“People here in Poland spend all day praying to God and go-
ing to church, yet we have had war, our city was bombed by
Hitler, we lived under martial law for years, and we have suffered.
Why didn’t those prayers work, and what’s different with this
Hawaiian one?”
I paused to consider the right answer, wishing Dr. Hew Len was
here to help me. In the moment I gave this reply:
“People don’t get what they say so much as what they feel. Most
people who pray don’t believe they will be heard or they will be
helped. Most people pray from a place of desperation, which means
they will attract more of what they are feeling: more desperation.”
My questioner seemed to understand and accept my answer. He
nodded. But when I returned to the United States, I wrote Dr. Hew
Len and asked him what he would have replied. He wrote back the
following e-mail:Ao Akua:Thank you for the opportunity to clean with whatever is going on in
me that I experience as your question.
An American showed up in the class that I did in Valencia, Spain, two
years ago. “My grandson was ill with cancer,” she said to me in a
break. “I prayed for him, asking that he not die, but he died anyway.
How come?”
“You prayed for the wrong person,” I said. “Better to have prayed for
yourself, asking forgiveness for whatever was going on in you that
you experienced as your grandson being ill.”
People don’t see themselves as the source of their experiences.
Rarely are prayers directed at what is going on in the petitioner by
the petitioner.
Peace of I,
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