Eric: I want to start off by saying that I don’t have a problem with people who pray. It’s not about prayer. It’s about how you pray and what that means to somebody who has been studying HBI material and kind of where you’re at with things and how we see things a bit differently about plugging into communicating with God. As I said before, if you’re new to all of this, some of the stuff that I’m going to be covering is going to go over your head. It’s going to go over your head because you don’t have the training or the knowledge. Some of you guys might be able to figure out on your own pretty easily. It is what it is.

 

I’ve often said that God is a consciousness throughout the universe. God is not a human being. God is not a man. Talking to God is not necessarily—You might as well be speaking Chinese or Zimbabwe or something. What God would get out of it is the slight pieces maybe emotionally what you’re trying to say but even then, it’s understanding the intricacies of what is being communicated. The other problem that I have is that most prayer is always about wanting something like, “God, I need a new roof over my house,” or “God, I want such and such to find the path,” which I consider in some ways to be mind control. When a church group gets together to say they’re going to pray for somebody to find their way to the church or find their way to God, that’s like remote influencing them to change their will.

I’m often amused when somebody says, “Well I’m gonna pray for this person to fall in love with me or to have babies.” Can you imagine if you didn’t want babies and then all of a sudden, you’ve got 200 people praying for you, that you’re going to fall in love with your husband and you’re going to have babies or something? Just think about, in some ways, how unfair that is. From their perspective, it’s what’s good, what’s righteous. This comes down to what perspective is of what’s right and what’s wrong. I’m not saying that when we pray that there isn’t this slight sense of trying to do a direction. I think the difference between us is that we know what we’re doing, we take accountability for it. When they do it, they color it up, “Well, we’re doing it for God,” or “We’re doing it for Jesus,” or “We’re doing it for Muslim beliefs,” or for Hindu beliefs. It doesn’t rest well with me.

 

To me, it’s like, if you’re going to do you might as well call it what it is and you’re influencing that person against their will or against their choice. They’re not necessarily fully aware and fully accepting of it. I find that the most general level of prayer is very—I wouldn’t say disturbing to me but I think for the everyday person, it is the way for them in a helpless situation to not feel helpless like they have some say. If they just talk to God and say, “This is what I need you do, God. This is what. Help this person with this illness. Please cure their disease. Please spare their life.” I think it’s coming from a sincere place and it’s the only thing you can do. You’re powerless to help any other way.

 

I have always approached it in a very different way because I understand God from my perspective. Of course, some people think I’m an enlightened being and other people just think I’m Joe Schmoe. That’s fine. For me, some people would ask, “How do you pray to God? How is it that you communicate to God, Eric? What is the basic communication with God?” There are many levels of communication for me and to say that what I call a prayer of enlightenment is certainly not the only way that I talk to God. I’ve shared other methods, other processes of talking and conveying and stuff. One of the things that I’ve always felt is that there’s never enough appreciation for God. It’s always in crisis that we turn to God. It’s always in a sense of need that we remember God. We never remember God when things are going well or things are doing well. We only turn to God when we’re desperate and other than that, we never remember God, we just move on with our lives.

 

It’s very rare for me to see a devoted person in any spirituality be appreciative to God and those are the ones that I respect the most because there are some out there. I have a great deal of respect for those people. It’s certainly what I call the biggest or the people who I think are false with their spirituality, that they’re not true to God, they’re just true to themselves. It’s whatever serves their needs, their wants, their desires. It seems to be that’s the way that it is.

 

When I pray to God, it is a unique approach. It can get—I don’t want to say it’s manipulative but it’s certainly an underlining of communicating through your heart chakra center, your mind center in your chest. I’m not saying like heart and heartfelt being the thing that I’m going after. What I’m going after is a form of communicating, in a sense, emotionally, that God can go, “I understand that.” More importantly is that God—There’s a thing in marketing that they call static. Static is when you’ve got five-thousand different marketing companies all trying to sell their stuff at the same time. If you were the person observing it, you don’t hear any one piece of marketing like, “Buy these jeans,” or “Buy these jeans,” or “These jeans are better!” All you hear is just like static, it’s like a whole thousand voices going off at the same time because they’re all trying to do the same thing, convince you that they have the best pair of jeans. It’s called static.

