reading

For all the students, counselees,
and ministers who asked me to
write this book.

As the title suggests, Handbook of Positive Prayer is meant to be a guide. The various prayer techniques are simply some possible ways to pray, ways that can help people avoid “vain repetition” or freshen their approach to the experience of communicating with God. The examples of specific techniques are just that, examples. Readers are encouraged to use words that are most comfortable for them. The important thing is that they pray, and pray aright.

In the Foreword to Prosperity, Unity’s cofounder and Christian metaphysician Charles Fillmore wrote, “What we need to realize about all else is that God has provided for the most minute needs in our daily life and that if we lack anything it is because we have not used our mind in making the right contact with the supermind.” The faithful and regular practice of sincere prayer of any kind can eventually assist people to make right contact with “the supermind” (by which expression Charles Fillmore means the Mind of God). However, because positive prayer aligns human minds with the Mind of God and God’s activity for the welfare of creation, it helps people make contact that is both right and conscious. The original purpose for writing Handbook of Positive Prayer was to help people make right, conscious contact with the Mind of God, not only to become open to accept the good that God is always supplying but also to become conscious of God’s abiding presence within them and all around them; in other words, to develop Christ consciousness.

It has been gratifying to learn through letters and conversations that Handbook of Positive Prayer has helped people to achieve both purposes. However, since the book was first published, the movement toward using nonsexist language in reference to God calls for some minor revisions. Otherwise the text is virtually the same.

It is my earnest desire that this little book continues to contribute to the spiritual well-being of all who use it.

“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Positive prayer is not new. It is at least as ancient as Judaism, which nurtured the spiritual life of Jesus from infancy to manhood. It is the form of prayer taught and used by Jesus throughout His ministry, and by His disciples and Paul. It consists of statements such as the above excerpt, which acknowledges that God is already supplying whatever good thing we need. A person using positive prayer accepts the gift and gives thanks for it even before it has become apparent. A person using a more traditional kind of prayer may suggest that for some reason God is either withholding what is needed or does not know what is needed. Begging, or imploring, is often used in such a prayer.

Jesus Christ clearly taught the use of positive prayer when in the Sermon on the Mount, He said:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ... your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.”

—Matthew 6:25-34

Using figures of speech that everyone could understand, Jesus was saying that God is not only the benevolent, generous Father of us all (which Jesus later described in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32), but God is also Divine Mind and the eternal, ever-present, all-wise, all-powerful principle of absolute good, which both governs and acts as the cosmic process that creates and sustains the universe. Jesus knew that God is always at work to supply every created thing with what it requires to express the nature it is created to express. He knew that human beings are created to express the image-likeness of God (Gen. 1:26), and that God, who supplies what birds, lilies, and grass require to express their nature, certainly supplies what humanity requires to express its nature.

Jesus used positive prayer throughout His ministry. He used it when He affirmed the presence of food enough to feed a hungry crowd by first blessing a few loaves and fishes as if they were sufficient, and they were. He used it at the tomb of Lazarus when He said: “Father, I think thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always” (Jn. 11:41-42) and then affirmed the presence of life in Lazarus by commanding him to leave the tomb, and Lazarus did.

Jesus used positive prayer because it was the kind of prayer with which He was most familiar, for positive prayer is the kind most used in Jewish prayer life. If we leaf through the Psalms, we see on almost every page statements that affirm the presence of God and the activity of God in every kind of situation. For instance, Psalm 23 is a series of interlocking affirmations that declare that God supplies everything that anyone needs. In His teachings, Jesus directly quoted or referred to the Psalms more than forty times. So steeped in those prayers was He that according to Matthew and Mark, even from the Cross He quoted the first line of Psalm 22—a prayer that affirms the presence of God in the midst of tragedy and the power of God to transform tragedy into triumph.

His use of positive prayer signified the total commitment of Jesus to the vision of God as benevolent, generous Father and the eternally active principle of absolute good. If we skim The Gospels, we read passage after passage in which Jesus assures us that God is at work to supply whatever need we recognize. Early in His ministry He said, “Ask, and it will given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Mt. 7:7). Among His last words during the Crucifixion ordeal where those to the compassionate criminal beside Him: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43).

