A righteous man and his friend come into a spiritual place, a place of prayer. As they are approaching the front door, however, the righteous man says, “I can’t go in there.”
“Why not?” the friend asks, puzzled.
The righteous man responds, “Oh, it’s full. It’s full of prayer. It’s full of tears. It’s full of wanting. The atmosphere is too full. I can’t enter there.”
The friend is truly confused now. “But isn’t that what’s supposed to be there? I mean, it is a place of prayer. So it should be full of prayers, right?”
But the righteous man says gently, “No, it’s not supposed to be so full. All of those prayers were supposed to have gone Upstairs, all of that desire elevated. That it wasn’t tells me that there is a lack of love in that place, for where there is affinity between people, where there is a form of unity, that is the place where prayers can rise from the physical up to the spiritual. Where there is no communion, no unity, our prayers and the energy we generate gets stuck.”
Our unity, love, and caring for one another is what awakens our spiritual elevation.