The preparation for receiving the Inner Grace are those periods of silence, inner reflection or introspection, meditation or communion. And even though in those three or four minute periods during the day we seem to be getting nowhere, we seem to be receiving nothing, we seem to be making no progress, don't give up on that account because you have no way of judging any more than you can judge if you decided to take piano lessons and were told to do a five finger exercise, and then at the end of six hours of practice you said, "Well, you know I can't do it any better now than I did at the beginning." Probably that's true. Outwardly it would seem so, but in the first exercise in the scale something started to take place in both mind and muscle. And it might take a whole year of this before what was inwardly taking place could manifest itself in the ability to do that - run right through that scale. But you see it would take each one of those repetitions of that five finger scale even where outwardly there would seem to be no progress, until one arrived at that place where there was a small progress, and so it is with meditation. From the first time that you close your eyes and realize that, "I am seeking the Grace of God. I am seeking some Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. I know not what to pray for and so I'm not going to pray for anything of this world." And you see a minute's already gone by but that minute has already emptied us of our human thought about prayer and so for the next half minute at least we have nothing to say. And that's all! That's all there is to that period of meditation. That alone repeated a dozen times a day would change one's entire life inside of a month. Or, at least it would begin to show changes inside of a month because every time one turned inwardly that way they would be declaring "I can of mine own self can do nothing", even if they didn't think the statement. They would be declaring, "I'm seeking the kingdom within", even if they never thought of those words. Their whole attitude would be "Father I of mine own self can do nothing, come to my rescue." In other words, it would be humility. It would be acknowledging the nothingness of human wisdom, human strength, human power. It would be acknowledging that there must come something from the Infinite Invisible. Something must come forth from the depths within if we are to be saved. And all of that is the true sense of humility, and it is the true sense of prayer.

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