God invites us to pray because this is our service. To get closer to the King, you must serve him.
When it comes the time for prayer the dervishes align up in serried ranks, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. Then their own personal stories no longer matter and they all feel the same.
It is like in war: what matters is the common mission, serving the greater plan, no matter how you feel, your personal problems do not have room.
When you are in a row it is easier to perceive the Absolute.
It feels more clear the existence of a higher order of which we are part.
Praying allows us to receive God’s love to heal the soul. Prayer has to do with reality.
To know you need to get in touch with someone who knows, not with those who believe: those who know is the king, who only believe, is a fanatic.
In the tradition say it is seventy times better to pray in the community. Islam assembles us, puts us together.
All men and women if they can do it, are invited to meet on Friday for jummah, the community prayer. “The One who gathers,” Jami, is one of the Divine Names. The ego always wants to isolate rather, to crown himself, to separate from the others. This is its program.
The prayer grants the peace to be together, to be part of the same body that moves in one same movement culminating in prostration. Bowing with others brings reconciliation.
Prayer allows us to enter into intimacy with our true nature. It makes us human.
By bowing you come in contact with the divine will that becomes audible.
The celestial world is watching us all the time and is looking for us; if we are wrapped in the mantle of our psychic world, and we only ever think to our problems, we result invisible to the spiritual world that can not recognize us and contact us.
The act of prayer puts us in the open, it put us in the correct position and in order.
Then we are reached by a divine ray that gives us reality and make our souls to shine; it descends on us a subtle strength and a protection. We rise up as stars from our psychic darkness, and we enter in the divine movement.
We pray because God invites us to do it, but our prayer is not for God. He has everything. What could we give Him? We do not increase His happiness if we pray, nor we diminish it if we do not pray.
He is the Father and wants to give everything to his children, but since He is the ultimate goal, and there is nothing but Him, it is to Him that we must turn in prayer.
In the prayers it is difficult to think but even if it happens to run after your own thoughts, it does not matter. To fix the gaze on the point where the head will touch in prostration it strengthens the willpower and reduces distractions.
The masters invite us to imitate the behavior of the angels about the prayers; which means to receive the order and to execute it. Prayer is the daily food for our soul. To keep a daily discipline weakens the ego; to pray is part of the Work. It is an actisvity of the soul.
