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Two Kinds of People Who Pray

By Philip Burley

There are two kinds of people who pray. The first is the person who prays out of a sense of duty. He or she feels good and justified for having prayed. The second person is the one who is moved deep from within to pray because they have discerned the need and value of prayer. They are the ones who can feel or sense the need to pray in their heart and pray from their very soul. It has nothing to do with loudness but intensity which comes from clear inner vision and heart-centered earnestness. When one prays for someone else’s child in the hospital, it is quite different from one who is praying for their own child in the hospital. This example of people praying for a child in the hospital expresses the difference between the two kinds of people who pray.

Prayer that comes from duty is often rote, even somewhat passive about the outcome, and rather devoid of emotion. It often manifests as making deference to a vague and unknown God who may or may not be listening. Whereas, prayer that is earnest seeks to actually, literally move Heaven to act on their prayer. This person knows God is listening literally and will and does act according to both spiritual law (merit) and unconditional love.

The prayer we are praying in these conference calls needs the earnest approach to move the heart of heaven to intervene and bring to bear the actual energies to thwart negative beings, bodied or un-embodied from invading and destroying humanity’s peace and happiness, whether in this nation or any nation on the face of the earth.

“Blessed be the peace makers” as Jesus spoke of is not about those who are comfortably satisfied in the maintenance of their own peace. That is selfish and self-serving. But rather, like Jesus, a peace maker is one who has peace within and desires all to have peace within and will go out of their way, as Jesus did, to create the physical and spiritual conditions to bring about peace for the wholeworld and not just for themselves alone.

One may be for world peace and still be an activist while still maintaining his or her own peace. After all, the ultimate realization of permanent peace within is derived from experiencing God within in the fullest and most real, undeniable way. Once this happens, really happens and is not just something wrought by an incorrect imagining, the awareness of God never goes away. Never again is that person ever without the awareness that he is in God and God is in him. One may consistently realize God’s presence and still go forth into the world and make a difference to the positive, even if it means entering into suffering and not losing God within. That is who the man Jesus was and is.

I am sure many of you --- due to the seriousness of what we are praying about and for -- are having to deal with “just how much do I have peace; how much do I trust God and how much am I able to maintain my inner peace in the face of possible, physical as well as spiritual negative circumstances?” Additionally, I am sure the scenario has played out in your head as to whom or what you would be in the face of disaster.

The day after 9/11, on 9/12 which was a Wednesday, I had to go on the air to do my radio show The Inner View, Adventures in Spirit. First, I was exceedingly welcomed at the station whereas usually the most worldly of the staff, including the station owner, were otherwise very earthy, even cynical about spiritual things. Not that day. They were faced with the reality of what if this (9/11) had happened locally. What if people here had died at the hands of terrorists? This made my work as a bridge between this world and the next appear much more important than before they experienced the aftermath of 9/11. One man even went so far as to bow from the waist to me when I came in and it was not out of making fun but out of respect. He had the look of one having been stirred to his core by what had happened just 24 hours before.

When I went on the air to a body of listeners, about 70-80 thousand per week and then listeners, whose number I did not know, around the world on the internet, I said very directly and simply as I opened my show that day: “For those who already know God and have experienced God within, nothing is changed. Only the outer circumstances have changed, but we are not changed. And this is the way it should be for one who truly knows God experientially.”

In light of the seriousness and blessing of what we are doing on these conference calls, and for some of you who are praying in addition to the call, I just wanted to say what I have said to put our lives and what we are doing in this prayer effort into perspective. Each is needed and all prayer counts. But let us raise our prayers to the highest spiritual manifestation by meaning every word we speak as if it were truly our life, our neighborhood, our city, our country experiencing an attack. This is the kind of prayer needed to not only protect our own life and life of faith but also that of countless others, many who are innocent and don’t have a clue about either possible problems ahead or the presence of Heaven to intervene and save and heal the land and the world.

*****

The Way to Self-Mastery

Philip Burley

Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.Anonymous

Factually there are three kinds of responsibility in life: God’s, others’ and yours. Some have said three kinds of business, God’s business, others’ business, and your business.

