Prayer is a great ancient Art. To learn how to pray you may begin from simple sentences, expressed in your own words. For example, you can say the following simple prayer: “I wish to achieve my goal” and repeat it.

You then begin to think: “What kind of ‘I’ wants to achieve this goal? I have many ‘I’ and many different roles. Which one of these ‘I’ wants to achieve this goal? What do the other ‘I’ want?

Do they want to achieve the same goal? As for ‘I want’, is this constant?  Could it be that sometimes ‘I want’ and, other times, I forget this very desire? Am I able to want something properly, strongly and consistently?

I say: <I want to fulfil this purpose!>.  What do I understand with the word ‘purpose’? How do I see this ‘purpose’? Is this purpose the most important and final goal for me, or is it just a small purpose? Is this purpose compatible with other purposes or does it antagonise them?”

If you ponder over the above scenario, you can understand many things: how complicate is to set a goal and how, owing to the lack of inner consistency, it becomes difficult to reach your purpose: one of your ‘I’ pulls us in one direction and another in the opposite one; today you want to achieve this goal, but tomorrow you may well change your mind.

When you begin to reflect, many things concerning how you function become clearer and you can see without shade of doubt what kind of work you need to do in order to achieve your goal.

In addition, you should check what emotions inform the above sentence: is this sustained by total involvement and strong, high emotions? Or are there already some inner doubts? What kind of thoughts do you have? Does it happen that one day you have some thoughts, but the following day others?

Since there is no consistency in your emotions, there is not enough emotional power to achieve your goal! This is why we cannot handle making a prayer to God:  there is not a sufficiently high emotional state and not enough emotional power.

As for God, He listens to your emotions, not to your words. He looks at your hearts, He sees your feelings and does not answer to your words, but to your emotions. Your words can be false, but your emotions can be much more sincere than any words in the world.  

Therefore, observe what emotions inform your sentence. See if your emotions are sufficiently strong or if, given other circumstances, you may end up wishing something opposite with equally strong emotions!? 

Frequently people say:  “I want to buy a car!”, but if at this moment they end up having a fight with someone over this matter, then they may say with equally strong emotional charge:  “I generally do not want anything”. If circumstances can make you have a desire opposite to your original one, or can make you reject your former desire, then you shall not be able to achieve anything.  When and if the circumstances causing the messing up of your goals appear, right at that moment,  you need to pray and say: “I know what my purpose is. In my meditation and in my thinking, I understand myself exactly. Now that these circumstances have arisen against me, I need to gather all my will power, my whole mind in order to reverse them.”

Specific circumstances may shape you as well as your purposes. If you do not learn to resist negative circumstances, you shall never be able to achieve your necessary goals. In the midst of negative circumstances, you should  stay vigilant and observe yourself: “Am I moving away from my path now? What emotions, what desires cause now a contradiction in me? What could prevent me from achieving my goal?”

If you would think in this way with regards to any request, any prayer or any sentence you utter, you would truly learn how to pray. Then God would grant you whatever you ask Him.