[Chills]

I am not religious today. I was brought up with religious teaching.
I use prayer.
I think I use it in various forms... one to focus my good will or good wishes for the benefit of others.
two...to find answers to problems that are perplexing or troubling to me.

In the first use I can not say if it works or not with positiveness..... but it seems to
In the second
I find it works for me.... simply because the answers are manifested ...and solutions found... often within the course of prayer or subsequent meditation.

I dont have a clue why it works but for all intents and purposes it certainly seems to for me.

I wonder how others think about this.

I would like to know if others pray and what your thoughts are on it.

BTW- I am not sure if what I do should be technically called prayer...but that is what I call it.

[Pepper]

I believe in the power of prayer. I don't pretend to understand it. I just know that it works. At least in my life. Often in life things happen that can not be explained with logic, or science, nor reason. Most often these "happenings" will be called mysteries, or, supernatural....etc

I personally believe in a higher power. My higher power is God, and His Son, Jesus Christ. I can't prove either exist, nor can anyone prove they don't exist. All I know is what I feel in my heart to be so. I do not like to be classified as religious. I'm even starting to wonder if I want to be call christian. Not because of my lack of belief in God, or Jesus Christ. But, because, religion, and christian, for the most part, don't express the divine greatness of the God, and Jesus I love.

I'm drifting. Sorry. Prayer releases power. It depends on whom you allow to channel that power you release to determine the outcome.

I'm not good at conveying my thoughts through typing. Hope this makes sense.

Pepper :)

[pop pop]

I pray and it works on many levels for me. I do it for a number of reasons. One is to cultivate and develop my personal relationship with my higher power (God). Another is to maintain and increase my feeling of inner peace and sanity. I can never be really absolutely sure how the former is progressing, the latter--well, I know how I felt before and I know how I feel after--and that is almost always better. The third reason I do it is if I'm in need of some sort of guidance. I usually get that too, although I can only characterize what I get as a sort of intuitive feeling about what I should do (no voices from the clouds). Maybe that "guidance" comes from within, maybe from without, I don't know.

I think there have been a number of studies, scientific and otherwise, on the effects of prayer, physical effects and others. On a bio-physiological level I think the effects may be similar to what has been studied, seen, documented and associated with various forms of meditation. In the 70's I studied/practiced transcendental meditation. It has been scientifically shown that there are measurable physiological changes in the body during meditation. Blood pressure decreases, respiration slows, and there are changes in brain activity that are similar to various stages of sleep. All good things.

So I would say that no matter what your reasons for doing it (prayer and/or meditation), even if those reasons have nothing to do with religion or spirituality, it has been demonstrably shown to be good for you.