In my previous post, God in Our Image, I shared part of a conversation I’d had with Jesus over a question about prayer. This post is to share more of that conversation.
One of the questions I’d had about prayer was the idea of praying to our Creator as “Father” or as “Mother.” How can we know if we are getting the terminology right? Does it matter?
And what about praying to Saints or Angels, or to any other image or idea? Can we ever get it right? Is it “okay” to pray to other spiritual Beings? I wanted clarification from Jesus.
I believe in the Divinity of Jesus, but I also believe in his Humanity. I also believe he is the pattern which we are to follow, and I do not believe that his Divinity means that he is the Infinite Source any more than my Divinity (or yours) means that I am the Source (or you). He is not the Father, he is not the Creator; he is as much a Creation as anyone else, although I would argue more enlightened (freed from ignorance) than most. But let each of us come to our own understanding.
So the next question I asked Jesus was: “How do you feel when people pray to you? Does it offend you? Or frustrate you?”
Jesus laughed and asked me, “How do you think I feel when you have prayed to me in the past? Do you think I was offended?”
As I felt his loving energy and looked into his eyes, ever compassionate yet full of humor at that moment, I realized, no, Jesus isn’t offended or frustrated, even with the billions of people across the world who confuse him, the Creation, with his Creator. Of course not.
“But what about praying to Angels?” I asked. I’d always been taught that was a no-no, it was “Angel worship,” and even though I didn’t believe that any longer, at the time I was having this conversation with Jesus, I was still hesitant to communicate with the Angels that I saw around me in the spirit world, or sensed in the physical world. Considering the complex past traumas I’d been through surrounding interacting with Angels, I was still shying away from direct communication with them at that time, unless it had first been initiated by one of my trusted Guides.
(See: Healing from Psychological and Spiritual Manipulation within Deliverance Ministry. I edited out a lot of detail about the complex trauma and confusion surrounding my spiritual experiences during that time, but it will give you an idea.)
But Jesus said yes, it was okay to pray to Angels if we wanted to.
“What about praying to Saints?” I asked. Growing up, I’d been taught it was equivalent to “having other gods,” a breaking of the Commandments, and to necromancy, a practice I was taught would send one to Hell. At the time of the conversation with Jesus, I’d learned differently about Hell (See: Refiner’s Fire and The House that Jesus Built: George Learns About Hell), and I no longer saw communication with Saints (or others who have passed) as anathema, but I wanted to hear what Jesus thought.
“Yes, that’s okay, too,” Jesus said.
And then I thought this was the really hard question: what about praying to other Guides, like Balthazar?! Or, praying to myself, for Pete’s sake! “Can I pray to myself?!” I asked Jesus.
Jesus laughed again. “Yes, that’s okay, too. Intention is what matters most.”
Prayer is not the same thing as worship. It is my personal opinion that worship should be reserved only for our Creator, although it is expressed in diverse ways. However, this is my opinion at this time; my opinion may evolve. Let each of us come to our own understanding. But prayer in its simplest form is simply communication with those in the spirit realm.
That’s all!
We pray for various reasons: to make a request for something we want or need, to ask for assistance, for guidance, for help, for support, to surrender to the will of Spirit, to align ourselves with a particular agenda for a particular purpose, to calm our mind or soothe our soul, etc.
Praying to—communicating with—our Guides in the spirit, whether a religious figure such as Jesus, or our late grandparents, can be very helpful for many reasons, and when it is done with the right intention, there is no need to fear deception.
(I say this for the benefit of those who, like me, were raised to be fearful and contemptuous of such communication. But if you are fearful of deception from any being from the spirit world, perhaps your bigger problem may be that you haven’t yet fully learned to trust God. See: Trusting Spirit Guides: Trusting Spirit Guides.)
Even communicating—praying to, in a sense—with our higher Self is something we should be doing, as it is an excellent way to get in touch with our intuition, with our needs, with our path, to find healing, to be encouraged, to ground ourselves, to retrain our mind; the list could go on and on.
We should each communicate with those in the spirit world however is best for us. Who are we to judge another’s path? Who are we to try to control how others express their spirituality?
Jesus said “Come.” He didn’t make any qualifications or conditions that must be met, other than need. How we get there is our own path to follow, and the same Spirit Who is powerful enough to keep us on our path and to lift us when we stumble, is powerful enough to keep others, too. Every experience, even the mistakes we make, can be used to teach us and to grow us.
It’s all Spirit, walking us home.
Blessings and Peace,
Diary of a Christian Mystic 