Presence and Prayer by Parabola Magazine
Presence and Prayer, by Michel Conge
S
ince you agree that a particle of divine energy animates you, you can understand that a contact, a direct perception of this circulating energy, must be possible. You can also understand that the key to the mystery of consciousness resides in this capacity of perception, which is not a mental act but the awakening of a dormant property.
Everything is here.
If this living and divine energy-substance were not in us, there would be no sense in trying anything at all.
We are separated from ourselves, and also, of course, from God, only through our forgetting or our ignorance.
Remembering oneself means recognizing oneself in a rediscovered and eternally present energy, free of all form.
This rediscovery must not be the result of thought or desire alone; the proof must be brought by our whole mass, in order that the contact becomes in fact a fusion with no gap through which doubt might still slip in.
It is only the Absolute whose reality we are incapable of knowing or touching, but this is not a permanent situation.
Let us move on to speak of prayer. Prayer is not a petition. It is another special aspect of the contact with the divine spark that we can experience in ourselves. Without this contact, we consider ourselves to be a “tiny being”; as you say in your letter, “How can such a tiny being as me…?” That’s a silly way of looking at it.
You are this Life that circulates. To acknowledge it with your mass—without words and without desire—that is prayer.
Know the kingdom and its justice and all else will be added unto you.1
Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.2
We need to ask for nothing. It is illusion—the ego—which asks. To come back to myself as “I”—awakened to the mirage of the “person,” the “name,” and the “form”—is to be fulfilled.
I do not need to pray in order to be; I need to recognize that I AM—that’s what prayer is. And from this rediscovered fact, Faith, Love, and Hope are born, very naturally and without any subjective distortion.
That’s what destiny really is—rediscovering what I am and, in fact, what I have never ceased to be: a spark that is never extinguished, a spark which creates. But never forsake the spark—I AM—for the illusion of the created form.
Those who pray without seeking to awaken their reality will fall into an even greater confusion than if they had asked for nothing.♦
1 Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
2 John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
2 John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
From Parabola Volume 42, No. 3, “The Sacred,” Fall 2017. This issue is available to purchase here. If you have enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing.
