It may depend on what is meant by “prayer”—I would expect that there are some forms of meditation / introspection / visualization that have benefits, though I don’t expect “wishing really hard” to do much good.
I used to meditate every morning—not thinking of anything in particular, just paying attention to thoughts as they pop up and trying to let them go without paying any attention. It’s supposed to make one better at noticing what one’s brain is actually doing (when you’re flinching at an idea, keeping yourself from thinking of something etc.) though I haven’t noticed any benefits myself, and am not particularly convinced by the evidence. But I wouldn’t mind meditating weekly if it would make my family happy.
I also read that imagining practicing a skill actually helps one learn it (though not as much as actually doing it), and that would be the best thing that could be remotely described as “wishing really hard” that is still actually useful.
I know this is some form of rationalisation—looking for a behavior that could be described as “prayer” while still being useful, and that this isn’t as good as “looking for useful behaviors, regardless of what they’re called”.
To be specific, my mom believes prayer is sitting down and asking god for something (like for her daughter to enjoy college life, etc) and expecting that prayer to be answered. Since I’m happy at college, she assumes it’s god. She fails to notice all of the times she’s prayed and nothing has happened.
It would not surprise me to observe that spending more time than I currently do carefully visualizing what I want would correlate with getting more of what I want.
Were I to observe that, I would probably explain it to myself by positing that, having primed the awareness of it, I increased my likelihood of noticing opportunities for it when they come by, and thereby increased my likelihood of obtaining it.
Someone with different prior beliefs might explain the same observation by positing that their visualization directly caused the thing they wanted to manifest, without an intervening behavioral change on their part.
That second thing seems pretty close to what people mean by intercessory prayer (though they frequently posit a Divine or otherwise not-ordinarily-perceivable agent mediating the result).
It may depend on what is meant by “prayer”—I would expect that there are some forms of meditation / introspection / visualization that have benefits, though I don’t expect “wishing really hard” to do much good.
I used to meditate every morning—not thinking of anything in particular, just paying attention to thoughts as they pop up and trying to let them go without paying any attention. It’s supposed to make one better at noticing what one’s brain is actually doing (when you’re flinching at an idea, keeping yourself from thinking of something etc.) though I haven’t noticed any benefits myself, and am not particularly convinced by the evidence. But I wouldn’t mind meditating weekly if it would make my family happy.
I also read that imagining practicing a skill actually helps one learn it (though not as much as actually doing it), and that would be the best thing that could be remotely described as “wishing really hard” that is still actually useful.
I know this is some form of rationalisation—looking for a behavior that could be described as “prayer” while still being useful, and that this isn’t as good as “looking for useful behaviors, regardless of what they’re called”.
To be specific, my mom believes prayer is sitting down and asking god for something (like for her daughter to enjoy college life, etc) and expecting that prayer to be answered. Since I’m happy at college, she assumes it’s god. She fails to notice all of the times she’s prayed and nothing has happened.
It would not surprise me to observe that spending more time than I currently do carefully visualizing what I want would correlate with getting more of what I want.
Were I to observe that, I would probably explain it to myself by positing that, having primed the awareness of it, I increased my likelihood of noticing opportunities for it when they come by, and thereby increased my likelihood of obtaining it.
Someone with different prior beliefs might explain the same observation by positing that their visualization directly caused the thing they wanted to manifest, without an intervening behavioral change on their part.
That second thing seems pretty close to what people mean by intercessory prayer (though they frequently posit a Divine or otherwise not-ordinarily-perceivable agent mediating the result).