From: rmr@acsu.buffalo.edu (Richard M. Romanowski)
Subject: How To Pray
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 05:46:43 GMT

	Lately we have been drifting from our customarily edifying and
rational discourse (pause for loud laughter to subside) to questions
of religion -- which has resulted in not a little ranting, much of
which I have done.

	But in the midst of it, someone complained of being in a
religious limbo, and I promised to post on How To Pray.

	If you are in religious limbo, this might help.  If you are
very advanced, you would do me a great favor by reading through this
and mailing me about how to improve it.  If you are not a beginner or
a master, you will probably think this post very elementary and
boring.


	This may not seem to be a post about how to pick a religion.
Read it through.  If the experiment is performed, the answer should be
apparent.

	One might well ask what prayer has to do with religion.  Many
people are very religious, i.e. they go to church, hand in their
envelope with the check to the collection plate, sleep through the
sermon, sleepwalk up and down the communion aisle, and return to their
regularly scheduled programming after forty- five minutes of mild
boredom.  But these folks do not pray, as described below.  Presumably
this is *why* seekers in religious limbo are in limbo -- our society
is lazy about prayer.


	How To Pray:

0) If you don't like the word 'pray,' read 'meditate' or 'do magick'
or whatever.  I will assume rational humans have enough linguistic
knack to make a working word substitution.  I don't have the knack,
but I'm not a rational human.

1) Pray daily.  A little bit of meditation done regularly will have a
much greater effect than a lot of prayers done intermittently.

2) If you miss your normal prayer time, don't whip yourself and think
you're sinful.  To quote or possibly paraphrase Ernest Wood's book
_Concentration_, we are not lofty masters whipping slaves into
submission.  Just do your best.

3) If you find your thoughts wandering when you try to pray, don't
freak out.  Thoughts wander.  If you get all worked up and clench your
jaw and try to corral them, you'll probably make it worse.  Gently
re-direct your thoughts back to the object of your prayer.

4) Pray by doing something you enjoy.  If you enjoy saying a formula
like the Hail Mary, do that.  Don't pray in a way you dislike.
However, don't just set out to enjoyably distract yourself and pretend
that it is prayer -- by prayer here I am talking about concentration.
Concentrate on something pleasant, but *concentrate*!

5) One may benefit greatly from concentrating on the breath.  One
might do this while saying a mantra or formula or charm.  One might do
this silently.  All sorts of yoga and magick books discuss this.

6) One might experiment with prayers at several times throughout the
day.  For example, one could pray at sunrise, at noon, and at sunset.

7) Anyone who can concentrate for five minutes straight is so close to
Adeptship as to make no difference.  When you start meditating, you
might realize that you only really concentrate for less than ten
seconds.  Don't worry.  Just realizing this is farther along the Path
than most folks ever get.
	----

	The Virtues of Prayer:

	Concentration is the First Step.  When you can concentrate,
you can do anything.  And is you concentrate on the symbols of myth
and religion, you will very probably reach the conclusion that all
religions are One, and the sectarian differences don't matter to
anyone who can pray.  If you don't, please tell me -- I'm sure that
I'll learn something from it.

LVX
rmr