Prayer, like other terms of spiritual practice, can be limited by inflexible mindsets and assumptions or religious rituals and rules. While there can be tremendous power in ritual prayer, the key of all spiritual practice is its expression of life. That is, prayer is a living, dynamic activity. Even if the words have not changed in thousands of years, they can be given a newness a freshness, by the immediacy of the need and communion. Spontaneous prayer has the words of the moment, but our words can hit against our own rigid beliefs that are not always conscious.
Prayer is one of the ways we let go, give way to a larger field of Intelligence and Care. It is the giving way that opens us to perspectives and solutions we have not previously grasped. As one minister put it, when despite all his prayers his intolerable situation stayed "stuck", he was forced to pray in a new way: "God show me where my answers are wrong." This is one way to reach the point of "giving way" or surrender.
Another way is to consider the idea expressed in a poem by Rumi and summed as the axiom: "That which your are seeking is seeking you." When you begin to explore this idea, you discover that your longing has ultimately led to you to prayer for the very thing that is seeking you. Prayer becomes the vehicle through which you open to receive, to welcome, to meet the gift. The whole atmosphere of prayer changes. The real spiritual practice is in opening to receive.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
What you seek, is seeking you.” Rumi