How To Pray So That Your Prayer Is Heard

How do you pray in such a way so that your prayer is heard? What makes a prayer effective? This post discusses how to pray so that your prayers are answered–regardless of whether you’re asking God, the Universe, or beings in the higher realms to respond to your request.

I have found that prayer has worked much more effectively for me not when I ask God (or Jesus, or the Universe) to do things for me, but when I ask for guidance on how to resolve the situation I’m in and I follow through with the guidance I’m given. The kind of praying that we’ve traditionally been taught in religions (such as the ritualistic repetition of someone else’s words, asking God or higher beings to do things for us, to sweep the problems away) does not work much anymore, if at all. Much more is expected of us now than ever before. We’re being encouraged to raise our consciousness and become the masters of our lives.

I am clear that only those prayers that ask for empowerment within the Divine Plan will be answered. (This is one reason why the ”Law of Attraction”–as it’s superficially understood–hasn’t been working.) Rather than praying for divine intervention to fix a problem for us, we ask for guidance and insight and understanding into the problem so that we can resolve it.

When we beg mindlessly, we actually block the help we could receive if we only included ourselves as active participants in the solution. In other words, only those prayers asking for empowerment, insight and understanding will be answered. Particularly now, when we’re being challenged to raise our consciousness and see ourselves as co-creators of a new world, one that works for everyone. Our own insight, inner awareness and self-empowerment is how we will save ourselves.

So rather than imploring or repeating the words of others (as if prayers written by others have more power than our own words sincerely spoken), it makes sense to spend more time listening (receiving inner guidance, or God’s input), and then to integrate this guidance into our lives (by making changes that are congruent with it, by following through with the guidance).

The following is an example of a memorable prayer I spoke one night about 13 years ago when my car was stolen. What happened is that my husband’s teenage cousin had borrowed the car to go sightseeing in San Francisco and parked it at a train station in Sunnyvale (ironically one of the lowest crime rate cities of its size in the U.S.). When she returned that evening, the car was gone.

“Right before I went to sleep that third night [after the theft] I was inspired to say a prayer: I thanked God for having given me such a wonderful car; it had been so dependable for so long. I told God that the person who stole my car probably did so because he had met some unfortunate set of circumstances and couldn’t see another option for himself. And if that car wasn’t going to turn up, I asked that it provide for the new owner the same kind of reliability that it had provided me.

That was it; I was done with my prayer. I went over to W. who was working late on the computer, gave him a hug and a kiss, and went to bed feeling serene.

I didn’t know it clearly then, but this is what it means to say a prayer: you speak what is in your heart, you let things go (you become detached to the outcome), you send it off into the Universe (by simply having that intent), and then you allow the prayer to do the rest. (This is especially true in the case when there’s nothing you yourself can do about the outcome, i.e. you can’t just go out on your own looking for your stolen car.)

Around one in the morning the phone rang and I spoke with an investigating officer from the Mountain View Police, who informed me that my car had been found about 2 hours earlier (right around the time of my prayer). I listened as the officer explained that the car thief had asked a couple of unsuspecting youths for assistance in pushing my car to a gas station as it had run out of fuel. Then when a police car turned the corner and headed in their direction, the thief got out of the car in a flash and ran off, leaving the youths standing with my stalled car. Wow, I thought as I put down the receiver.

I suppose I stand corrected on my “problem-free” car–my fuel gauge had been reading inaccurately for some time. But the thief, of course, had no way of knowing this, and neither could he have known just how reliable to me my car really was…”

The interesting details of what happened were not lost on me–the fact that it was stolen in low-crime “Sunnyvale,” and found by the “Mountain View” Police. My car being found soon after I said my prayer. And the fact that what got me my reliable car back was my dysfunctional fuel gauge.

My understanding of prayer has increased since then. The way to pray so that your prayer is heard is to speak your own words from your heart and ask for guidance, listen to the still small voice within you, and muster up the courage to follow through with your guidance when you receive it. Know that you absolutely do need to be proactive about your higher purpose (your unique contribution to the new world) and that the feedback you receive from God / the Universe is what will help prevent you from being discouraged on your path.