An Inspired Essay by Lloyd Strom

One of the most misunderstood aspects of higher spiritual teachings is the activity of worship. It is often dismissed as a traditional religious practice that is not relevant to modern students of Truth. However, this is not the case.

Worship Requires Our Full Attention
Worship is the activity of giving our full attention to something. In a traditional religious sense, the object of our worship might be some sacred person such as Jesus, Buddha or Mother Mary. In a higher spiritual sense, what we worship might be the divine essence or state of consciousness that traditional religious figures exemplified.

However, in a very ordinary sense the focus of our worship can be any real or imagined object, condition or circumstance in our lives that we give our full attention to. The fact of the matter is that we all have things that we worship, from movie stars to cosmic mysteries. The only question becomes: "What are we giving our attention to?"

What We Worship We Become
We set ourselves into agreement with anything that we give our attention to, whether it is something desirable or not. By giving something our attention we are agreeing that it is a reality in our lives. Since agreement is an aspect of love, and love is the awareness of oneness, it follows that: What we worship we will become.

This simple statement is known as the Law of Worship. It basically describes how we absorb, and are absorbed by, whatever we give our full attention to. This is indeed an extremely profound facet of life, for it enables us to change who and what we are by choosing where we will place our attention.

We Can Choose What We Worship
What sets us apart as human beings from all other creatures, is the ability to direct our attention where we choose. Consequently, we have the means to change ourselves into whatever we want to be in terms of the quality of our life experience. In this regard, it is important to realize that we are diminished whenever we give our attention to that which is less conscious than we are.

However, we can also be resurrected and made new by placing our attention on that which is greater than ourselves, such as the Divine. Therefore, it is important to remember that our attention will go where we intend it to. So, if we set intentions to express the 'divinity within us,' our attention will be directed to reveal the presence of God in our lives.

Worry is a Form of Worship
When we worry, we are giving our attention to some unpleasant imaginary condition or circumstance that may, or may not happen in the future. In this sense, a worry is a 'problem prayer,' and is a highly effective way to insure that what you are worring about will come to pass. In the Bible, this is why Job said, "What I have greatly feared has come upon me." ...Job 3:25

The way to break the spell of worry, is to give your attention to something that you love, instead of what you are afraid of. The modern spiritual teacher Emmet Fox called this process the Golden Key. He said that 'the solution to every human problem is to stop thinking about the problem, and think about God instead." This makes sense when we consider that God is the universal unformed good that formulates Itself into good conditions in our lives whenever we give the Divine our attention. In other words, When we worship God something good always happens.

Two highly effective practices that you can use to do this are:

The God Song
In the midst of worry or strife, take a few minutes to chant this singing prayer as a way of bringing your attention back to God as Love.

The QuickStop Prayer
When you are on the run, this is a highly effective way to keep your attention on the Truth about your life, as revealed by scripture.