Ask Andrew W.K.: Prayer Is Stupid, Right?
By Andrew W.K. Wed., Sep. 3 2014

Hey, Andrew.

Thanks for doing what you do and helping people. I'm going to make this short and to the point. My older brother was diagnosed with cancer last week. My whole family is freaking out and trying to deal with the news. Everyone is trying to find different ways to help, but something my grandmother said has really got me angry. She said we should all just "pray for my brother," like prayer would actually save his life. Just thinking about it now makes my fists clench with frustration. We need to actively help my brother and do actual things to save him, not kneeling on the ground and mumbling superstitious nonsense. I got into a fight with my grandmother and the rest of my family about this and now I feel worse than ever. I need to get them to see that praying and religious mumbo jumbo doesn't help. How do I explain this to them?

Thanks for reading this,
Not Gonna Pray

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Dear Not Gonna Pray,

I'm deeply sorry to hear about your brother's diagnosis. I'm sending you my thoughts, and my heart goes out to your brother and your whole family. Guess what? That was me praying for you. I think the idea of "praying" is a lot less complicated, a lot more powerful, and a little different than you may realize. In fact, I'll bet you're already praying all the time and just don't realize it.

Prayer is a type of thought. It's a lot like meditation — a type of very concentrated mental focus with passionate emotion directed towards a concept or situation, or the lack thereof. But there's a special X-factor ingredient that makes "prayer" different than meditation or other types of thought. That X-factor is humility. This is the most seemingly contradictory aspect of prayer and what many people dislike about the feeling of praying. "Getting down on your knees" is not about lowering your power or being a weakling, it's about showing respect for the size and grandeur of what we call existence — it's about being humble in the presence of the vastness of life, space, and sensation, and acknowledging our extremely limited understanding of what it all really means.

Being humble is very hard for many people because it makes them feel unimportant and helpless. To embrace our own smallness is not to say we're dumb or that we don't matter, but to realize how amazing it is that we exist at all in the midst of so much more. To be fully alive, we must realize how much else there is besides ourselves. We must accept how much we don't know — and how much we still have to learn — about ourselves and the whole world. Kneeling down and fully comprehending the incomprehensible is the physical act of displaying our respect for everything that isn't "us."

This type of selfless awareness contains a contradictory aspect that sets the tone for true immaterial experience. It's the feeling of power in our powerlessness. A feeling of knowing that we don't know. A feeling of gaining strength by admitting weakness. We work so hard to pump ourselves up and make ourselves believe that we know all the answers and that we have the power and strength to do anything — and we do — but the fullest version of that power comes not from our belief that we have it, but from a humbling realization that we don't.

The paradoxical nature of this concept is difficult, but it is the key to unlocking the door of spirituality in general, and it remains the single biggest reason many people don't like the idea of prayer or of spiritual pursuits in general — they feel it's taking away their own power and it requires a dismantling of the reliable day-to-day life of the material world. In fact, it's only by taking away the illusion of our own power and replacing it with a greater power — the power that comes from realizing that we don't have to know everything — that we truly realize our full potential. And this type of power doesn't require constant and exhausting efforts to hold-up and maintain, nor does it require us to endlessly convince ourselves and everyone else that we're powerful, that we know what we're doing, and that we're in control of everything.

To know that you don't know is the definition of a spiritual awakening. And keeping that realization at the front of our mind and in the core of our being informs the rest of our existence. It takes a deeper type of strength to admit to ourselves that we don't have it all figured out than to run around keeping all our plates spinning. It seems strange to think that turning yourself over to your own bewilderment would actually bring clarity, but it does. Solving this riddle is the beginning of any true spiritual journey.

Many people feel threatened or uncomfortable with this sort of gray area. They like things to be "yes" or "no," "black" or "white," and "right" or "wrong." They want to live in the "real world" that they can touch and make sense of. When things "don't make sense," they retreat. These people will have to allow themselves to fully admit that they don't know, in order to actually begin knowing and that's often too frightening of a task. It can be too painful to even imagine, after all those years of effort, simply abandoning our carefully crafted structures and stepping into the immense chasm of the uncharted and unknowable.

Many of us worked for years to build up our idea of the world and who we are in it. We've clung ever more tightly to the idea of what is true and what is false. We've toiled and schemed to get what we need to "be happy," and to gain the sense of security that comes with "figuring things out" and "making it." We do that by building a better and stronger protective shell to shield us from the painful horrors of the unknown.It can be too painful to even imagine, after all those years of effort, simply abandoning our carefully crafted structures, and stepping into the immense chasm of the uncharted and unknowable. And now, it's time to take it.

I want you to pray for your brother right now. As a gesture to your grandmother — who, if she didn't exist, neither would you. I want you to pray right now, just for the sake of challenging yourself. I want you to find a place alone, and kneel down — against all your stubborn tendencies telling you not to — and close your eyes and think of one concentrated thought: your brother.

I want you to think of your love for him. Your fear of him dying. Your feeling of powerlessness. Your feelings of anger and frustration. Your feelings of confusion. You don't need to ask to get anything. You don't need to try and fix anything. You don't need to get any answers. Just focus on every moment you've ever had with your brother. Reflect on every memory, from years ago, and even from just earlier today. Let the feelings wash over you. Let the feelings take you away from yourself. Let them bring you closer to him. Let yourself be overwhelmed by the unyielding and uncompromising emotion of him until you lose yourself in it.

Think about him more than you've ever thought about anyone before. Think about him more deeply and with more detail than you've ever thought about anything. Think about how incredible it is that you have a brother — that he exists at all. Focus on him until you feel like your soul is going to burst. Tell him in your heart and soul that you love him. Feel that love pouring out of you from all sides. Then get up and go be with him and your family. And you can tell your grandmother that you prayed for your brother.

Love,
Andrew W.K.

Hair cut and my dick sucked at the same time.

K's make great BBQ though! And hookers ...

I often have my hair cut at Korean places, since "white people" almost always fuck up my hair, I almost always have my hair cut by either Korean, VN, or Chinese women, and I haven't noticed any of them trying to "ram their religion down my throat"

Personally, I find white southern people the most likely to try to do this type of thing, with black southern people , especially black women, in second place. I rarely have any Asian people of any nationality trying to "convert" me. Even the Thai girls that I take to temple (right after fucking them) never seem like it ever even occurs to them to try and convert me.

I think you are a bit like BPS here, he's a race baiter, you are a "religion baiter" You guys look for this type of behavior so much that you are bound to find it.