In Kabbalah: Key to Your Inner Power, Elizabeth Clare Prophet writes:
The mystical side of Kabbalah does not preclude the practical side of prayer. God wants us to petition him to fill our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs, as long as the fulfillment of our requests will help us serve him and grow spiritually.
As cited in the last chapter, Joseph Gikatilla tells us that each of God’s names is like a key for all our needs, no matter what they are. The Zohar itself encourages us to pray for the fulfillment of our needs and says that the righteous rely on their prayers and supplications rather than on their own merits to fill those needs.
The Zohar even gives a formula for making requests to God: We should begin by praising God and then present our petitions to him. When petitioning God, it prescribes, we should “state in precise terms” what we require so that there is “no possibility of misunderstanding.”6 God wants our prayers to be specific.
Kabbalists stress that our prayers are not directed to the sefirot but through them, so to speak. We are not worshiping the sefirot, for they are not gods or goddesses. You can think of the sefirot as the chakras of the cosmos. They are step-down transformers for the light of Ein Sof, vessels that channel God’s bounty to humanity. In answer to our prayers, Ein Sof’s energy moves through the sefirot to effect change.
Kabbalists also stress that our prayers should not always focus exclusively on one sefirah to the exclusion of the others.
Rather, our prayers are meant to enhance the unity of the sefirot so that there is a harmonious flow of energy from Ein Sof through the channels of the sefirot to our world.
Music CD: Come, Holy Dove! Mystical Union through the Names of God
The above article is excerpted from Kabbalah: Key to Your Inner Power by Elizabeth Clare Prophet.
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