Go to the Fountain and Drink!

The Arabic word for prayer is 'al wird', which literally means 'to go to the fountain and drink'. The mystics say, in prayer we bring together the two poles of our being. The limited part of our personality, our everyday-ego, tries to come into contact with the unlimited part - that part which sometimes is called 'higher self', sometimes simply 'self' or the 'unconscious', sometimes 'God'. God needs us to be realized and to take on form in this world. And the Sufis emphasize that the longing for an encounter with the Divine is an important precondition for this meeting of the two poles.

This longing is not self-evident, but grace. Suhrawardi for example does not ask for 'union with God' in his 'Daily Prayer of Reference to the Highest', but he says, „I ask you to give me longing to meet you.“ Likewise Jelaluddin Rumi says in the poem which stands on top of my homepage, „Spend less time seeking water and acquire thirst! Then water will gush from above and below.“ Again - it is the seeking which matters. Then the finding follows of its own volition.

Let's Call it Our Ideal  

Another important aspect of prayer is invocation, says Pir Zia Inayat Khan in his paper "The Five aspects of Prayer and the Five Elements", and he quotes the saint Ali who said, 'Pray to God as if you see God.' But what does it mean to 'see' God? What is God? What is it, that we believe in? There are as many definitions of God as there are people. Every person has her/his own path to God, and this path is her/his ideal.

We could not live in this world without an ideal - we would be broken. When Hazrat Ali speaks of praying to God as if you see God, it is to bring that ideal from the abstract realm of conjecture into one's lived reality. And the ideal of a person, continues Pir Zia, is always precisely what that person needs to develop in himself or herself. This changes at different times in one's life, and so changes our God ideal.

Hazrat Inayat Khan says, 'God is what is needed to complete oneself.' And so each of us is a 'work in progress'. There are qualities that belong to our being but are not yet adequately expressed in our life and are struggling to be born. They are brought to our attention in the form of our ideal, and in life we are attracted to people who manifest this ideal in a way that we are not yet able to manifest. That person then becomes a mirror in which our true self sees itself. 

Invocation means, to live with that quality of being just as you would live with another person, and to experience how this quality becomes important and vivid in your life.