I was lost in my early-20s, felt unfocused, unmotivated and suffered from depression. I had good friends but my worldview was tainted. I wanted to believe in God but everywhere I looked I saw hypocrisy, greed and selfishness. I woke each day with a sense of ennui and hopelessness. These feelings culminated in a half-hearted attempt to take my own life. My suicide attempt was a failure like everything else.
Therapy helped but didn’t change my opinion that the assholes were running the world and evil men were winning. I read books on morality such as Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. Frankl, a holocaust survivor, concluded that life is filled with suffering but our reaction to suffering is a personal choice. In the book When Bad Things Happen To Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote that God does his best to help us but doesn’t have control over the evil in the world.
This was discouraging. If God didn’t control evil, then religion seemed like a waste of time.
I was born Jewish but never felt connected to my faith. I turned to Buddhism, attracted to the Four Noble Truths:
Life is Suffering
Suffering is caused by craving
Suffering can be ended by eliminating craving
The Eightfold Path leads to the end of suffering
This led me to try the “eightfold path” focusing on right thought, right speech, right conduct, etc. I embraced meditation, yoga, martial arts, vegetarianism, fasting. After several years, I ended up back where I started: the world’s an evil and immoral place.
I explored other religions such as Taoism, Hinduism, Sufism and the Baha’i faith. I felt a surprising kinship with New Testament teachings in the Gospels particularly the Sermon on the Mount. I was attracted to the humility of the Beatitudes and the wisdom of the Golden Rule. Jesus professed radical views such as loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you.
At 24, I caught a lucky break. My best friend’s brother-in-law George was a spiritual teacher who gave public talks on living a spiritual life. I immersed myself in his teachings. I met with George for private sessions learning Tai Chi and meditation techniques. He focused on getting in touch with our “still small voice” that’s drowned out by the world’s noise and chaos. This entailed quieting yourself and becoming still.
George was a Christian but didn’t try to convert me. One day, I asked about prayer. More specifically I asked, “How do you pray when you don’t believe in a God to pray to?”
“Good question,” George said. “If you’re not comfortable with the idea of God then call it something else. Cosmic Intelligence, Source, Universal Love. Most people pray when they need to change something in their life. We pray for money, health, a new job, a new romantic partner. We pray for something specific we want to happen. This assumes we know what’s best for us. It isn’t rational. If we knew what was best for us, we wouldn’t need prayer in the first place.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Accidents happen, people get sick. I mean shit happens, right?”
“Yes. But what if the shit that happens is a result of our bad decisions? I work with a man who entered a business partnership with a con man. They worked together for years until he learned his partner was embezzling from the company. The business went bankrupt and the man’s home was foreclosed on since he’d put it up for collateral. When this man began seeing me, he admitted he’d been suspicious about his partner from the start. He ignored his intuition and hoped for the best. When things went bad, he prayed to God to save his business. It was too late. The man lost his house, his wife and custody of his children. But he did one thing right. He didn’t blame God or his unanswered prayers. He blamed himself and his own choices. He admitted he was blinded by his desire for success.”
“Are you saying all of life’s difficulties are a result of our bad decisions?”
“Not all, but many of them. Our problems might also be a result of our karma?”
“Can you elaborate on that,” I asked.
“We live in a material world but we’re here to learn spiritual lessons. Everyone’s lessons are unique. Prayer helps us discover what these lessons are.”
“Like clues to the mystery of life?”
“Exactly. When you pray, you initiate a relationship with the universe as your partner. As with all relationships, it takes time to develop trust with your partner. Prayer helps us understand our role in the cosmic narrative.”
“When you say relationship with the universe, I assume you’re talking about God. Like I asked earlier, don’t you need to believe in God to pray to God?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“All you need is an inkling of an inkling that prayer is not a waste of time. Prayer leads us to an understanding that universal wisdom exists. This can take years, even lifetimes. It’s part of the relationship building process.”
“You mean getting to know God?”
“Yes.”
“So I can pray even if I don’t know why I’m doing it or who I’m praying to?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
George reached into his satchel and pulled out a Bible. He held it up and flipped through the pages.
“When I was a teenager, I always wished I could get something out of this book,” George said. “It all seemed so fanciful. The burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the virgin birth. Then one day I had an epiphany. It’s written in code. The Bible is meant to be understood symbolically like an allegory. If we get caught up in minutiae like lawyers interpreting statutes, we’ll miss the underlying meaning of the words. Maybe if this book was called ‘Helpful Hints for Better Living,’ it would be read differently.”