 

I think the world, with prayer, has an awful lot of static, a lot of static. Everybody wants something, everybody’s got problems, everybody is trying to survive, everybody has got demands, wants and desires vastly upon God’s consciousness.

 

I don’t want to say that God doesn’t hear them but what I want to say is that if I were God, sometimes I would imagine that it’s deafening to hear all of these requests, almost demands. They’re so desperate and I think that no matter how much you love somebody, there’s only so much that you can give. Even God can only give so much constantly. Therefore, there are people who are always angry when their prayers aren’t answered or when the things aren’t answered and they’re upset or angry and then they find their inner peace. They go through all these different motions. “God didn’t hear my prayers so I’m not religious anymore. God must not exist.” If you were in God’s shoes, can you imagine answering twenty gazillion prayers per second? That’s only our world! Could you imagine all the other worlds in the universe, galaxies and such and such?

 

I find that when I look at the class I gave on being an optimist, all the research and studying on being an optimist versus a pessimist, the pessimist being someone who always sees the negative in life and sees the doom and gloom in life. An optimist is somebody who says, “Well, it was a bad thing that happened but the good thing that’s going to come out of it is that we’ve learned a lot more from it.” They’ve already proven that optimists have longer marriages. They have better lives. Their life expectancy, if I’m correct, is longer. They’re generally happier in life in this world, so an optimist seems to have a better connection with the universe. I often say, “Look to nature for your answers.” Look to nature for the answers in the universe because it tends to repeat itself. It’s kind of like a cong shell for an ocean seashell. If you were to open it up, you’d see the spirals in it and you’d see the spirals in a fern or the spirals of a galaxy and universes. It’s the repetitiveness of the universe that you will see in the micro and the macro constantly.

 

It doesn’t mean that it’s just the visual things that you see in life that actually make that difference. There are things that are energy-wise that make that same difference. I can’t say that I’ve ever—I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist out there but I can’t say that I’ve ever really have met a plant or a tree or an animal that, in truth, has been a pessimist in life. I’ve always found that the things in nature have often been optimistic. They either prepare for winter, they prepare for the worst. They take it in strides. There never seems to be a groaning of what life is dealing with. I think it’s human nature that we groan the way that the universe works instead of working with it to make the best of it. Of course, tragedy happens in nature. Of course, tragedy happens to creatures and animals and forest fires and everything but in some ways, those things are also happening on levels that we cannot necessarily comprehend.

 

I used to think that forest fires were a terrible thing for nature until I became more involved and [informed] about these things—because I don’t consider myself an expert in any other field that my own spirituality. I realized that it’s nature’s way of cleaning out the old trees, the old growth, the trees that had gotten old that are still standing but they’re dead and their shadow is preventing the light for the saplings for growing. None of the new trees can grow. The fact that fresh oxygen is mainly coming from new trees growing and older trees produce less oxygen and they pretty much are done producing an exchange of carbon dioxide versus the oxygen they produce.

 

When there’s a fire or a storm, it’s kind of cleaning out the old so it makes way for the new. It’s almost a necessary evil. Even when we see something terrible in life, there’s usually, in nature, a good reason to create greater life or more life from that. That’s an optimistic view and when you really look at it, you have to see it. It’s sad, in a way, it’s bittersweet but there is a greater truth to it.

 

This brings me now to the idea of prayer and how well one’s mind understands the architecture of the universe. How does one understand God and God’s relationship with the universe? In so doing, when you understand God’s relationship, you may be very frustrated, you may be very angry. You may say, “Why do these things happen to me?” I would say, “It’s Shiva, it’s Kali, it’s destruction so that new life can grow from it.” I often say, “We don’t grow as people unless we have some kind of struggle that we have to deal with in order to grow from it.” I know certainly that all the struggles I’ve had in my life, I haven’t wanted! That’s for sure…and I still don’t. On the other hand, I have to try to find the optimistic view in it and say that if it wasn’t for those things, would I be the person that I am today, the person that you love, the teacher that I am? Would I judge people more harshly had I not had those experiences? I do love the saying from a great master who said, “Before I take the speck out of my fellow man’s eye, I need to take the log out of my own.”

