Originally Posted by
mnh1982 
Do you "pray"? If so, to what, or to whom? I find myself doing what, for lack of a better term, I would call praying, every day. But usually, it's for guidance from the loved ones who have gone before me, or just out into the ether, hoping for a little clarity. I wonder sometimes if what I'm really doing is pleading to my rational, determined, objective Self to give my emotional, romantic, indecisive Self a freakin' pep talk about how to deal with my AH. Can that be considered a form of prayer? To appeal from one side of oneself to the other for a change in attitude or behavior, & to "grow a pair", as it were? Thoughts?
I prayed for many years while following a recovery program that had "spiritual experience" as a center piece. After a while I started to slowly realize I did not believe anymore, I became skeptical of the foundations of my belief and less reliant on the emotional comfort, big highs and lows associated with blissful selective ignorance. I found ways of living a rich and happy life that aligned with reality I became a skeptic, positive atheist and secular humanist. My main tools of living are contemplation and mindfulness, which Ironically were things I started practicing in my "spiritual" recovery days, through suggested ways
Ike prayer, meditation, doing inventory and breathing exercises. The main difference is I kept the pragmatism of the practices and dropped the mysticism. All of my early curious experiences lost the higher power tag and became simple contemplations.
Even-though I live life today out of a space of atheism, if I am honest I would have to say in a weird way Prayer was not a total waist of time. When I prayed, the things I would say were about aligning myself similar to the serenity prayer kind of like "help me see" requests or "help me do", prayers about contemplation of the day, After praying you still had to be the doer, so it kind of was an alignment for the day, to try and look at things and act in a way that make life more interesting, robust and rich.
It looks to me like you are coming to a similar conclusion about the some helpful ideas of prayer, perhaps you could change it to a simple contemplative practice, eventually you may not need mysticism "guidance of loved ones" or even the separate selves ideas. Like me you may conclude its just a simple process of reflection and attempt to get through life see through the many self made suffering narratives we all cling too.
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