Prayer

Such an observation of the streaming together of the future and the past into the present will show us how the life of the soul grows beyond itself. When, in looking back over the past, the soul observes the important things that play on it and of which it does not feel itself to be equal, we shall understand how it can unfold a basic attitude and feeling in relation to the outcome of the past. When the soul, whether in judgment or in shame and regret, feels something great flow into itself out of the stream of the past, it creates within itself what we may call a devotion toward the divine. This devotion toward the divine that looks down upon us from the past and that we can imagine as something acting upon us, although our consciousness cannot take it in, is produced by one of two forms of prayer that lead to an intimacy with God. If the soul surrenders itself in inmost calm to these feelings about the past, it will begin to wish that the mightier thing it left unused and that has not permeated its ego may become present in it. The soul will know that if it were possessed of this greatness, it would be different, but the divine did not belong fully to its inner life and that is why it has failed so to form itself that it can approve of all that it is. When the soul experiences this, it can overcome the feeling by asking itself clearly how it can make truly part of itself what has lived unconsciously in all its actions and experiences, how it can draw into itself this unknown that its ego has failed to grasp. When the soul holds this attitude, either in feeling or in word and idea, we have the prayer to the past and thus seek to approach the divine through one of the ways of devotion.