Sacrifice of the ego, privilege to the soul.

Praying with ego, or praying with soul. The ego prayer is our ego, talking. It sees prayer as a sacrifice of our time, so that later we will benefit. I will do something for God, so I can get rewards later. Can you see the huge arrogance already creeping in, in the motives alone. I, my ego, will do something for God. How can we do something for God? God is so great and omnipotent that He is not affected by any of our actions. We cannot affect God. Only God can affect us. But the ego prayer is still thinking:

If I please God now, make the sacrifice and say the prayers I have memorised, I will get my rewards later, while the others deserve their own punishment, -something we may even enjoy to see if the moment arrives, since they have been so stupid not to follow the same rules we believe in. Our ego is always thinking in a commercial way. Superior versus inferior. I do something for you, you do something for me. A mild form of corruption? Only our ego could make us think and act as such.

The soul prayer is our soul, praying. It sees prayer as a gift of God to us. Something sent to us from heaven, something we can do for ourselves. Praying is no longer a sacrifice we make for God, it is a privilege we accept. By praising God and praying with our heart, our mind and our soul, we will immediately experience peace of mind and if even that would be the only reward, it would be already enough for us to keep on praying. But it is not the only reward. In the process we gain insights that help us, live a more complete and happy life full of peace of mind. It will really help us to see God’s plan for us. We will become alerter and try to miss fewer opportunities to do good. We will start to live more as a soul person and less as an ego person. Living a life according to God’s plan, we may die with great peace of mind that lasts well into eternity. After a soul prayer we will not feel to be the good ones deserving rewards in distant future, while the ones not praying like us are the bad ones deserving punishment; after a soul prayer we will realise all of us are poor sinners and it is our duty to do as much good as possible and in the process inspire as many people as possible to do good with us. This will result in an immediate but lasting peace of mind and happiness.

G.