Friday, December 6, 2013

Gaby Alvarez: Phenomenology of Prayer #1


“There are five elements to prayer: praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition, and intersession.”  Most people have no problem with the last four elements but it is the first, praise, that they… we struggle with. The reason this occurs is that praise is the only element that does not involve self. The concept of praying to God to let him know how great he is, in other words to adore/admire him. “Prayer is deep, quite possibly the deepest decentering of self deep enough to begin dismantling or destructing that burning preoccupation with myself”.  In prayer one must enter a state of humiliation to complete the first element of prayer. Once in this state one no longer has self in mind. 

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