Religious practice includes rituals that enable people to contact the spirit world. These rituals…

Religious practice includes rituals that enable people to
contact the spirit world. These rituals may be personal and private or public
communal demonstrations of belief. Prayer is the most personal method of
attempting to contact the spirit world. Through prayer, believers convey their
thoughts, feelings, hopes, and worries. The purpose of prayer is both cathartic
and practical. The cathartic element comes about from the relief that people
feel in the act of prayer, allowing themselves to express feelings and fears.
Prayer is also aimed at achieving practical goals such as healing an

Religious practice includes rituals that enable people to
contact the spirit world. These rituals may be personal and private or public
communal demonstrations of belief. Prayer is the most personal method of
attempting to contact the spirit world. Through prayer, believers convey their
thoughts, feelings, hopes, and worries. The purpose of prayer is both cathartic
and practical. The cathartic element comes about from the relief that people
feel in the act of prayer, allowing themselves to express feelings and fears.
Prayer is also aimed at achieving practical goals such as healing an illness in
oneself or family members, gaining prosperity, or obtaining spiritual
knowledge. Prayer attempts to establish a relationship with the spirit world
through words and thoughts. But how can people know if their messages have been
received? In some belief systems, a spirit being might communicate directly
with a believer through visual or auditory contact. In others, a person might
receive a symbolic or mysterious message that would have to be interpreted.
Such messages might occur in dreams, visions, signs, or omens that are so
obscure or mundane that a specialist has to interpret them.