It is according to the extent of our consciousness of prayer that our prayer reaches God.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Our follies and errors are natural; but when we defend ourselves, making virtues of our shortcomings and trying to hide our errors, it is as if we nurtured our errors, trying to make them grow. The only real method of growth is to judge ourselves constantly and to see where we fail; then in prayer to ask for pardon and right guidance.
People often think that, as God is the Knower of the heart there can be no need of any recital or gesture in prayer; but that it would surely be sufficient if they were to sit in the silence and think of God. But this is not so; it is according to the extent of a our consciousness of prayer that this prayer reaches God. If the body is still and only the mind is working, it means that part of the being is in prayer and part not; for we have both mind and body, so that the complete being must be praying.
( from Unpublished Papers from the Nekbakht Foundation Archives: Prayer – 8 May 1921 and 15 May 1921 )
But an inquiring mind will ask, ‘If God is within us, then all our troubles and difficulties, our feelings and our attitudes towards God and also our faults, are known. So what need is there to express them in prayer?’ It is like saying, ‘Because I love a certain person, why should I show it?’ Expression is the nature of life. When every part of our mind and body expresses our feeling, our thought, our aspiration, then it produces its full effect.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Average people are dependent upon mind, and even though they may be devotees, they cannot pierce the mind-mesh. As soon as one views life from the aspect of the relative non-reality of personality, all life and love enter the prayer. Then prayer becomes Ishk and mounts to the throne of God.