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prepares the way for prayer; it empties thought, making
it ready for, or receptive to refilling. "Empty that he
might fill me," expresses the idea of fasting and prayer.
Thought emptied of its own opinions and ideas, is
cleansed, and prepared to be filled with Divine Idea.
Prayer is the complement of fasting. After the
emptying must come the filling; after the rooting out,
comes the re-sowing; after tearing down, we want to
build; after fasting we must pray.
As a new idea of Truth dawns in our understanding,
one of the first questions it stirs up is, How shall I pray?
which shows that our prayer changes as our consciousness changes.
As Jesus opened the disciples' eyes to more Spiritual understanding, we hear them asking at once, "Lord,
teach us how to pray."
As consciousness increases, prayer assumes new
meaning, and the words of our childhood -- the "milk"
that belonged to babyhood no longer satisfy our fuller
grown thought.
To find a more helpful idea of prayer, which our new
consciousness demands, we first must know what the
purpose of prayer is.
Prayer cannot, and has never changed God. We
read, in Isaiah 51:9, the prayer of Israel, calling upon
God, to awake. "Awake, awake, put on strength, O
arm of the Lord." This is the prayer of childhood, and
the answer comes back, (Isa. 52:1), "Awake, awake, put
on thy strength, O Zion." "Zion" needs to awake, not
God.
As soon as we understand that the All is Everpresent, that we live in It, and that "All things are ours,"
we see that the purpose of prayer is not to bring anything to us, is not to induce the Divine to grant us, what