It is not up to each of us to know God’s business or responsibility. How can we? God is infinite and we are—at least while in the body for most people—finite. Then who can totally and completely, in minute detail and in broadest of cosmic strokes, fathom the mind and heart of God? At best, and maybe through all kinds of life’s blessings, struggles, and suffering, we may come to know that God is unconditional love.

We may know from observation and/or from life experiences what is God’s business or responsibility but not in everything and all things. What we can know is that whatever God does with anyone’s life, ultimately it is always for the good of that person, regardless of the appearance of things, inward or outward, as motivated by our Heavenly Father’s divine care and love.

Even if someone dies, what appears to be an untimely death, they will find themselves in the world of spirit where the next phase of their life is to open. They will quickly and readily know that their death was not an accident (even if it took place in a so-called automobile accident); nor was it, therefore, untimely. It was their perfect time and way to leave their body and earth and move into the next phase of life in the world of spirit. We have to remember, as part of our business or responsibility, that we did not come here, in this world of effect, to stay but to be a temporary guest on earth for a period of time to learn and grow and at our appointed time and way, move on, born from the womb of Mother Earth into the world of cause (the spirit world), to a much greater, infinitely more expansive and expanding existence.

Once having transitioned into spirit, a thousand questions--whose answers were not available on earth--will flood into our awareness and the cloud and mystery of life will lift and we will feel freer than we have ever felt as we become aware of who and what we truly are to the fullest extent. In our new found home we will be able see the cause and effect in our life, if we desire and are ready for such revelation. To the degree that we have lived correctly on earth, we will be free from the body and attachments to the earth and come into the knowledge as to why we came to earth.

Very quickly, if not immediately (especially if we have lived a fruitful, meaningful life on earth) we will discover that there is a God readily available and experienced in spirit, and that our life, whether known or unknown, has been playing out just as it should have to teach us all that we were to know while on earth, all according to a personal, eternal divine plan (God’s business) for our individual life.

We will quickly experience that our “life,” as found in the body, did not end but continues in a world of greater hope, greater possibility, and greater freedom and love. As with everyone who has lived positively who transitions into spirit, we will say with a smile on our face and sense of relief in our heart, “I never want to return to earth again to take up my former life. I feel as if, at last, I have come home, born into a world of unfathomable beauty and love, where knowing and experiencing God is not a guessing game nor does it require one ounce of faith. Here, in spirit, I know God firsthand by direct experience and he knows me and speaks to me directly in my heart and mind and in a thousand different ways, not perceivable on earth, in all that surrounds me in the world of spirit.

Other’s business is just that. We may try to get into the mind of someone trying to harm us or into the mind of someone who does things not in keeping with what we would do in the same situation, but to try to fathom another’s mind is to try the impossible and to be out of our area of responsibility or business and into someone else’s and God’s business. Second guessing someone brings untold suffering and confusion. It is better to take them on face value and stay out of the mental gyrations of morbid pondering and wondering just what someone is thinking. Who can truly know another’s mind when we don’t, as yet, even comprehend our own, let alone quiet its constant utterances?

What is more, when you are over there in someone else’s business who is at home taking care of your business? It is often the sad reality of many people that they are so busy trying to run other’s lives that they have no time for their own and then wonder why they are not happy with themselves and are mentally and emotionally divided and confused.

Then there is our business. Staying in our business is like staying on our path. And it is important to always remember that wherever we are IS our path, which is there to teach us under ALL circumstances. There is no such thing as being off of our path. Only the phenomenon of memory and imagination make it appear otherwise, that there was some alternate course.

We did not come to earth as anyone else but us. There is no other life to live but the one that unfolds as “our” path of life, the journey, minute by minute, day by day unfolds. Not even can we live our children’s lives. Many parents try to but fail miserably because it is impossible to think and feel for another. That is their responsibility not ours. Even as babies we may care for them as they need care but still it is they who get hungry and cry for food. You cannot do that for them. It is they who laugh when they laugh or if they laugh. You may have stimulated them to laugh but it is they who laughed from within themselves. You cannot learn to stand for them, to walk, to talk. These are all within the realm of personal, individual accomplishments and responsibility. No, each must walk their own single, solitary walk. This is obviously the grand plan and it works best when thoughtfully, prayerfully observed and practiced carefully.

