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reflection and self-awareness. This is because prayer is often a very intimate ritual that is conducted

individually and in private. For this reason, it provides you the asylum to consult events in your life and truly

think about the feelings you have towards them. This ultimately increases the awareness you have for the

world around you. The external dimension of prayer is the connection you feel with the person to whom you

are conversing. In most cases, people have a feeling that the entity that they are conversing with contains more

layers than that of themselves. This is the connection that is felt between the person conducting the ritual and

a supreme figure. 9

Prayer also has many other effects on the body and mind. Often prayer can make a person feel more

optimistic and hopeful then they had previously. This is most likely because it feels reassuring to have a

supreme figure watching over your actions and potentially helping you from creating bad decisions. Prayer

also provides a person to reflect upon other aspects in their lives, potentially allowing them to reflect upon

certain moments and see them from a different perspective. This could potentially alter a negative experience

into a positive experience. A more positive outlook on life enables someone to be much more open-minded,

allowing them to see the beauty in diversity and recognize everyone in life is facing a struggle of some kind.

This allows people to forgive easier as well, as they recognize a life full of grudges inhibits their ability to be a

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happy, healthy person. A virtue stated in the Bible is that “Preferable is death to a bitter life”. Giving the
effort to live a better, happier life is much better that living a life of being bitter and consistently displeased.

Prayer also provides people with a sense of security, leading to an ease of anxiety, providing them reassurance

and removes their irrational fears. It also can simply allow a person to have a mental break from their lives. It

is very significant in these cases to have a God that you feel like is always listening and providing some form

of nurturing into your life for these rituals to be a positive experience. 9

Researchers from Baylor University investigated the different psychological effects that believing in

different kinds of gods had on your mental state. They conducted a study investigating how people view God

and how it affects their livelihoods. They did a study on 1,714 volunteers and determined whether they had a

close, intimate relationship with God or if they had an insecure relationship with Him. They then assessed

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