So how does one learn how not to pray and often why not to pray? It is a little difficult so try to keep up.

First pick up your Holy Book. Open it. Read it as though you are taking part in some competition of ‘who can finish each page the fastest’. Remember no heart, no emotion and no mind, just the end result is important. Finish the page or the prayer as quickly as you can. God is a busy fella and why waste the poor blighter’s time. He is keeping a tab on how much we pray and the end result is important. So read your prayers really fast. While praying this fast, your body might move sideways or back and forward. That’s good. You are really moving at a good few knots an hour. God likes speed.

To further hasten things up keep a watch or clock nearby to keep tab of the time and pace. As God and all the Masters keep harping about detachment, remember pray with complete detachment, as then you can go through the prayer like a wasp suffering from gout. As soon as you finish the prayer, you can tick off, from your ‘to do list’, one more formality out of the way.

To get really good at this, try to finish the entire prayer Book in an allocated time frame. Let us say, finish the Book in seven days. The Master loves it. You will impress Him by the speed of your reading. Go through the entire Book, consisting of innumerable pages and many chapters, in the allocated days and your spiritual growth graph has moved quite a few notches northward. As we are busy and can’t spend the whole day calmly reading the Book, condense the time frame into may be an hour or two, and read on like a demented horse, with eyes covered in blinkers, panting away. Remember one’s Master keeps a tab on all these marathon quick reading sessions. As it is important to finish the Book quickly and in the allocated time frame, for God sake, don’t ponder on each line, the essence of each paragraph, the inspirational life of the Master or the prayer, the very essence of what the Book is trying to teach. You won’t have the time for it and if you do, then either you will have to sit for hours at a stretch or then not finish the Book reading in the allocated days. That is going to really make your Master disheartened and disillusioned. We do not want that. Also calm, slow reading can be done when you retire or get unemployed. Now is the time to run the marathon like a hundred meter dash.

Also, God is fascinated with numbers. You have to do a mala or a rosary either once or eleven times or sometimes He wants a prayer to be repeated 1,25,000 times in forty days. He has a stop watch and an inbuilt calculator, so it’s best you go through the numbers. If you don’t pray it that many times, my friend, you are not going to get whatever it is you are praying for. So as prayer is a business transaction (why else pray) make sure you reach your numbers, whichever way you can. Pray fast, pray hard, pray quick, and get the hell out of there. If you think, you can shut your eyes, focus on the prayer or Mantra, and pray with your heart and soul, like a child, reaching out to a Parent, and God or Master is going to bless you with whatever you want, or allow you to connect with the Divine Energy, you are an innocent child. Prayer is for the adult. It is a business deal. Show me the numbers and hours, God says. What do I have to do with your emotion or surrender?

Prayers are all about numbers and chants and formality. Don’t sit quietly and just talk to your Master. That is not prayer. That is the first sign you need to start taking medication, as come on, the Master isn’t listening to your heart and is not interested in your day to day life. He or She just wants numbers and the clang clang clang of formal chanting and muttering. Also pray with fear, never with love, as God I guess, likes people to tremble and pray to Him out of sheer fear of His wrath rather than the pure love of His Oneness.

Where prayers are concerned, more complicated they are God likes them best. Ah and yes, very often we do not say our formal prayers as the prayers are in the language that we don’t understand. And obviously we do not have the time or inclination to understand the meaning. So either you rant them off or just avoid them. If you don’t understand them, how on earth will God understand those words? So the logic is let it be, let my ancient prayers gather dust, as the ancient language was understood by an ancient God, and our God is clearly an accountant.

