Prayer has had a tough time. The phrase "thoughts and prayers" has become devalued in the mouths of American politicians after yet another mass shooting leaves dozens of schoolchildren dead; it's a word used by email scammers out to catch trusting and naïve people. Prayer is dismissed as a form of magical thinking, hoping for a physical effect (stopping mass shootings) without a physical cause (appropriate legislation).
Can we summon something into reality by thinking about it?
Physicalist science would say "of course not."
Religions would have you say "of course you can."
I'd say: "It depends." It depends on what it is you're praying for. I'd offer a synonym for prayer – willing. As in, "I am willing something to happen/not to happen". And if what you are willing to happen aligns with the Vast Eternal Plan, then I'd posit it has more chance of happening than if it didn't.
If you pray for a Lamborghini so that you can show off to everyone, that's less likely to come to pass as the result of your metaphysical intervention than if you pray for a worthy outcome.
Yet we have prayed for peace – the slaughter in Ukraine continues with no prospect of peace. We have prayed for Rysiek's health – he died despite the intensive and heartfelt prayer of many friends. Prayer doesn't work, some may argue, and in bleak moments it feels that way.
Nevertheless pray, or will, I do. Daily. Waking up, brushing my teeth, out on a walk, as I drop off to sleep. Expressions of gratitude, for health, for life, for things not sliding into chaos, are a part of my daily routine; I am conscious of being grateful and offer the experience of gratitude as a form of prayer, which confirms alignment with the Purpose. Gratitude is the bedrock.
Our lives, our world, teeters ever on the edge of chaos, and prayer, based on awareness of just how precarious life is, can keep us upright, walking the narrow way, and not tumbling over that edge.
The metaphysics of will? I'd see it grounded in the mystery of quantum uncertainty. We don't know the outcome of a quantum measurement until we consciously observe it and the uncertainty collapses to a concrete state. But can we will the outcome? Science is split. Physicalists and reductionist materialists would say absolutely not. Random events are occurring within the atom, but an external mind cannot affect whether the outcome is A or B. Yet there's a growing number of scientists open to the reality of mind over matter; they try to capture this experimentally, the results show a weak but consistent effect that's both statistically significant and above chance.
And here comes the next split. Is the power of mind over matter available to everyone? Or to anyone who's been trained, who's using the appropriate protocols (initiated into the occult, for instance)? Or are only a small handful of humans gifted with special powers such as the ability to foretell the future, forestall disaster, heal others at a distance or view remote locations? Large-scale experiments into psi phenomena do show a group of outliers who have better results than the average participant (better able to predict who out of four random callers will ring the phone next, for example).
There's no consensus on this one yet. Perhaps never.
My view is – if you will such abilities, if you are open to such possibilities, you will have far more likelihood to deploy them successfully. Like intuition, the ability to "petition the Lord with prayer" is something that becomes more available to you the more attention you pay to it. Don't ask for too much; be aware of those small miracles that do come true, and be thankful for them.
Dismiss the power of prayer, of course, and it never make itself more available to you. Materialists convinced they live in a material world of physical cause and physical effect are unlikely to pray. And that includes the 10% of Americans who define themselves as 'Religious But Not Spiritual'.
Accepting that the Cosmic Purpose is to tend towards the Good, prayer should be aligned with the Good. Prayers for health, for wisdom, for hope, for confidence, for good cheer, for peace, love and understanding...
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