July 28, 2025

The Anchorite, The Hermit, by –
Gerrit Dou.

Monday:
Why, for whom, and what do we pray? | July 28, 2025

In accordance with the righteous intentions of the man operating for the betterment of himself and all sentient life in existence, prayer is the most sacred form the material action of ascending above the Earth takes and the object of why this ritual is performed is a profound question that cannot always be easily answered, but in this post I attempt to answer that very question, within the frames of my own ability, patience, and discipline. Verily, to pray is to call on the forces of the creation, the creator, to extend divinity to the untimely, or in other words: prayer is the act of seeking order and guidance in the world by becoming ordered within so that you may be enabled to seek order in other aspect of the creation, or to see the profound insight. Prayer is not however, asking for something and people that operate under that assumption are indeed mistaken and they are not engaged in prayer, for they, most of them at least, are just engaging in another transaction and for these people their relationship with the creator can only be summed up at best, as a faux pas, and at worst blasphemous. Now, I am not in the business of speaking on behalf of God, so I am not making any claims about people's intentions; I am simply explaining my views on prayer, and the way I relate to prayer and it is at the very least a false prayer to pray because you want something, a quid pro quo relation. Prayer is not, in my view, meant to change a state of affairs, a person, or an object, it's rather meant to seek out the parts in another person, in particular, that might be approachable entry points for the divine and the sacred, in a way that you may guide your fellow man to seek the light, or enlightenment. Prayers can be thought of as a form of spiritual warfare against sin and lust, and one form prayers of this kind could take is simply by clearly informing people about the moral boundaries of the world, or by guiding people to seek the righteous, because by setting the righteous example in the form of the nobleman or the man seeking higher rank, you can help other men see the light and by enabling them to see the betterment in you, and this is surely a form of Bodhicitta. Prayer can also be simply praying for something, but in that instance it is imperative to always keep in mind that the object of praying should never be to create a transactional relationship to the creator, whereby you hope for betterment, but instead this form of prayer should be practiced with the intention of seeking out the source within and that way seeing the good, even within deprived individuals, and that can be one example of Radical Peace. There are many reasons to pray for someone or something and there are also many ways to pray, but the important thing to know about prayer is that it is something that occurs not in the material domain, but on the spiritual and transcendental plain.

    Take the example of the man unsure about when he should pray and how he should pray: a man that doesn't like his boss might not want to pray for his boss once he finds out that his boss has been in a severe car accident. What is the man in the example supposed to do? Again, I am merely attempting to provide guidance here so do bear with each and every word of mine, for I am by no means perfect. In that aforementioned instance, I would advocate that the man should not pray for his boss, for doing so would surely be engaging in false prayer and if he doesn't like his boss that dysfunctional and anti-harmonic relationship has come to exist for a reason: a reason that has made that man not privy to compassion for his boss and my advice is accordingly that it would be preferable that the man asks someone else, a co-worker, his wife, his brother, or his son to pray for his boss, for you do not require a personal relationship with someone to pray for them, but a man that is in no good standing with another man may not be said to pray in good conscience for another man, which will invariably bring out demons within that man and the man he is praying for. In my view, you may only pray to strangers and people you have a personal and upstanding relation with, for every dysfunctional relation has to be worked out before prayer can take place in good conscience. What then is the man in the example supposed to ask other people to pray for? I don't believe that it is so much that the man should ask other people to pray for something, as it is that he should ask other people to seek salvation in the example of the boss, which will enable them to move closer to the light and the source and the boss in the example to move closer to recovery in seeing other men enable themselves to become better men in his example; prayers are in this way reciprocal and altruistic. Altruism can surely be seen as a form of prayer.

The Virgin Mary in Prayer

    To take another example: if a man has a good and upstanding relationship with another man, in this case his son, and he is made aware of his son's lust for other men, I think it would be entirely accurate and righteous for that man to pray for his son to see the light and to seek the righteous way, and it would also be quite appropriate for that man, the father, to ask other people—including his boss, provided that they are in an upstanding relation—to pray for his son, for that father wishes nothing but goodwill onto his son and that father is also, understandably, in an agitated mood and for him prayer could be a way to express agitation and fear of the unknown, and by collectively praying for his son the father can be helped by the power of love in conscripting more souls to the enterprise of morality. I believe that it is of the utmost importance to conscript many people into the prayer, for that is the only avenue of affecting change in the material domain, and if more men are made privy in this way to the art and the practice of praying it can open up more hearts to the power of the divine. While I recognize the fact that we're living in the era and the times of the Kali Yuga and that the humanist axiom demands absolute "reason" from men, I do still believe that the practice of prayer is one of the last avenues of the transcendent arts left in this world and that's why I am sure to encourage as many men as possible to embrace this art and tradition, whatever forms it may take. The intention of practicing such things as celibacy and abstinence is also, in and of itself, a form of prayer and something I encourage any man to do.

Reginald Drax – July 28, 2025.