Recently, I've been feeling that if everything is made of love and gratitude, the only thing I can do is offer prayers.

I am not a Christian, but like Christians often do, I put my hands together in front of my chest and ask for help from above. It feels like, as the Pure Land Buddhism says, "reliance on other powers" is the only way to move forward from here.

This is not about dependence on others, as it is often misunderstood in Christianity, but about trusting the divine energy that comes from the heavens and entrusting everything to it.

Prayer is considered important in Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, but it is often misunderstood and difficult to understand specifically what it is. However, recently, I feel like I am gradually beginning to see the reality of what prayer is.

Words like "prayer," "heaven," and "God" are often easily misunderstood. For example, they can be metaphors for "light." However, prayer is not just light, and prayer is not just about God, and the reality of what "God" is is also a misunderstood word.

In yoga, it is often said that "what you see, hear, or feel during meditation is not important." However, this is a warning for those who have not yet reached samadhi. After samadhi, what you see, hear, or feel during meditation is exactly what it is.

After samadhi, the presence of light seen during meditation is the presence of light itself, and the connection with the higher self is also important. Everything you see and hear after samadhi is true, so of course it is important, and it is not "not important" as yoga often says.

Recently, when I try to express my feelings, they become exactly what yoga warns against. If you interpret them literally, it seems that they are "not important." However, this is quite like a harmless lie for practitioners. Perhaps it is because it is truly important that they say it is "not important."

Indeed, there is a tendency to imagine something similar at the beginning of practice, and there is an effect of correcting that. There is a saying in yoga that "the light, sound, or sensation during meditation is not important, that seeing a figure like God is an illusion and is not important, and that it is a trap that stops the progress of practice." Many people imagine such things, and indeed, such warnings are often effective in general.

Even though I say that, recently my feeling is that I am quite satisfied just doing "love, only love" meditation, where the presence of light during meditation is so divine, and I simply wish to say "thank you."

When I do "love, only love" meditation, that feeling gradually spreads from things close to me to the upper-left direction of the sky, and my perspective shifts upwards, and that naturally changes into a "wish" or "prayer."

In this state of meditation, first of all, gratitude arises, and because of that, I enter a state of "love, only love." And the source of that love is, fundamentally, that my own heart is reacting and love is welling up, but I feel that there is a presence that has been watching me from afar, looking down from the distant sky.

Then, I feel that I am offering a prayer to that distant presence in the sky, combining the feeling of what that presence watching me from afar is, and the wish or prayer that the love from my heart reaches that presence.

I offer a prayer to that presence in the sky, which has been guiding the path of love in my heart, saying "please guide me."

Some Christians might call that "God," but in my case, I don't think of it as a general entity. I simply feel that my group soul, which is the original group before I separated as a spirit, is there watching over me. I don't understand things like "Christ" or "God." In my case, even though it's called a group soul, it itself has a normal personality, and it's an ordinary consciousness, but the total amount of aura is much larger than mine. That group soul guides me from time to time. Because I know that, I offer a prayer to that group soul, which is the original group I was born from as a spirit, saying "please guide me."

If you call that "relying on external power," then perhaps it is. Or, if it's a prayer to Christ or God, then maybe it is. Or, perhaps, as Hindus say, it's a prayer to "Bhagavan." The way you put it isn't very important. As a reality, I feel that it is sufficient if I can feel the love welling up from my heart and offer a prayer to the sky with gratitude.

It's as if someone from a distant star, whose spaceship broke down and who is unable to return, is looking up at the sky, thinking of their home, and every day, feeling sad and offering prayers. While wondering when they can return to their group soul, their days are still filled with love and gratitude, and are fulfilling in their own way, but when they think of their home, they feel a sense of sadness and offer prayers, and it feels somewhat similar to that.

When I was a child, I remember a song in an anime where the lyrics were something like, "Reach you," and that scene also overlaps with the feeling of praying, "May it reach the heavens (group soul)."