Knowing What You Want
Before any true prayer can begin, you must first know what you want—and be willing to bring your whole self into the asking.
Why clarity matters
When we pray, we are asking for something. That simple fact, though obvious, holds more depth than most people realize.
There are many kinds of prayer—devotional prayer, for example, is pure love directed toward God. But the kind of prayer we’re exploring here is the prayer of supplication—asking God for something you want or need.
Before you can ask, you must know what you want. That sounds easy, but it isn’t. When you stop and truly ask yourself, What do I want?, hesitation often arises. You might feel unworthy, or afraid to ask too much. That reluctance is the first barrier to effective prayer.
When guilt or shame clouds your approach, you instinctively hide. It’s the same impulse that made Adam and Eve conceal themselves in the Garden after tasting the fruit of knowledge. They hid because they were naked—exposed, vulnerable. And so do we.
If we don’t feel good about ourselves, we can’t stand open before God. Our prayers become guarded. We only show what seems acceptable.
But God can only meet the part of us we reveal.
The honesty of desire
To ask for something, you have to admit that you don’t already have it. That’s humbling. It’s easier to tell ourselves that we’re fine than to face our real longings.
But true prayer begins with honesty—the courage to see what we actually want.
We carry layers of self-image—ideas of who we should be. Those layers hide our raw desires, even from ourselves. Sometimes we fear that our true wants are inappropriate, selfish, or unspiritual. So we censor them.
We might think, I should ask for wisdom, or compassion, or patience.
Those are noble desires, but they often come from the head, not the heart.
The heart’s desires are deeper, riskier. They reveal where we’re still incomplete.
Meeting the hidden self
Every one of us has shadowed regions within—the unacknowledged urges, fears, and needs we’d rather keep buried. These hidden parts of ourselves shape our choices and limit our prayers.
Until the whole self comes into the conversation, we’re only whispering half-truths.
This is why shadow work matters. It’s the process of bringing light to what we’ve hidden. Meditation can help—bathing the mind in divine light and asking sincerely:
“Let Your light fill me completely. Let me see the truth of myself.”
When light enters, it stirs the depths. Old thoughts and feelings surface. We start seeing in others what we’ve denied in ourselves. That’s projection—the light showing us our own reflection.
Understanding this grows compassion. We judge less, love more. And we begin to sense what our soul truly longs for—not what the ego demands, but what the soul yearns to express.
The dragon and the gold
Ancient myths describe this process vividly. In almost every culture, there’s a dragon guarding treasure.
The dragon symbolizes our shadow—the fearsome forces we’ve buried: anger, lust, shame, pride. These are the masculine faces of the dragon—forces of domination and control that keep us from surrender.
But there is also a feminine face of the dragon—one born of fear and self-defense. It’s the part of us that once shielded us from pain but now keeps us from growth. It guards our heart with armor forged from old wounds. What began as self-preservation has become self-limitation.
The dragon is not our enemy—it is the keeper of what we’ve outgrown.
The gold the dragon guards is our life force.
The maiden it imprisons is our soul’s pure longing.
And the hero who slays the dragon—whether Siegfried or St. George—represents the Christ Light within us, the divine will that redeems and unites the two.
To confront the dragon is terrifying because it means facing our own history of fear. Yet when we do, the false self dies, and our vitality returns.
The light frees the soul, and from their union new gifts are born.
The baptism of fire
This inner work is purification. The baptism of fire is not punishment—it’s transformation. It burns away the masks we wear.
When that happens, the soul begins its true journey home.
Everything that once defined us—roles, relationships, even beliefs—may fall away. That’s crucifixion: the death of the false self.
What emerges is authenticity—the unobstructed flow of divine life through us.
The conversation of prayer
Prayer is communion with God. It’s the ongoing conversation between the created and the Creator. And conversation requires honesty.
You can’t commune with God while hiding from God.
When you approach the Divine Light, everything concealed will be revealed. That’s not condemnation—it’s grace.
You can pray:
“God, help me let go of what hides me from You.
Let me be as You created me—whole, real, and alive.”
That’s the prayer of authenticity. And when it’s prayed from the heart, it never goes unanswered.
The true desire behind every prayer
If we look deeply, isn’t that what every prayer ultimately asks for?
To be whole.
To be real.
To be fully alive.
All other desires—success, love, health, peace—point back to that one essential longing: the return to our original wholeness.
When you pray from that place, everything aligns. You are no longer trying to get something from God—you are becoming what God has always known you to be.
So let that be your prayer:
“God, help me let go of what hides me from You.
Let me be as You created me—whole, real, and alive.”
When that prayer becomes the movement of your heart, your life itself becomes the answer.
Reflection
When you pray this week, notice what you hide from your own asking.
What are you protecting that no longer needs protection?
What dragon still guards your heart?
Begin there.
Ask honestly.
And listen for the voice that whispers back—
“You were never meant to hide.”