How often do you pray?

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I try to pray as much as a can but I admit I'm not doing it as much as I should.

I haven't prayed in years. Until recently my spirituality wasn't God centred. I was more focused on the spiritual world itself. God is a part of it but even in Christianity you have angels, demons, souls and saints. The one thing I wanted was to feel connected to it all including but not limited to God. I dreampt of actually interacting with it.

Now I just don't care anymore because not caring is the only way to not be miserable. I can't get a sense of spiritual satisfaction by traditional means of prayer and going to church and the things that would make me feel connected are inaccessible.

Prayer serves no purpose for me. It doesn't make me feel anymore connected. I still feel severed even when I pray. If it doesn't give me a sense of connection it has no spiritual purpose.


It can also have a placebo effect. I'm extremely suggestible so the last time I prayed I experienced a generic hallucinatory sensation as I was trying to convince myself that I had been heard. I felt a breeze on my neck which was impossible because I was indoors. I was hoping and expecting to be heard so I gave myself a sign. I trick myself so easily with placebos that prayer is actually bad for me. It functions as another placebo.


If I'm going to trick myself with a false sign that my prayer has been heard I shouldn't even bother.

Prayer can be a vague concept to me. I don't formally pray to a God, but I do tend to do mental well wishing that could be very similar praying,

A good example is from when I used to do commercial driving. I'd be on the road with bad weather and snow coming in. Sitting there behind the wheel I'd be thinking "Man just let all these truckers get through this safely". Or "Just let these guys find a safe place to park.".

I pray. I can't say how much, because I've prayed more fervently during some circumstances in my life than others. When my wife or daughter, or some other family member has been sick or hurt, I concede, that's when I do most of my praying. My wife pulled through gall bladder and appendix operations, though not so for my Mom and Dad when ailments and age wore them down. I certainly prayed a whole lot back in school during math tests - didn't work much . Still, I take comfort in believing someone is there listening to me - and all the billions of others.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

In a broad sense of the word pray means to beseech or implore. In which case several times a day.

If you mean directed at a divine being then lets say once every 5 years on average.

I often think prayer is a way to develop a conscious relationship with the Creator.
And then I ask what I want to know.
Listening is the hard part.
I think prayer is more listening than 'speaking'.

Primary school (elementary). So, a little over 20 years ago.

Was more of a "sing at parade" type of thing in my case; something they made you do or else you got in trouble.

You make it sound like it's a bad thing not to pray.

Same here, not prayed in around 40 years, it was compulsory at my school (in the UK) in morning assembly and anyone caught not praying aloud to Jesus/God got dragged off to the headmaster's office and beaten with a cane. I got a number of beatings between the ages of 11 and 15 for non-compliance so I usually just mouthed the words aloud while inwardly thinking of anything except f***ing Christianity and its twisted values. Pretty much all other the other kids did the same, just mouthing the words aloud to avoid a beating. Not surprising that church attendance in the UK has plummeted over the last fifty years. Most of the people I was at school with never attend church except the occasional traditional wedding (non-religious registry office weddings have become the norm). Forcing Christianity down kids throats under threat of physical violence has all but killed Christianity in the UK. Religion has become totally irrelevant to most peoples' lives (in the UK) nowadays.

I've never felt the urge to pray to mythological beings, figments of someone else's imagination, be it Zeus, Odin, Thor, the Christian god, Allah, Hindu gods, the Inca's sun god, the Egyptian cat god etc. Each to their own. If it makes someone feel good by praying to one or more of these gods good luck to them; it is their choice.

This.

Give a starving man a thousand prayers and he will still die of hunger. Give a starving man a grain of rice in place of each of those prayers and he will live to see another day. Give a starving man a livelihood and he will live to feed himself and his family too.

You can't tell the devoutly religious that, no matter how genuinely you mean it. The word of God trumpets basic human sense.

i pray as i approach my letterbox that i will not be astounded by the letters that are contained therein.
i am always worried that i may get a letter that tells me i owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and i pray that i will not be sentenced to a life of worry like that before i open the letters,

Does this sort of rigorous religion education continue to be forced upon children today? Because from what I've heard, the British kids are over the top crazy today, so I wonder what causes besides going through puberty could be behind that.

Also, nothing's stopping you from asking God to give you strength (and luck as not everything can be under our control) to carry out those benevolent deeds you've thought of.

Every day. But I do not expect an answer or results. It is just a way of centering my mind.

Think of it as a Jeddi mind trick.

ruveyn

British kids are no more or less crazy than kids in other Western countries. It is very much dependent upon location. Kids are crazier in areas with high unemployment, poor job prospects and poor services - this in turn leads to high crime and drug abuse thus driving such areas even further downhill. Typically they are former industrial areas that have hit hard times since the recession and out sourcing of jobs and manufacturing to China and elsewhere. You have the same problems in America in Detroit for example. The once proud car manufacturing region of the states is now full of crime ridden, drug dependent ghettos and the kids have poor prospects in life.

The beatings are no longer allowed in UK schools and I gather the force feeding of Christianity in a morning assembly has been watered down into some sort of "multi cultural religious understanding" whatever that is. One of my relatives is now a headmaster himself and he and all the other teachers find it to be a waste of time and the students generally non-receptive to it. Don't know if the kids are still forced to pray or not with alternate sanctions against them for non-compliance.

Which god would I pray to for strength? Zeus is good with thunderbolts and Thor's got a mighty hammer, so I imagine both of those are appropriate. Any suggestions as to which of the many mythological gods would be the most suitable to pray to that mankind has invented over the millennia? The Christian and Muslim versions of the mythological Hebrew god are fairly popular in the West at the moment but Krishna is popular in India, maybe Hotei from Japan? Too many gods to choose between. Maybe I could pray to a prophet but which one? Mohamed, Jesus, Moses, Guru Nanak, Joseph Smith, Shree Rajneesh or one of the countless others?