Spiritual neglect

While working with privileged teenagers I realized that so many of them are in such need of something that money cannot buy. They need someone to pray for them. While living in the States close to the monasteries I had the blessing to be surrounded by monks and nuns, whose sole purpose in life is prayer for others, and secondly themselves. What a great privilege it is indeed; to have friends who spend quite some time praying for you. When everything else failed in my life back then, I knew that at least I had some people praying for me. And so this monk-friend once told me ” when you pray for someone is like depositing blessings in their bank, and during difficult times, these prayers are withdrawn to help them with their struggles.”

So here I.am thinking that my students have parents that give them everything they want and don’t want. They have parents that carved their present and future perfectly. The best education money can buy. Preparing them for ivy league schools. Having the most luxurious and fun vacations all over the world. Wearing the comfiest and funsiest clothes fashion can show. But when they hesitantly knock on the door to my office asking to speak with me with a trembling voice, and then pouring their heart out in tears full of worries, panick, anxieties, emptiness and fear, I then realize how empty their spiritual bank account is.

Come here my beautiful soul, and let me tell you that just because you have a thought, it does not mean it s true. You have to learn how to be the master of your mind. You have to know how to filter the thoughts that enter your soul. You have got to learn how to spend more time in your presence than your head. Life is happening in front of you, while you are too busy thinking of hypothetical scenarios. ” and what if this, and what if that…..” You also have got to learn to do your part, let others do their part and let God to His part. And that s when they stop sobbing, and while wiping their tears off their eyes they tell me ” ….but miss I don’t believe in God….” ” I know you don’t my love…perhaps you can start a journey to see if He is there…if He is real…you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I am sure you tried yoga, meditation, maybe drugs, perhaps going to a psychic. Well it is about time to stop going west if you want to go east. and when you find Him….then you would have gained everything”. Then i go on to tell them about the power of praying without seizing using a prayer rope.

And after they leave, with tears in my eyes and with an ache in my heart I pray for them and I pray for their family. That ache I feel, that punch in my stomach is exactly th same one I feel when I meet children that have lived in poverty, have been abused, have been.involved in drugs or were raised in underprivileged conditions.

So my dear parents, please pray for your children. They need your prayers more than your money. Because they live in a very dangerous, immoral, cold, twisted, harmful, dark world. And while they are away from you, and you have no control of who can hurt them or.lead them.into a dark.path that no money can bring them back, just know this: know that there are not enough demons in hell to hurt the children of parents who pray.