The power of prayer

When I was younger I always wondered why prayer only worked for certain people. Think about it, a person in a poor country will spend their life praying for a better life, and they will die living in a worse situation than they were in before they started praying for a better life. Now a person in the United States will pray for a job, car, a house, and many other things, and their prayers will eventually be answered. 

Why does prayer work like this? Does god choose specific people to help, and ignore others? What makes Americans better than people that reside in poor countries? Now that I am older, and wiser, I understand how prayer works . . . it doesn't work. Well, it doesn't work in the way that most people assume that it does. I will explain.

People act as if our creator is a genie and their prayers are wishes that are granted whenever they ask for something. God, can you please help me get a job, can you please help me get a car, and can you please improve my failing health. After you get a job, a new car, and your health improves, you will say, thank god, he answered my prayers. Prayers work based on the type of environment that you live in, the amount of hard work that you put into what you are trying to accomplish, and it really depends on if you make more right choices than wrong ones. And most importantly, the people around you and their actions will have a huge impact on you getting the things that you prayed for. With that being said, prayer works, but not in the way that we think it does. Prayer works because we manipulate ourselves into believing that an unseen force is working just as hard as we are to help us accomplish the things that we set out to accomplish. Prayer motivates people, but that doesn't mean that your prayers are being answered.

Why doesn't god answer our prayers? Well I hate using the word god; I used the word creator. Our creator gave us freewill to make our own choices in life. Our choices will decide how things will turn out in our lives. The choices that you are making, along with the effects of the good and bad karma that you accumulated while in this lifetime, and previous lifetimes, will determine how good or bad your life will be.

If our creator intervened every time we asked for help it would stunt our spiritual growth. Our overall purpose in life is to rise to a higher level of consciousness, the highest level, which is super-consciousness, is a level of consciousness that all souls must attain. At this level we will become one with our creator again, and escape the cycle of reincarnation.

Prayer is a way of talking to our creator and meditation is a way of hearing our creator. Prayer should not be used to ask for things that you could get on your own if you worked harder and made better choices. Prayer should only be used as a way to connect with our creator, and to talk to our creator, that is it. If you see a person in need of something, don't just say that you will pray for them, offer to help them. If you want a car, house, or a job, don't bother our creator with that, work harder, make better choices, treat others good, and avoid negative karma, and you will see things in your life change for the better.

It may seem as if your prayers have been answered after you’ve have asked our creator for help, but the truth is, you are the one that will be answering your own prayers after you ask our creator to physically intervene in your life. That is hard for some people to comprehend because they only see things the way they was taught to see them, and they can't see beyond that. Just know that our creator gave us free will for a reason, use it to your advantage, but also use it to spread love, and help others. If we all followed these methods we could change the world, while changing ourselves.

The impact of raising a child to be religious

Should children be forced/manipulated into following a certain religion? To answer this question I will focus on Christianity, which is a religion that I was a part of, but my opinion can be applied to any child that follows any religion. If you ask most religious people when did they choose to become religious, they will tell you that they don't remember. Most kids never have the freedom to choose what they want to believe in, because their parents force their beliefs on them at a young age. Think about it; parents start taking their kids to church at a young age, they start buying them toys for Christmas, and in the midst of that they tell them that Christmas is the day that they celebrate the birth of Christ. A lot of children have these beliefs forced on them without even fully understanding them. Is that fair to them?

We need to teach our children to be thinkers, and not followers. We need to teach our children to do research, instead of believing in something that they do not fully understand. I believe that parents should sit down with their children, and explain everything to them about each major religion. Then they should go online with them, and allow them to research different subjects that pertains to to those religion. They should also let them analyze the beliefs of civilizations such as the Hopi Indians, Maya, and the Sumerians. Once they have enough knowledge about these things, then parents should ask them what do they want to believe in. It should not matter what they chose to believe in, as a parent you should support them, and respect their beliefs even if they differ from yours.

Believe it or not, teaching your children to research subjects such as religion, and to form their own opinions will benefit them in a lot of different ways. Look at the people in the world today, so many of them have no clue about all of the negative things going on in the world, they have no idea of how corrupt the government really is, they have no clue that we could change the country and the world by getting rid of the monetary system, and replacing it with something like a resource based economy. The reason that they don't see the world for what it really is, is due to the fact that a lot of them were raised to be content with the way that things are, and to believe what the majority of people believe, instead of forming their own opinion. That is why I stated that the method that I suggested that would give children the freedom to choose what they want to believe in can be the same method that they can apply to everyday life as they get older. Don't believe something just because others believe it, always ask questions, always do your own research, and always form your own opinions based on what you believe is true.