Prayer - The Key to Blessedness

By H.D. Paramahamsa Omkarananda Saraswati

Prayer is supplication or the admission of human weakness and limitations and an earnest yearning of the heart for God. Prayer denotes confession of man's inferiority and powerlessness before the transcendent Divinity and a desire for attuning himself to It. It is reliance upon the Divinity and an offering of the heart to God. Prayer is the expression of the aspiration of the human being to become pure, perfect and God-like. Exposing the heart to the sunny rays of the Lord is prayer. To stop the mind from roaming, to silence the turbulent senses and to focus the feelings on God is prayer.

The blind, deaf, lame, armless, puny, ignorant, debased, the lowliest and the forlorn, all can pray to God, for, prayer belongs to the heart and its feeling, and not to the body. To think of God always is the best prayer, which crowns the human being in the Kingdom of God.

Prayer is a universal necessity; one day or other you will be made to pray, for, thereby you obtain the Key to Blessedness. Just as food is necessary for the body, so also the Bread of Prayer is necessary for the Soul. Prayer is help to the helpless, strength to the weak and eyes to the blind!

Prayer grinds the flint of egoism, breaks the walls of pride and consumes the fire of selfishness. It opens the third eye or the eye of wisdom, the real eye - intuition. Develop this "eye of intuition" through prayer and see the Majestic Lord sporting in every being and pulsating in every vein of the contents of the universe. Wherever you turn this "eye", you see nothing but God - the transcendent Divinity! By prayer you dwell in the Lord who is all-happiness and sweeter than the sweetest.

Prayer elevates the soul and attunes it to the Lord, the Supreme King of kings. It awakens you to the awareness of God in the heart. It dispels ignorance and dries up the ocean of Samsara (or straying away from the Truth). It raises the human consciousness to the Divine consciousness by shattering the limits of human nature. It cleanses the mind and removes all snares. It is an antidote for all diseases, a panacea for all maladies and a cure for all ills.

Blessed children of God! Therefore, come, open your heart by the key of faith and devotion, so that the Infinite God may enter in and shine there! Renounce your petty things of the world which have captured all your attention, those evanescent things to which you cling blindly; for God shall give you all, the Whole, and make you the King of kings, the supreme One, above whom there is nothing.

Through prayer empty your heart, and God shall fill it with His Consciousness-Delight, and you shall be all-full. Be steadfast in your prayer. God listens to and answers all your prayers. Would you not like to make your life, a life of prayer and be supremely blessed? Then, arise now, and pray.