Prayer

 Prayer to many people is one way talk to God, done in order to please God.
Truth is that we cannot please God.
It sounds like supreme arrogance if we believe that God
could be affected in any way by any of our actions.
Only God can affect us, only God can please us.

Prayer is a gift of God to us that allows us to be a bit closer to God.
It is essentially something we do for ourselves.

If we pray quietly with  our heart and mind and soul,
it has a wonderful effect on our lives.
It brings peace, bliss, love in our lives.
Not that God is suddenly sending these things to us from somewhere far away.
We are continuously literally bathing in peace, love and bliss
All we have to do is open our hearts and open our souls,
let it all flow in and act.

Prayer is meant to help us tune in, tune in to the love and peace that is around us at all time.
If I read Al Fatihah (part of the Muslim prayer) and think deeply about the meaning, one cannot but feel but more peaceful, loving and blissful after it.
If one reads our Father (Christian prayer), the meaning of the words in it are amazingly similar and if one thinks deep about the meaning , one cannot feel but more peaceful, loving and blissful
I am sure the same goes for the prayers in other religions.

Let us upgrade our prayers from just reciting mindlessly something we learned by heart many years ago, to giving some deep thoughts about the meaning of these words we have memorized, let the meaning soak into our hearts and souls and let it change us for the better.