Prayer

Approaches

There are a variety of approaches to understanding prayer:

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• The belief that the prayer is listened to, and may or may not get a response;
• The belief that prayer is intended to inculcate certain attitudes in the one who prays, rather than to influence the recipient;
• The belief that prayer is intended to train a person to focus on the recipient through philosophy and intellectual contemplation;
• The belief that prayer is intended to enable a person to gain a direct experience of the recipient;
• The belief that prayer is intended to affect the very fabric of reality itself.

The existence of prayer is attested in written sources as early as 5000 years ago. Anthropologists believe that the earliest intelligent modern humans practised something that we would recognize today as prayer.

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