Humility in Prayer: Acknowledging We Don't Know How

Ah, this one is very, very nice: 'Only when we humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought to can we truly begin to engage in the practice of prayer.' That's beautiful. Only when we humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought to can we truly begin to engage in the practice of prayer.

Why does it always feel like that? Some of us have been praying for a long time. Can we really say, 'I know how to pray'? Nobody can really say, 'I know how to pray,' because it's only that tiny bit in the method and 99% in Grace. And because that Grace is indeterminable, we can never say that 'I have the best method now to pray' or 'I know how to pray.' Just in the same way that we can never say, 'I know how to inquire.' So many people who have been doing inquiry for decades still come to satsang sometimes and say, 'Am I doing it right?' You see, because unlike worldly mechanical processes where you can say that if you do this much effort then this much push will happen to that object, in spirituality we can't say that because it is Spirit-led. It is not effort-led. And yet effort is needed.

Are you getting this point? That nobody can ever say, 'I know how to pray' or 'I know how to inquire, I'm a master at it,' because that would mean that the outcome is in their hands, in their control. And all of us have that experience that one day we pray, one time we remember God, and we are in a deep bliss. Another day we pray, and it's just mechanical and it's not giving you that bliss, that joy, that peace. So then in those days it's natural to question, 'Do I really know what I'm doing? Do I even know what I'm doing?' But it's not about that. We can never know. And to humbly acknowledge that is important because the effectiveness of prayer is Grace.

So it's like the Govardhan story, that we may feel that we are helping Krishna by holding our hand up, holding Govardhan up to prevent the rain from falling on us, from drowning the village, but He has to do it. And yet both things are important; we have to go and do that, you see. So it's a very, very direct way of saying this is very important: only when we humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought to can we truly begin to engage in the practice of prayer. You see? How many of you have struggled? 'Am I doing this right? Am I doing this right?' It's okay.