Give up; you've done a lousy job running the show so far, don't you think? Give up so being can run the show. Prayer is actively surrendering to being, to God in you. You have nothing to say to God; bank on it. So stop whining, wailing, singing, lamenting, hosanna-ing, or making any other noise. Just shut up. Shut up and listen.
Prayer becomes possible at the moment of salvation; the moment of salvation, the choice to participate in creation is a being's first prayer: "God, here I am, I'm ready to begin."
Praying for what you want is pretty pathetic when you think about it. You still think you should be in charge. "God, you must've forgotten about this stuff; take care of these items if you would." Wow.
What you want isn't just utterly irrelevant, it's a hindrance to prayer. Wants, words, thoughts, wishes, and images are all in the way; they stop prayer cold. Reaching out or calling out to God is making meaningless noise that drowns God out. Shut up and listen; God's not gonna shout you down.
Prayer is between you and God in you; nobody else is in on it. Public morons, preachers and other con artists love to make meaningless noises ordering God around: "God bless America" - they might as well add "and make it snappy!" "God bring us good health or world peace or whatever" - in other words clean up our messes; we can't be bothered. "God save our souls" - sorry, you're on your own with that one. "God help us win this war or contract or football game" - are you fucking kidding me?
Prayer is surrendering to God in you. To surrender to God you have to open to God. Opening to another being is love; opening to God is prayer. Being is God in you; you can only open to God in you. God outside you is terrible and unknowable, and you would be unable to bear even the slightest contact. But you can find your way to God inside you if you shut up and listen very carefully.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, prayer is very advanced work, one of the most advanced and demanding practices. It's not for babies. Prayer is searingly transformative. Yes, it starts softly, but that stage doesn't last long unless you decide you're determined to stay shallow with it. If you want to pray, work hard to develop so you'll be able to bear the flame of God in you as you approach.
There are two interweaving strands in opening yourself to God: resting receptivity and intent receptivity. Resting receptivity comes first; you can't practice intent receptivity until you've made good progress with resting receptivity.
Resting receptivity is sinking or settling into yourself while acknowledging or at least accepting that the deepest and truest part of you is no different than God. Anyone who spends time looking inward, sincerely and without being worn down, will come to know that being and God are the same; it couldn't be otherwise. That knowledge is both comforting and terrifying; prayer is about engaging the terrifying aspect of God in you. If you haven't come to the knowledge that being and God are the same, you can still set out to pray by accepting that it must be so, and as you make progress you'll come to that knowledge.
Start by wrapping yourself in silence. Leaving behind all your silly squawking - calling out to God, begging, pleading, singing, lamenting, rambling on - is just the first step toward silence. You cannot quiet all the voices inside you or make them go away, but you can reach beyond them, you can hold out your longing toward the silence underneath them all. Silence is a manifestation of God's grace, a form of help God gives that's supremely comforting and sustaining; it's also how we humans can approach the flame of creativity. The comfort and protection of silence become increasingly important as you make progress in the practice of prayer. You need the protection of silence to bear the crucible of prayer.
Straining for silence makes more noise: disappointment, self-recrimination or congratulations and other mental garbage. The antidote for straining is sweetness. Sweetness is a human quality deeply similar to silence; it's silence on a small, human scale. You need sweetness to reach silence, silence to reach prayer, prayer to reach presence. As you approach the practice of prayer, be sweetly patient with yourself, with exactly the sweet, bottomless patience of a mother or father regarding their infant child with humble amazement. We are all infants in the realm of being.
With a strong anchor of silence, you can begin to weave in the thread of intent receptivity. Within the silence, let yourself long for God. Hold out your longing toward God as you held out your longing toward silence before; longing is active emptying, active opening. If you try this too early, before you have a strong anchor in silence, it just makes more noise: internally wailing for God, rather than simply and silently longing for God, inviting God to possess you within the flame. When you start to make noise, return to silence and resting receptivity. Work back and forth between longing for God and resting in silence, slowly and with sweet patience drawing closer to God in you.
The practice of prayer is a lifelong process; once you've embarked on deeper work with intent receptivity, you'll discover that, once again, you're just at the beginning. The path into the deeper levels of prayer is a long one, and each turn of it demands all you can give and more you didn't know you had; the deeper levels of prayer are not a practice of development, of inhabiting being more fully, but a practice of becoming. Along the way, you'll have more and more need of silence. The experience of God's presence in you - what you're reaching for with prayer - is both a treasure and an overwhelming trial, very difficult for humans to bear. You'll have great need for the comfort of silence as you begin to feel that fire.
At the deepest level, prayer leads to the threshold of the presence of God and prepares you to tell the truth. In bringing you to the threshold of the presence of God, prayer completes the work that can be done before you must go on beyond the fellowship of humanity. Beyond prayer, there is only the presence of God shining through.
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