A Simple Overview of the Prayer Journey

The keynote of supernatural prayer has always been recognised as this: an experienced awareness of the presence or the reality of God. The 'touches of infinity' arouse in us an awe-inspiring awareness of infinity... the mind sees its first glimpse of what it is to love God above all things.

The Prayer of Faith [dark night, passive purification, illuminative way], with its long drilling in emptiness and desolation, leads us slowly but surely to a state in which it is all one to us whether we are in sunlight or in cloud, provided only that on our part there is complete, unreserved, uncalculating, unrestricted yielding of our whole being into God's hands. The rule of prayer is that progress is like the progress of an incoming tide, that each forward movement is followed by a backward one, and that if on the whole the tide rises along the shore, the predominant impression is one of constant withdrawal after each advance, and the total advance is imperceptible or unperceived.

The Prayer of Faith is so potent a developer of detachment from self that it is such a valuable prayer. We propose now therefore to consider this prayer with that especially in view.

-From the text.