340. The Tzaddik's Prayer

Dear G-D,thank you for all the blessings you bestowed upon me.No matter what happens,you are there always ready to give a helping hand.Bless all people,and your people Israel.Open up their hearts so they may receive your strength and your love.

The essence is in One. G-d is One.
The tzaddik binds himself to G-d to become one with G-d. So we bind ourselves to the tzaddik to become one with the tzaddik and thereby uniting with G-d. This is the beauty of k'lal Yisrael. As Jews we join together to become one with the tzaddik and G-d.

There is no soul that lives and doesn't pray, its imposible. People pray without noticing that they have pray. Praying is asking, if you refuse to pray to God directly you will still pray indirectly.

Thank you, tzvi, that really really, helped. thank you, and in general, you give me a lot of strength. i think the rebbe means by opening our eyes, that we think that so long as there's still somewhere to get to, in a certain way we are not 'there' yet. but that is no way to connect to God, for God is not in where we should be, He is in where we are now. by opening our eyes to the understanding that even though there’s fixing to do, but for the moment we are in now, like you said, we have everything we need, we have the power to fix. and also that we need not be fixed right now.
from there comes real prayer.
what do you think, r' tzvi?

this was great. i have two questions on this, really longstanding, if you could please give me the right outlook.
Number 1 is, what does it mean he lacks nothing? Because God takes care of him and gives him whatever he needs? But isn't there an idea that god has all the influence waiting, but you need prayer to draw it out?

Number 2 is: just to clarify: so all the requests we make during the Amida are really : help us open our eyes to see we already are in the best place as far as this area is concerned?

these ideas always confused me, some clarity would really help me to connect to prayer better. thank you,

the problem that you solve by developing this somewhat complex argument is solved immediately when we realise that prayer means thanking, contemplating etc, which any tzaddik can and does do , on infinitely rising levels, on a personal level, and for his people.

A thought to add another perspective to this beautiful wisdom ... Changing the way we see what prayer is can allow us to see the question of why anyone needs prayer in a different light.

We do truly lack nothing because G-d gives us all that we need and want and all we have left to do is thank Him ... and we can do that through prayer. I believe it is taught that prayer is said with belief that G-d answers ALL prayers. So we are not really asking for what we want. We are trusting that we are always given all that we want.

So we can look at prayer as a way of thanking G-d for all that He gives us. Then we see why prayer is needed by one who lacks nothing. G-d is giving us gifts in each moment of each day. Prayer is another gift ... a way of saying thanks for these gifts; for when we remember to thank G-d, we also remember to notice all the gifts that we sometimes take for granted and we remember G-d's presence in our lives. In that is yet another gift.

THANK YOU!