The Power of Prayer
From The Secret of Shambhala, James Redfield, 1999

"...he was talking about watching for the subtle twists and turns of synchronicity, those mysterious coincidences that could pop up in a second to push one's life in a new direction.
Perceiving this mysterious flow, I knew, remained the central experience of real spirituality, direct evidence that something deeper was operating behind the scenes of the human drama."
"A prayer that asks God to intervene assumes that God can intervene, but only if He decides to honor our request. It assumes we have no role except to ask. The other form of prayer assumes that God is ready and willing but has set up the laws of human existence so that whether the request is fulfilled depends in some part on the certainty of our belief that it will be done. So our prayer must be an affirmation that voices this faith. In the study, this kind of prayer proved to be most effective."
"They maintain that if our expectations, our faithful assumptions, are what makes prayer work, then each of us is beaming a force of prayer energy out into the world all the time, whether we realize it or not.
"If prayer is an affirmation based on our expectations, our faith, then all our expectations have a prayer effect. We are, in fact, praying all the time for some kind of future for ourselves and others. We just aren't fully aware of it."

DIVINE ENERGY
"The degree of beauty we can see measures how much divine energy we are receiving within us.
Everything around us, both natural and man-made, flowers, rocks, grass, mountains, art -- is already majestically beautiful and present beyond anything most humans can perceive. All we do when we open up to the divine, is raise our energy vibration and thus our perceptual ability so we can view the world the way it already is.
"Keep breathing. Your vibration and ability to perceive will increase even more. Everything will become shiny, as though illuminated from within.
"Your ability to perceive beauty is the primary measure that divine energy is coming into you. You will feel lighter. The energy will rise up through you and lift you up, like a string pulling you up from the top of your head. And you will feel a greater wisdom about who you are and what you are doing. You will receive intuitions and dreams about what is next on your life path.
"You must become conscious of your expectations about life. It is the only way to maintain and extend the higher level of energy you experience. You must learn to expect that level of energy in your life, and you must do so very deliberately and consciously. This is the only way to complete the first prayer extension.
"Now you must expect this energy that is filling you to keep filling you and to flow out of you in every direction. Visualize this happening. The measure of whether the energy is flowing out is the feeling of love.
"Yes. It is a love that becomes a background emotion that stays with you as long as your prayer-energy is going out into the world. You must stay in a state of love.
"The only way to establish a constant flow of synchronicity is to stay in a state where your prayer field keeps this flow moving toward you -- a state of conscious alertness. One must visualize that one's energy is going out and bringing just the right hunches to you, the right events. You have to expect them to occur at any moment. The more you stay in this state of mind, the more the synchronicity will increase. And eventually, if you keep your energy high, this posture of conscious alertness will become your prevailing attitude toward life.
"The prevailing human worldview is always a giant field of belief and expectation. The key to human progress is to have enough people who can beam a higher expectation of love into this human field. This effort allows us to build an ever higher level of energy, and to inspire each other toward our greatest potential.
"...[W]hen you send your energy out to bring in synchronistic experiences and uplift others, and when you anchor this energy with detachment and faith, you are promoting the divine plan, and the more you can act and think in harmony with the divine, the stronger your power gets. There is a built-in safety device: God is not going to turn up the power in you unless you are on the same page with universal intention."