This was a blue pill/red pill moment for me. I’d always dismissed the Bible as propaganda and primitive dogma written to control the masses. Like George, it was hard to embrace teachings that condoned stoning rebellious children to death (Deuteronomy 21:18) or instituting the death penalty for those who worked on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32). George was telling me I’d approached the Bible incorrectly. I wasn’t supposed to read the words literally but decode their hidden meaning.
“You asked how to pray,” George said. He opened the Bible to the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. “We’re given an example with the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us the words but first he says, ‘This is how you should pray.’ Do you see what he is doing?”
“No,” I said.
“Have you ever taken a yoga class?”
“Yes.”
“The first thing a yoga teacher does is show you the proper position of a stretch. Then he goes around to each student and tweaks their body until they’re holding the pose correctly. Jesus is showing us the proper posture to hold when praying.
“The first words are Our Father. This means the first thing to do when praying is to acknowledge God. We’re paying homage to God’s existence like Native Americans honor ‘the Great Spirit.’ We’re also clarifying God’s relationship with us. He is family. Like our birth father, he is approachable and wants us to converse with him.
“The next four words are who art in Heaven. This means there is a Heaven, a place where life is perfect. We don’t see it and we don’t know where it is. We only need to know it exists and God resides there.
“Hallowed be thy Name. To hallow something is to give it value. God’s name is to be spoken with reverence. Prayer is a sacred act. Through prayer, our lives become sacred.
“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This tells us heaven and earth are two different realms that one day will merge. Kingdom is not necessarily a place but a state of being. Thoreau wrote ‘Heaven is earth seen correctly.’ In other words, there’s more to this world than we can see with our eyes.
“We’re told to say thy will be done not my will be done. We’re aligning ourselves with the world as God sees it. We’re telling God we accept His intervention in our life. It’s a transformative moment like receiving a blood infusion.
“Give us this day our daily bread. Bread corresponds to our basic needs. Food, water, sleep, shelter, health. It’s not about praying to win the lottery or to get a new Ferrari. We pray for what we need, not what we want. God is the source of our needs.
“The next line is important. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Here Jesus adjusts our posture like a yoga teacher. He wants us to live in a state of forgiveness. This is tough. If someone hurts us or our family, it’s natural to want revenge. It’s part of the fight or flight response. But we’re told to forgive those who hurt us. Why?
“We don’t realize how much we suffer by holding onto grievances. Anger, frustration, jealousy, fear… these feelings eat away at our health and vitality. This isn’t just a moral exhortation. It’s a helpful hint for better living. Forgiveness is an important step on the spiritual path. It allows us to heal from past wounds. The person who forgives benefits more than the one being forgiven. We also forgive so we can be forgiven. This frees us from our history and our karma. It allows to us to let go of the regret and shame we feel for past actions. This is difficult and can even seem impossible at times. But we’re not expected to do this on our own. We’re asking God to do this for us.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. This tells us several things. One, evil exists. Two, we’re all tempted by dark impulses. This is a plea to be protected from life’s trials and our worst inclinations. So many people are addicted to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, sex, gambling. Lead us not into temptation is a request to God to help us navigate life’s trials. It’s like a GPS system telling us what routes to take and what streets to avoid.
“The prayer ends with For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. God is in charge and always will be. It’s a statement of humility, of honoring God’s authority. It’s like being a player on a basketball team and respecting the coach. We might not always understand the coach’s strategy but we acknowledge that he knows the game better than we do. If we follow his advice, we’ll excel. If we disobey him, we’ll get benched.”
“Are you saying getting benched is getting punished by God?”
“No. If you don’t know the strategy and rules, you’re hurting the team. It’s like driving 70 miles an hour in a 35 mile zone. You can blame the policeman for giving you a ticket but you’re the one who was speeding. There’s a divine order of life. If we go against it, we suffer the consequences.”
“Then why do so many evil people seem to succeed in life?”
“It might seem that way from afar, but through prayer we learn to see the world as God sees it. With divine eyes, life looks a lot different.”
I recalled a passage from Hamlet.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
It’s been more than 30 years since these initial discussions with George. Prayer has become a major part of my life. I still see the darkness in the world, the evil impulses of people and the resulting turmoil and confusion. But the darkness no longer consumes me.
I’ve stopped trying to discern the meaning of life. Instead, I wake each day with a sense of gratitude. Every breath is a gift, every moment a miracle. It’s enough to simply exist and feel the light upon my face. For this I give thanks to God.