Also when you pray, I assume, you pray to a statue of your Deity, God, Goddess, Master, or religious Symbol. Remember to focus on the Statue or Photograph only. Don’t get carried away with Energy etc. Leave it to those crazies. One’s focus of prayer is that Statue, Symbol or Snap. Do not get lost in the Spirit and the Energy that you pray to. Just keep praying to the physical aspect of your God and Master. Do not go beyond it. And certainly, do not try to fill yourself up with the Energy you pray to. Keep focusing on the physical aspect of your God and Master. Let Him or Her reside there, and that is if you believe S(H)e is there. I mean, let us face it. God is up there, first right turn after the ninth planet. That is why I guess whenever we beseech God, we always look up to the sky and as there is so much pollution, God really can’t get the drift of what we are saying.

Ok now very important. When God or Master doesn’t listen to you, it is best, to get angry and stop praying. Throw a nasty tantrum or best go silent on Him. He hates that. He craves for attention and wants it anyway He can get it. I mean what is the sense of praying when nobody seems to be listening. Who knows, our Master or The Great Flame, has a personal vendetta against us. Otherwise give me one good reason why you and I are going through such a harrowing time and the other folks are raking it in. Be it cash, relationships, fame, power, love, whatever, the other guys are doing just fine, which means God is either short sighted or suffering from a serious wax problem in His divine ears. Otherwise why are we suffering? Why isn’t He listening to us and just giving us what we want? Thus, He doesn’t exist or obviously has a thing for the rich folks. Also, we all are born I guess only once. I mean there are a number of ill-informed folks who keep harping on reincarnation and karma and all that mumbo jumbo. And often we too believe in all that metaphysical jazz but hey, karma and past life, even if they did exist, doesn’t give the Old Man any right not to listen to us and give us grief. I mean, look at those politicians and they are doing just fine while we lead our lives as nobly as we can and yet are being trounced. Nope. God may be there but He doesn’t listen and do as we tell Him to and if there is a God who doesn’t listen to what we want, it is best either to no longer pray to Him or ideally stop believing in Him. And as we don’t pray because we love the poor clueless Chap or because we are in a state of gratitude and most often it’s a clearly non rewarding barter arrangement, and He isn’t keeping up to His end of the deal, it is best not to pray or just mumble something and tick Him of the ‘to do list’.

Very important we all are busy. There is always something important to do, somebody who needs us or some deadline to meet. Remember God is supposed to be God. He can wait. Also He is supposed to be All Knowing, All Calm, All blah and blah, so He can understand. He doesn’t have to meet any deadlines or face the boss who looks like a science project gone completely wrong, each day, day after day. So don’t bother chanting His Name while you travel, do not remember Him while you eat or drink, just do your important stuff. He can wait. I mean He made all of creation in seven days and has been taking the longest vacation ever, since then, so let Him be. Don’t bother involving Him in everything you do or not do. We are so tired that there is no sense just sitting quietly and breathing Him in. He needs those long prayers with words that can give the tongue a spasm. He doesn’t want one’s silence. Or just being with Him, and as one is too tired to go through one’s prayer, it is best not to sit and be silent and just breathe and exhale and spend time with Somebody who obviously is fixated with only formal prayers. God isn’t cool. He is like a deranged military man, who needs all the protocol and as we are at the end of the day too tired or in the mornings too busy, just let Him be.

If you sit down and just pour your heart to God or Master that is not prayer. Prayer has to be a formal drill. It has to have the numbers. If you just breathe Him in and exhale all your angst that is not prayer too. It is some silly exercise, an unemployed sage thought of to pass his time while lost in the Himalayas.

Of course, there are those so called spiritual chaps who claim that prayer is communication with one’s Master, God and Goddess. It should come from the heart. It should flow with the breath. Prayer is the bridge that paves the path for the soul to reach The Great One. It is the sigh that comes from the depth of one’s most private dwelling. It is a private conversation between each individual and can be expressed best through love, humility and surrender. Prayer sometimes can come forth in the form of a tantrum or angst with one’s Master but always through love. Prayer is the song that often may have no words and only rhythm of silence. Whatever way one prays, it needs to still the mind, calm the heart, and make the soul exhale. But I guess all this you already know. So don’t bother with the last paragraph, sheer gibberish.

Be blessed.