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Teach Us To Pray
True Prayer
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[Teach Us To Pray]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness;
. . . and, to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
--Robert Browning
ALL DOWN the ages man has been making the spiritual effort
to realize conscious union with that innermost center where
Truth in all its glory abides eternally. This realization
can be accomplished only through true prayer.
The disciples of Jesus earnestly importuned, "Lord, teach
us to pray." Today, as disciples of the Master, we are
asking of Him to be taught the way of unifying our
consciousness with God-Mind. We would find that inner Truth
which sets us free.
His instructions to the disciples were "But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut
thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy
Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee." It is
difficult to improve upon
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this simple method. Quietly entering the inner chamber
within the soul, shutting the door to the external thoughts
of daily life, and seeking conscious union with God is the
highest form of prayer we know.
The purpose of the silence is to still the activity of the
individual thought so that the still small voice of God may
be heard. For in the silence Spirit speaks Truth to us and
just that Truth of which we stand in need.
Prayer is man's steady effort to know God. There is an
intimate connecting spirit that logically unites man and
his source. This connecting spirit is the divine Logos, the
Word of God, which in truth reveals the logic of Scripture.
Because of this fact man instinctively feels and knows
whence his help comes.
God-Mind, composed of radiant ideas, vibrant life, glorious
new inspiration, is ours to use. Since we are the I will
man in the supreme Godhead, let us through Jesus Christ
realize our spiritual importance. Let us think deeply on
the divine Logos, the Word of God! In it is the living
impetus that is bound to vitalize the soul of man and
enable him to develop his latent powers.
When we awaken even a very slight consciousness of this
co-operative spirit, we become cocreators with God, and we
find we can adjust any condition that comes into our life.
Jesus was so completely unified with God-Mind that He could
claim the words He spoke to be not His but those of the
Father dwelling within Him.
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Through prayer we gain the intimate relationship with God
that Jesus must have enjoyed when He said, "I and the
Father are one." Jesus Christ is our teacher and helper. In
prayer what should be our attitude, our interest, as we
approach the divine presence? If we knew that right now we
were about to be ushered into the presence of Christ, to
what extent would our spiritual expectancy be aroused? No
doubt we should be thrilled through and through at the mere
thought. Let us feel this same intense interest, this same
concern, as we approach the divine presence within
ourselves. It will add much to the readiness with which we
receive Truth.
ENTERING THE SILENCE
When entering the silence, according to Hosea, the command
is "Take with you words, and return unto Jehovah." After
many centuries this instruction still stands approved
today. To the metaphysician it means to close the eyes and
ears to the without, to go within and hold the mind
steadily on the word "Jehovah" until that word illumines
the whole inner consciousness. Then affirm a prayer such as
"Thy vitalizing energy floods my whole consciousness, and I
am healed."
Think what the mighty vitalizing energy of God, released
through Jesus Christ, really is. Penetrate deeper into God
consciousness within you and hold the prayer steadily until
you attain spiritual realization and the logic of your own
mind is satisfied.
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To realize an idea in the silence is to clothe it with
life, substance, and intelligence. To realize a prayer is
to actualize it. To realize it is to clothe it with soul,
to know there is fulfillment.
The word of prayer has in it a living seed that is bound to
impregnate the soil of the mind and cause it to bring forth
fruit after its kind.
Through Christ man has the power to realize that as I AM or
I AM "vitalizing health" he is the great central magnet
functioning in omnipresence, around which all the healing
powers of Spirit revolve. He has the power to realize this
truth until the most sacred ethers respond, and he beholds
himself as powerful, peaceful, perfect: healed through and
through. It is after this fashion that we engraft the
healing word into our very souls.
When we were in Florida a few years ago a citrus fruit
grower told us many interesting things about the growth of
his orchards. There are many swamps in Florida. He had
instructed his men to go out into these swamps, into the
muddy black waters infested with creeping things, there to
dig up the wild-lemon saplings with their strong, vigorous
roots, to transplant them into well-prepared soil, and then
to graft into them buds from his prize domestic fruit
trees. Thus new trees laden with golden fruit appeared in
due time. The strong, vigorous root of the wild lemon gave
the new fruit added flavor and quality.
Metaphysically the law is "If the root is holy, so are the
branches." At least the branches are potentially
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holy. We find that the natural man is usually physically
strong and vigorous just as the root of the wild-lemon tree
is. The natural man also struggles in a murky, negative,
swampy atmosphere without power to bring forth spiritually,
just as the wild-lemon sapling does.
But the natural man can take a word of Truth and through
"one-pointed" mind concentration can penetrate into the
invisible, can unite his consciousness with the mind of
God, and can hold a realizing prayer until the truth it
contains is engrafted into his very soul. Thus just as the
citrus fruit is developed through the grafting process, so
man, through the engrafted word, becomes a strong, positive
spiritual character.
There is only one God, only one ruling power in all the
universe; and the highest avenue through which God can
express Himself is man. The hungering for God that is felt
by man in his soul is really God hungering to express
eternal life through man. God is always seeking to awaken
man's very soul to His mighty presence. He thus expands the
consciousness, offering man an opportunity more fully and
more perfectly to express Him.
There is a partial unity with Spirit and there is a
complete unity with Spirit. Whenever we wholly merge our
mind with creative Mind we meet Christ in our
consciousness, and it is when we are in this consciousness
that our prayers are fulfilled. The ability to merge our
mind into the one Mind makes a great man of us.
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Every person hungers for eternal life, and in his effort to
satisfy this hunger every soul makes its own concept of
God. The ancients said that an honest man is the noblest
work of God. Ingersoll said, "An honest God is the noblest
work of man."
In deed and in truth prayer is man's spiritual approach to
God, and effective prayer does not agonize. Neither Jesus
nor any man who has fused his soul with the soul of God has
suffered or agonized. The suffering comes as a result of
separation and the effort to return to the consciousness of
Omnipresence, "my Father's house."
Carlyle said, "Consider the significance of silence: it is
boundless, never by meditating to be exhausted, unspeakably
profitable to thee! Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy
own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation
and stupor; out of silence comes thy strength. Speech is
silvern, silence is golden; speech is human, silence is
divine.
"Fool! thinkest thou that because no one stands near with
parchment and black lead to note thy jargon, it therefore
dies and is harmless? Nothing dies, nothing can die. No
idlest word thou speakest but is a seed cast into Time, and
grows through all eternity. The recording angel, consider
it well, is no fable, but the truest of truths; the paper
tablets thou canst burn; of the 'iron leaf' there is no
burning."
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[Teach Us To Pray]
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