The highest level of prayer is not a prayer FOR anything. It is a deep and profound silence, in which we allow ourselves to be still and know God. In that silence, we are changed. We are calmed. We are illumined. Prayer is meant to dissolve the worldly focus, to dissolve our sense of a separate self, to help us detach from the noisy world order.
Prayer is like pouring hot water on an ice cube, melting the cold and encrusted thought forms that still surround our hearts.
The world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true. I once thought love was supposed to be nothing but bliss. I now know it is also worry and grief, hope and trust. ... If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.