Prayer...Why didn't you Ask?

Why Didn’t You Ask?

A simple question—but one that opens up the entire structure of our being.

For me, prayer was a difficult topic. I come from a Christian background, where the language of prayer was something made very familiar, but the experience of it was not. It felt vague, abstract, disconnected. That is, until the structure underneath it began to reveal itself through my studies in Kabbalah.

Kabbalah teaches that prayer is not something you do. It’s something you are.

It’s not about belief, ritual, or even words, It’s about resonance—your internal state as it relates to what you’re receiving in every moment.

Because heres the shocker.. You’re already praying.

Always.

Every thought, every ache, every fear and flicker of desire is a broadcast.

A signal in a state of reception, already in motion.

You can call it ontological (relating to or based upon being or existence)—because it’s not based on what you believe, do, or intend, but on the structure of your being itself.

In Kabbalah, we’re not viewed as a body with a soul inside. We’re understood as a vessel—an inner configuration designed to receive.

And what we receive isn’t random. It’s entirely determined by the shape of that structure.

You don’t get what you think.

You get what you resonate with.

And you can only resonate with what matches your internal state.

This is what Kabbalah calls Equivalence of Form. You only receive what you already resemble. The sages say: the only way to receive what the Creator wants to give is to become like the Creator.. and His Thought is To Do Good to Creation.

Which means life has never been a neutral experience. Every moment has always been this request concealed in us..

And that request is not only heard—it’s answered.

But only in accordance with what the vessel is able to receive, it's equivalence of form with the Giver.

Let’s be clear. When I speak of prayer, and doing Good. I’m not referring to religions take on the matter—not in the way we were taught. Although, The sages of Kabbalah teach that nothing in the world should be destroyed. Not even religion. Because every tradition has served the evolution of perception.

But we’re in a different phase now.

Faith, in the age of blind belief is closing and Faith in the age of Above Reason is now.

We’re no longer building our relationship with reality based on hope.

Now it’s about structure. About a true perception of our state, our role and our actions.

Many of us have practiced 'becoming who we want to be' in vision boards, positive thinking and manifestation. And sometimes, it worked.

But most of the time, we were trying to shape the future without transforming our present selves. We didn’t know where our desires were coming from—let alone knowing what kind of vessels we were using to receive them.

Basically: it’s not just what you want—it’s who you choose to be with what’s already trying to reach you.

Kabbalah reveals to us this inner wiring of reality, the structure of the Soul. It’s the moment your awareness tunes into 'what is'—so that what’s meant to come through you can finally do so. Just like a radio doesn’t create the signal, but receives only the frequency it’s tuned to.

My teacher often shares with us the moment he came to understand this..

He and Rabash, his teacher, were walking in the woods of Ben Shemen. He was frustrated—furious, really. At himself, at life, at everything. He was letting it all out. Complaining, raging, listing everything that wasn’t working.

He said his teacher didn’t interrupt. He just listened, all the way to the end.

And then, once the storm had passed, Rabash asked him quietly:“Why didn’t you ask?”

Because in all that venting, all that blame, he hadn’t once asked for his own inner correction. His anger was aimed outward—at others, at circumstances—but not once had he turned the question inward.

Not once had he reached for help from the only place that could actually shift anything.

The enemy wasn’t out there.

It was the resistance.

The form within him.

And only one force could help him overcome it.

That’s what Rabash was talking about. Not a prayer of words—but the kind that rises from the heart.

Broken. Surrendered. Real. Why didn’t you ask the Creator for help?

That story never left me. It became a mirror. Because I could feel that request within me, the underlaying part of me where words can't be spoken but emotions arise—The help me, but not knowing what for, just feeling frustrated and helpless in a desperate need for change.

And with the question 'why didn't you ask' I could feel that I was still trying to control the world, to control from within a blind and limited vessel.

And that’s where life has really began it's shift.

Not all at once—but in phases.

In the slow reconfiguration of what it means to ask for help.

Phase One: Asking the question Why

Life just happens.

You react.

You move through it.

You want, suffer, strive, collapse.

It feels like the world is moving, and you’re just caught in its current.

But then something breaks open.

Through grief.

Or silence.

Or an honest moment of stillness.

And you start to ask—not why did this happen to me?

but: Why do I even want what I want?

And for the first time, you’re not reacting. You’re witnessing.

Desire itself becomes visible.

And that visibility—becomes that simple moment of seeing what drives you.

Phase Two: Asking the question What?

What am I?

Not my personality.

Not my job.

Not my coping mechanisms.

But what is this structure that receives, reacts, wants?

I felt it, more than understood it.

I wasn’t just a person.

I was a configuration I could observe.

I don’t have to control the world—I have to witness myself towards it and tend to the form I meet it in.

That shift alone changes your whole life.

Phase Three: Asking the question How?

This is where prayer stops being abstract.

It becomes functional in feeling and alive in its experience.

How do I ask?

Not with repetition.

Not with effort.

With alignment.

You begin to notice: What is the shape of my being while I’m asking?

Am I configured to receive what I’m yearning for?

Or am I resisting it in form?

Its in this questioning that mercy stops being a miracle; It becomes a law.

When the vessel resembles the giver, the Light flows.

Not because you believed hard enough. But because you matched the frequency of what you were seeking, in Faith, in Above Reason— we meet ourselves fully here and with this awareness of self, we find ourselves desperately lacking in comparison to what is being given.

Phase Four: Arriving to the question, For Who?

This is when the “I” starts to dissolve in it's expansion of self into All.

Because the desire isn’t yours alone. The request isn’t just about your healing, your outcome, your path.

You begin to feel the thread that links you to others.

The ache that lives in more than just your chest.

And the prayer becomes shared.

The request for Help becomes giving.

Your longing becomes part of something greater than yourself.

The vessel isn’t just you anymore.

It’s collective.

And you become a participant.

Not just a receiver.

It stops being a quiet hope or a private ache, and becomes a living structure—part of the system itself.

A way of aligning with what’s already in motion.

Not to escape life, but to meet it fully.

To become the kind of vessel that can receive what’s truly being given.

Thats the work.

Thats the request.

It is our true State of Being. I'll pause here for the moment on the subject of prayer, and in the next article introduce the layer of conscious observation. This topic in the series of 'A State of Being' is where we must be careful, for ourselves and for others. My teachers and the Wisdom of Kabbalah provides all of the tools and materials, but we each experience our perceptions of reality very differently. And the work between our unconscious and conscious selves, it is a very unique experience to each and everyone. So much so that it is forbidden in the wisdom of kabbalah to share, and by forbidden it simply means impossible to do. But we can help each other in the desire to understand how it can be approached, so that each of us can observe the work within us.

Bradley J Cleary