A Closer Analysis
The power of prayer… what exactly does one do when they pray? Well think about it. They reaffirm their beliefs and their wishes. If we look at the placebo affect we see that the mind is quite powerful. It’s at least as powerful as pain medicine. If that’s the case then what is the difference between one type of pain and another? Somebody that works hard for what they want can be said to undergo a type of pain. Some things take time, perseverance, consistency, tenacity and struggle. All of these come at a cost and the debt is discouraging. When someone prays for the “strength to endure” what they are really doing is acknowledging their struggle and in doing so perhaps they are also self-administering a type of pain medicine. But is this really a simple game of belief?
Subconscious Actions
Anyone with a shred of conscience knows the feeling of wanting to be a man of your word. Anyone with a shred of conscience knows the desire to avoid claiming or committing to what one cannot do. And maybe this is the critical point of inflection. It seems the most profound effect of verbally stating your beliefs and your wishes out loud while believing they are being heard is…. that it forces you to act on those words even if just to prove it to yourself. As a consequence the power of prayer is not necessarily in the existence of god but in the power of conscience. With each prayer you subconsciously program yourself and you subconsciously take actions that align you with those prayers. Of course there are physical limitations but the power is real (with or without god). You essentially program yourself. This is in alignment with the spirit that we are not robots because true robots cannot program themselves. Even the most advanced AI requires carefully curated training data still vastly different than the experiences of a child.
Please check out my recent article on synchronicity here.