What is my responsibility, my business? According to Jesus, it is ultimately to love God with all of your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. The secret to fulfilling this principle of love lies in the word “yourself.” How do you love yourself? Do you do it by trying to figure all of life out and thinking egotistically that you should and do know all of the answers? Do you argue with life and reality trying to make life conform to your idea of how it should be or do you come to humbly accept the inevitable…that is, God’s will? Whatever happens, in the end, his will is always done. Only always.

This does not mean you should not question or blindly surrender to anything and everything. This is where wisdom comes in: when circumstances are obviously impossible to change, even if they spell suffering as with someone having terminal cancer, a death of a loved one or friend, it is best to yield, to surrender with joy because it means God loves them so much that he is ready for them to take the next step in their eternal journey to know him and walk perpetually with him on their path but now in the spirit world. There is a lesson to be learned, (many in fact) but the biggest to learn is to trust him totally because as your all-wise, all-knowing, all-caring Heavenly Father he knows what he is doing and will not fail you in the end, regardless of how things may presently appear. And all of this is his business! Knowing this allows me to truly let go and let God. As his child it allows me to trust and rest peacefully in his taking care of me to the nth degree and with all that is filled with love.

It is why the great mystics tell us in their writings that in the end they stopped fighting reality as it appeared in their lives and surrendered. Saint Francis, in the latter part of his life, bled profusely, weekly with the stigmata--a very painful, excruciating experience where open, bleeding wounds appeared on his forehead, in the center of his hands in the center of his feet and in his side. They were wounds that came because he gave up his life and sought with everything that was in him, to perfectly imitate the life of Jesus.

When you love God totally, you stay out of his business because you simply cannot do for yourself what is God’s responsibility. As implied above, you trust him and seek to have faith in his parental, eternal loving parenting of you. And the more you dwell on practicing this as in “Not my will but thy will,” the more you are living as you should and the greater the peace you will have in your life. And when things change or don’t go according to the way that you think that they should, Heavenly Father knows your confusion and, at times, the perplexity in your mind and heart and yet, by the unarguable reality before you, leads you onto this part of your path to be able to look back, in time, to see and understand exactly why your path led you through such and such experience, even the most unpleasant or tragic ones.

Every day there are a number of things in the earthly realm that you will need to take care of. You cannot avoid them and still live on earth. However, only when you love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and your neighbor as yourself are you truly connecting to the spiritual realm of your life. These two principles, that of loving God completely (which includes trusting him completely) and your neighbor as yourself are the hallmark of great souls and in life or death they do not waiver in their commitment to God and neither do they suffer when life does not go the way that they expect. Instead, they come to accept what appears on their path as opportunity to trust and love God even more, even as St. Francis strove to love Jesus completely. And they look carefully for what it is that their Heavenly Father is trying to teach them. Inevitably the answer comes—if not today, tomorrow-- and they then walk even closer, trusting God even more fully and completely because time and again, as they humbled themselves to reality, reality gave back to them God’s reality, the higher, better way and eternal peace.

Let us consciously choose to stay within the realm of our perceived sphere of responsibility and allow others and God to stay within theirs. If such a harmonious, correctly ordered world existed today, there would be war no more and heaven would come on earth. If all loved God with all of their heart, mind and soul and their neighbor as themselves, peace would reign everywhere and all of creation would rejoice.

Until that happens, let us each, within the sphere of our own life, allow it (that is peace reigning in us) to happen for us. This is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves and is the true spiritually mature way to live. As God has deemed it so it shall come to pass one day for all. But right now taking care of ourselves, staying within our scope of responsibility or business, is quite enough.

May this sharing bring some added peace, joy, and love to your life. It is not my business what you get out of this reading. But I would hope for you what I would hope for myself: that through the recognition and practice of living within your own business or responsibility and staying out of other’s and God’s business that you will lead a saner, and infinitely more peaceful and freer life. And may God bless you, which, incidentally is God’s business!

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