe your own laziness or sleepiness or anything, pray for the strength and determination to win over it.

Your prayers must include ‘I will….’

I will be successful

I will overcome my laziness

I will study

I will be strong.

I will have abundance in my life.

Say and feel as much positive sentences starting from ‘I am…’, ‘I will..’, There will…’ and see how your life starts changing.

I pray because it gives me the courage to act.

5. Allot specific time for prayer:

The true essence of prayer lies in praying consciously and deliberately. Even if you pray for just 5 minutes, it is great! To give time for prayer is to give time for your self, for you growth, for your dreams.

Don’t you think you, your growth and your dreams deserve at least a little time from your day? We are busy in so many unnecessary things. We don’t give ourselves any priority. When you allot a specific time for prayer, you give yourself priority in your day.

I give myself at least 30 minutes – 1hour to prayer everyday. When I first started it was just 10 minutes a day. And it started to make such a big difference in my life. When you start praying the right way, you can notice it for yourself.

Who to pray?

Lastly, we will not understand the true essence of prayer if we don’t know who we are praying to.

We tend to think daily prayer as part of being religious, but I don’t think prayer has got to do anything with religion. We can pray without being really religious. 

Personally I too don’t believe that there is a God out there who resides somewhere in heaven and who decides upon our lives, but I do believe that there is something, some higher power, some infinite intelligence that is guiding us, guiding this entire Universe.

This entire Universe that is working in such great precision where we have the right amount of air to breathe, water to drink and everything that makes all this life possible, I simply cannot believe that all this happened by chance!

“The probability that life arose by a coincidence can be likened to the probability that a voluminous encyclopedia be the result of an explosion in a print shop.” – Biologist Edwin Conklin

People say that as science is advancing and people are becoming more and more scientific and rational, people are losing their beliefs and their faith and spiritual side. 

But I believe that those who are really scientific, they must be more in awe with the Universe because science is only discovering the laws of nature, the laws of Universe that is already there.

It did not create gravity or energy or such laws. They have only discovered the laws of nature and have learned how to apply these laws that are already there.

Einstein has also said, “The more I study science the more I believe in God’

So if science is only discovering and uncovering the truths of nature, there must be a creator, some higher power. There is something beyond that which science can comprehend.

I pray to this higher power and you can name it anything- whether God, Universe, energy, Infinite intelligence or anything. 

So this is why I pray and this why I will keep praying for the rest of my life.

I have come to realize that the true essence of daily prayer is in how it gives me the courage to dream big and the courage to not begrudge my life.

I used to think prayers are a pleading to God where we become overly dependent on God where we place ourselves totally in the mercy of God but now in my experience, I have found that prayer has made me more independent and has made me rely on my own determination, on my own vigor, on my own self first.

I pray so as to win everyday against my own lesser self that tries to hinder me and I pray that I may be an example before God/Universe/Higher Power.

So here, I have shared down my thoughts, you can share your thoughts too in the comment below.

Thank you if you have come to read this far. I hope that after reading this post, you start praying too or if not that, I hope that I at least changed your attitude towards prayer. 

Let us not underestimate the power of prayer. To underestimate the power of prayer is to underestimate your own self. 

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