In prayer we are neither on the one hand dialoguing with an outside source who utters messages from without, nor are we simply talking to ourselves. We are reaching deeply into ourselves and sensing more clearly that we are in God's knowledge and love. We are discovering the Divine within us. We are experiencing ourselves and our lives as uttered by God, and we listen.
According to a Talmudic legend, an angel escorts the soul from its abode in heaven into the tomb and there unites it to the embryo. The angel tutors the new being in the mysteries of the world, transporting it to heaven and darkness to see the heights and depths of creation, revealing to it the ways of beauty, truth, and goodness, disclosing the potential of its future life on earth, even to the time and place of death. As the child matures within the womb, it ponders the wonders it has seen. Then, at the instant of birth, the angel touches the child on the mouth, erasing all memory of these marvelous revelations.