 

I often say, “Forget the log! ‘The log mill out of my own!’” I’m just not into judging other people. I accept people for who they are. I’ve seen it all and had I not seen and experienced the tragedies in my life, the terrible things and the mistakes and the good things that I’ve done, I would not be the person that I am today. Of course, I might want to do things differently now, of course. I can’t, so I have to look at it and I have to say, “Did they help shape me into the person I am today and do I like who I am today?” I do like who I am and I’m glad to be who I am. I think that those things are what is helping me to be the person I am to reach out to all of you.

 

That is an optimist’s point of view. That is, in my opinion, the right point of view to have to have a spiritual relationship with God. I don’t think God wants to house itself or to contain itself in a vessel to explore this universe in a person that’s a pessimist, someone that’s—I mean, do you want to hang out with a pessimist all day? Do you want to be around somebody who is always seeing the world in a negative light, in a negative way? Of course not! You resist these people but you do want to be around somebody who tends to see things in a positive way. Maybe not over-the-top positive but positive. I think God is the same way. God wants to be around somebody who sees the beauty in life, who sees the beauty in things, who sees the beauty in problem-solving rather than problems being the consumable.

 

I think that it’s very important to take that into consideration and how one approaches that. If God prefers the company—just like man may prefer the company of an optimist over a pessimist. I’m not saying a pessimist can’t have God help them because sometimes God very much does help them. There has to be a break in the pessimist for a moment that I think is a window of optimism that invites God into their life. That is the moment that miracles happen, that if the pessimist is purely pessimistic, I think they’re the ones who say, “God did not intervene in my life,” “God did not help me,” “God did not do something wonderful for me.” I think that they were purely pessimistic. They were purely demanding. They were purely in a place in their heart that was just so dark and so dreadful and so fearful that it consumed them. Fear consumed them.

 

I always remember Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda in one of their books there, in teachings. Don Juan, I believe it was, was saying to Carlos in regards to death that mourning over someone’s death was selfish. It was a selfish thing to do because this person who has passed on now wants to move on into the universe. The will of the person who can’t let them go holds them here. It’s like that desire holds them there and they’re like afraid to move on. It’s like a mother that smothers their child from growing and wants them to stay in the same neighborhood nearby them for their own selfish means, for their love. They can’t see past by letting them free that they’re going to grow in the world and become more knowledgeable and more experiential in life. That’s part of growth so that they can grow beyond their own parents. Some parents don’t let them do that. They smother them.

 

In either case, I think that to be pessimistic in letting someone go—Of course, I, too, don’t want to let people I love go when I’m in a human body. Of course, I’m going to mourn them. Of course, I’m going to be sad for them but fortunately for me, I have an advantage because I also know what else is happening for them. I’m only being selfish because I’m thinking about my moment now. When someone dies, time changes dramatically. Spatial times changes. Your perspective changes. You’re not hindered by all of the organic biochemicals in the human body that make you feel extremely attached to one another. It’s not to say that you don’t love someone mentally and that you’re not attached to them mentally, but what it is is that you instantly go through these micro-moments that are very fast but seem very slow because you’re moving at a higher speed of consciousness. You see a form of release, you see a form of emancipation. You see a form of liberation instantly while that other person is in a slower state of consciousness. They’re dealing with this moment, they’re dealing with this death.

 

In the moment of your true death, you are emancipated from the burdens and cycles of this dimension and you’re like all of a sudden feeling all of the universe around you. You’re feeling God around you. You’re feeling vibration and you’re being flooded with memories from past lives and you feel more complete all of a sudden. You don’t feel like you’re so disconnected. For the first time, you feel like you are finally connected to something more. You definitely feel it at a much more rapid speed because you are energy and at a higher speed frequency. You definitely feel the need to progress and move on. The yearning of someone that loves you, who used to love greatly, that can’t let you go, they can’t understand what you’re feeling now. They can’t understand that feeling of liberation. I imagine it’s like college student who just can’t get away from their parents fast enough because they’re so excited about the environment and the parents are hanging on because they’re afraid to let them go.

