What do you think prayer is?

[brewer]

I pray/meditate with my hands, as I explained earlier.  Get's shit done.  I actually hum alot, though, really repetitive stuff, when I;m working.  I find that it helps me to clear my mind and creates sort of experienced symmetry between the fall of the tool and the sound of my voice.  Helps to melt away time.

Isn't that why service men chant/sing when they march or run?

[The Grand Nudger]

That;s to control breathing and regulate each individuals pace to the formation...but yeah, it makes the run more fun and creates a shared experience, for sure.

You should check out some of the good ones, they use themes relevant to running...rollin like a wagon wheel. See, you're not running, don't think about it, just roll...and while you're at it, rock steady. For the frst few miles you can notice the cadence sort of flagging off, real low energy..but once runners high kicks in, it's all shouting.

Timed pt runs are a fuckin slog. Five mile plus full company formations..chasing the flag....now that shit -rocks-. I had a co that would pick all the hooah shit to get us started, and then pull the running themed ones (and the ones that make fun of pogues who can;t run) after we'd gotten over the hump. Brilliant work.

(another point of interest, since I'm on it..belting out to a bunch of support "Pick up your weapons and follow me, I am the airborne infantry" not only compels your formation to run harder..it goads others into doing the same. You can imagine the effect when 120 guys blast past you and your buddies at twice your speed singing that.)

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Here's one, and most probably know that the same basic cadence can have a plurality of lyrics.  This is a marching song, check the themes and how they relate to prayer or meditation..specific to the task at hand.

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Were you keeping the beat by the end? Success, so were they. You just got jedi mind tricked, in a song about your (and their) death, it's somehow made into a positive. lol.

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[The Valkyrie]

Talking to yourself.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's certainly what a cadence is, on the mental conditioning end.  Talking yourself up before the fact, remember it during the fact, singing it again after the fact. Most of us (I'd go so far as to say all of us) do something similar. Do you have any pre-surgery rituals or ways of reassuring yourself or pumping yourself up? Prayer is one expression of diverse but fundamentally common human behavior, not an altogether different sort of human behavior.

[vorlon13]

Prayer?

Wonderful chance to nag the Lord God Almighty about some personal trivia you're having.

[Cyberman]

It depends on the intention. Prayer can vary from focusing the mind to an issue, to wish fulfilment, a desire to feel connected to something other, self-aggrandising condescension, all the way up to desperate sympathetic magic.

[The Grand Nudger]

One would think that, of any group, believers would want to investigate and communicate the nature of prayer accurately.  If a god told them to pray, because that god knew it had some use, then it's use as understood -must- be the use intended.  OTOH, that's entirely too boring of a syncretism between belief and reality for most believers.  

"I said not to eat babies boiled in their mothers milk, you fucking simpletons..but that didn't have shit to do with dairy!". The same would have to be true of prayer, if there were a god who recommended it. Unless, ofc, that god is also a simpleton. IMO..no matter how it's sliced or from which direction..every ounce of idiocy connected to prayer is entirely human idiocy.

[Nay_Sayer]

A common misconception is that praying is simply a kind of channel through which you ask for a favor from God. This is exactly why prayer "doesn't work" for many people because everybody wants to know "what can God do for me?" but the very simple thought "what can I do for God" never crosses their mind. How will you receive anything if all you do is ask?

You have to ask the right god, Which you haven't done.

[shadow]

What is prayer?

Theists tout it as actual communion with the Divine. Of course, many of us here will reject that assertion, but that leaves the question: what exactly is it then? I'm sure many of you have read Christian accounts wherein Christians describe prayer as having therapeutic powers. I'm open to this idea. When I first began to study Hinduism and eastern texts, I used to use a mala (beaded necklace) to sing repetitive prayers to Ganesha or various bodhisattvas. Oftentimes, I was left energized by the activity. I wasn't so much a believer in any of it, just someone who incorporated it into a yoga, chi gung regiment that I employed to reduce stress.

This got me thinking about Christian prayer and what actual purpose it may serve to its practitioners. Is it a form of meditation or self-talk? Or is it pure delusion?

I wouldn't know - I've never prayed before.

[Cyberman]

Prayer: petitioning the unlikely for the impossible.