It is therefore not surprising that according to some scholars, the earliest form of the model prayer that Jesus taught His disciples, “The Lord’s Prayer,” was in more positive terms than those in for form we know. According to scholars, Jesus used a tense that would have to be translated this way: You are giving us this day our daily bread; you are forgiving us our debts, as we are forgiving our debtors, and so on. Perhaps translators considered the phraseology awkward, but whatever the reason for the change, “The Lord’s Prayer” as we know it is a series of simple requests which imply that if we ask, we shall receive. The requests express confidence that God provides the good we seek.

Jesus had utter confidence in God, confidence that was not shaken by the most negative kind of circumstance. Throughout His ministry, He encouraged His followers to develop that same degree of confidence, and during the Last Supper, He summarized His efforts with these words: “The Father who dwells in me does his works.... Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (Jn. 14:10, 12).

To believe in Jesus means more than to accept intellectually what He said; it means to base one’s behavior upon intellectual acceptance of His teachings. Jesus taught His followers to use positive prayer, and He demonstrated the power of positive prayer to accomplish apparent miracles. He wanted them to use positive prayer, for He knew that it would build in them the same confidence that He had in the abiding presence of God that enabled Him to let God work through Him to provide whatever He needed so that He might do whatever He needed to do.

According to the book of The Acts of the Apostles, the intimate disciples of Jesus who became the Apostles practiced positive prayer and were able to do great works. Paul also practiced positive prayer. From his own experience, Paul knew that it transformed one’s mind, and so he taught it to everyone who would listen to him or read his letters. He wrote to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2). To the Ephesians, he wrote: “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life ... and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22-24).

Paul practiced what he preached; the letters he wrote to the early groups and churches begin with positive prayer statements. If the purpose of the letter was to bolster the faith of the people, Paul thanked God for the faith they had already demonstrated (Rom. 1:8-12); if the purpose was to encourage harmony in the fellowship of believers, he thanked God for the harmonious relationship that already existed (1 Cor. 81:4-9).

Paul’s teaching on positive prayer is quite specific. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote: “Rejoice always, prayer constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit ... hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thess. 5:16-19, 21-22). Although Paul was advocating that the Thessalonians abstain from evil acts, he was also saying that they should abstain from evil in the form of thoughts of hopelessness, fear, and anxiety—what we today call negative thoughts. Paul knew the power of thought, and in what was probably the last letter he wrote, he advised the Philippians:

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

—Philippians 4:8

If we are to pray constantly, our thoughts must always be consonant with the mind of God who dwells within us. By cultivating such thoughts as Paul advocates, we hold fast what is good and do not quench the Spirit of God but allow it to do its work through us and for us.

Positive prayer, then, is more than deliberate, conscious communication with God for some specific purpose (although it certainly is that). Positive prayer is the way to form a permanent attitude of mind that reflects the eternal, benevolent activity of God so that we may truly express our nature as the children of God, created in God’s image to express God’s likeness here on Earth.

Many persons may not need to know how and why positive prayer works. To them, the information that Jesus taught and used positive prayer is sufficient to warrant their learning and practicing it. This section is included for those who find that knowing how and why a process works helps them to cooperate with it.

Positive prayer works because of the law of mind action: Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. This statement means that if we persistently think a particular kind of thought, other thoughts of the same kind will form in our minds, and eventually we will feel compelled to say the words or do that acts that express the thoughts outwardly so that corresponding conditions or things will be formed in us or in our environment. It also means that we may attract to ourselves or be drawn toward conditions, persons, and things that reflect our persistent thoughts.

The first chapter of Genesis indicates that by a process similar to the law of mind action, God created the universe and all that it contains, including us. First there is an idea in the mind of God; then there is a manifestation that corresponds to the idea. Certainly, that is said about the creation of man: “’Let us make man in our image....’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Gen. 1:26-27). An image is the representation of mental vision or an idea. Since we are made to reflect the divine idea of God, we have the same kind of power that God has, and the ideas or thoughts that we hold in mind are reproducible in the outer or physical world.

Any divine law is simply the way God works, and since God is the principle of absolute good, the law of mind action is intended to bring only good into manifestation. However, as Jesus pointed out when He said that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt. 5:45), God’s absolute goodness is impersonal; thus the law of mind action operates impersonally. Rather like a perfectly constructed computer that gives right solutions to problems only if we feed it with the right information, the law of mind action can give us what is right and good for us only if we feed it with right and good thoughts. In the words of computer operators, “Good stuff in, good stuff out. Garbage in, garbage out.”