 

Both are rightfully correct. Both are rightfully, in their heart, not wrong. Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan, Don Juan would say, “This is selfishness because you should let them go on. They’re onto their adventure. They finished their work here. They’ve completed what they need to do here and your yearning for them is anchoring them here. It’s what’s making them feel complexed or fighting with their emotions because they can feel you so intensely right now. They feel your sadness and they don’t want to abandon you and they don’t want to leave. It’s a very hard struggle. It’s a very difficult thing and even I would have trouble with it and have had trouble with it. I guess I probably adapt a little bit better than most people knowing what I know. Don’t think that if you can’t do that it’s abnormal, it’s perfectly normal.

 

Having said that, praying to God for me is about praying to God about being not grateful but thankful. There is a difference between grateful and thankful. I think words are an extremely important thing so if you have other culture, I want to point out that I think it’s important that you give this a lot of thought because what I say in English may not be appropriate for your own culture your own language. You have to find the right interpretation but I’m speaking purely towards English people because that’s who I’m here to help at this moment.

 

When I pray, I say that I’m thankful for the people in my life. I share that with my heart. I’m thankful for all of my coaches, all of my friends, all of the people I meet in my life. I am thankful and this is what I tell God. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to meet these individuals, to share my life and to share part of my life with them and part of their life has been shared with me. I am thankful for that. I’m not “grateful” even though they sound familiar. Words mean different things if you feel your heart center, your chest center. “Grateful” is more humbling, like you were thrown a few morsels. It’s not about morsels. It’s not about martyrdom. You want to be very careful because the universe is a very sensitive being. God is very sensitive to what you feel and will react to every little subtle thing in a very specific way.

 

The best way to approach God, which rises above the static—what makes your prayer stand out above all the static, all the want, all the desire, all the control, all the demands, all the needs is that yours is about thankfulness. I’m thankful that I had an opportunity to teach all of you. I’m thankful for that and that’s what I tell God. “Dear God, I am thankful for the opportunity you gave me to teach all of these beautiful people. I am thankful for the opportunity that I’ve had to serve you. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to serve all of the White Cell. I am thankful for the ones that we were able to find.

 

Now, notice that I didn’t say anything about the ones that we didn’t find. Now, this is the trick to it all and it sounds very manipulative in a way but the universe is an odd thing at times, nothing seems to be quite what it is: There is a secondary part inside of me that yearns for the rest of the White Cells to be found. When I say I’m thankful for all of the White Cells that I have found, I truly, truly am! I mean, imagine how many years I’ve looked for all of you! It’s just beyond comprehension. All of a sudden, one day we start HBI and all of a sudden, now I’m finding tens of thousands! I’m so thankful to find you! Is it enough? No, but it is. For me to have found one or two, I am so thankful to have found one or two. That’s what God needs to hear. It’s like when I say to you guys, “I just want to be a little appreciated,” it’s not about ego. I just want to know that you guys are really appreciative about what you’ve found for what I’m showing you. I want to feel that thankfulness, I don’t want it to be fake like in that last song. Don’t just say you’re thankful. I want to feel it. It’s not for me, it’s for God. I believe it’s God that created this opportunity.

 

Instead of saying to God, “God, you know I’m praying to you because we’ve got to find more White Cells. We have to find more, can you please send us more? We need to grow in numbers, we need to do better in business. We need to have [fewer] troubles in our lives so that we’re less distracted. Please help us, God!” No! It’s more demands on God! It’s more stress, it’s more whatever. What would God want to give him a reason to want to help me because I’m the one saying, “I’m so thankful for what you’ve done already! I’m so thankful for what you’ve given us already. I’m so thankful for the people that we have found. That’s good enough for me. I yearned for more, you feel that, God! I know you feel it! That is secondary to what I really feel of gratitude and thankfulness for what you have given me.” That is the difference that you need to understand. One cannot set demands on God.

You cannot set demands and say, “God I’m praying for the flower to bloom. Please make it bloom for me.” You’ve got to be thankful that the flower is even growing in your garden. You have to be thankful that you will have the opportunity one day to see that flower bloom. You have to be thankful that you are present and alive and breathing, that you know that you’ll probably get to see it bloom. You are thankful for the opportunity! That’s what makes God want to do more for you. That’s what makes you different than everybody else. That’s what makes God want to put his sunshine on you and water you and nourish you and protect you. You are making God as if his efforts have been worthwhile.

 

God wants to be loved also. God wants that reciprocation. God doesn’t want a child that’s always “want, want, want, want.” Have you ever had a child? They “want, want, want?” One of the most golden moments that you have, one of them’s got to be when your child comes up to you and sincerely looks you in the eye and says, “Thank you, mama,” “Thank you, dada,” Thank you, papi.” They smile and they hug you because they’re so happy and you feel that it’s genuine. Don’t you want to go out and do more? Don’t you feel more protective over that situation? Don’t you feel as if you’ve finally been acknowledged for some of the stuff that you’re doing? It’s not about ego, it’s just about saying, “You know, I did a good thing and I want to do more of those good things. This person gets it. They get it. They’re growing from it instead of being spoiled by it.”

 

If someone were to be dying from cancer, I wouldn’t say, “Please stop them from having cancer. Please make the cancer go away.” I mean, sure, that’s what I want in my heart! Of course, that’s what I want in my heart! I would say, “God, I’m so thankful for the time that I’ve had with this person. I’m so thankful that they found that they had cancer. I’m so thankful that they have the chance now to fight this cancer off. I’m so thankful that they have a chance to live and they didn’t find it too late.” “If it is too late and we’re told, I’m so thankful for the time that I have had with this person and I will be thankful for every single moment until the moment they pass that I get to spend with them and got to know who they were and it became a part of me. I am thankful, God, for you allowing that time in this world. I’m thankful.”

 

That may be hard because it may not be in your heart what you want to really say but God knows in your heart what you really want. When your child tells you, “Thank you, dada. Thank you, mama,” you know in your heart what you’re being thanked for and you know what it’s going to take to get more of that because you really like that thankfulness. You love that love and so you want to get more of that, don’t you?

 

God is very similar and if that person passes or that tragedy just comes to be, then I say to you this: I’m thanking you for the troubles I have for they are making me the person I have become. I’m thankful for the challenges I have no matter how burdensome they are and how hard to swallow they may be. Now I’m stretching it. “I’m thankful that I’m alive.I’m thankful that I’m breathing. I’m thankful that I don’t live in a mud hut and I have malaria and my family is dying from malaria and the last four kids had have died and my brothers and sisters.” If I’m in Africa and I’m living in a mud hut, “I’m thankful I have a mud hut that I live in and that my hands haven’t been chopped off by the rebels down the road. I’m thankful, Lord, that I have what I have. I’m thankful for the few meager roots that I have to eat from.” “I’m thankful that when my arms got chopped off, my head did not get chopped off. Lord, thankful, I am so thankful to you that I still have a chance to exist here and to see this beautiful world that you’ve created.”

 

It sounds so difficult but in truth, it’s what God needs to hear. It’s what makes God recognize you. When I get up sometimes, 4:30 in the morning, I’ll sit at the foot of my bed. I don’t get on my hands and knees. I don’t think God needs me on my hands and knees but I’ll sit at the foot of my bed and I’ll take a deep breath and I’ll think of a few things and I’ll say, “You know, God, I am so thankful for the people in my life. I cannot even begin to thank you enough. I’m so thankful for the opportunity for the things that I have seen in this world, the things that I have done in this world. I am so grateful, I am so thankful. I’m thankful.” That is how I pray. That is the prayer of enlightenment. That is the prayer that God can respond to and understand and relate you. It is followed by an emotion. It is followed by a Feels-Like that is projected out if you listen carefully. It knows what you want but in truth, you’re not necessarily asking. You’re simply demonstrating and opening your heart and saying, “God, with all the troubles in the world, I just want you to know that I acknowledge that you’re there and you may not be able to fix everything and maybe everything isn’t meant to be fixed. Maybe it’s exactly the way that it’s supposed to be so I can grow from it.” I don’t like it but you know what? Sometimes when you’re punished by your parents it takes you twenty years to realize they were actually doing you a lot of good and they did it out of love.

 

I don’t know, all I know is that I’m thankful for all of the opportunities that I have and I’m thankful for this opportunity to share what I’m sharing with you now. I hope it was worth your time.

 

.