WHY BAD PRAYER IS NO PRAYER AT ALL

you can't say everything we do is prayer unless you immediately add the qualifiers good prayer and bad prayer ... good prayer gets past the self to other people and everything else ... the healthy that is the true trinity ... not the bad trinity me myself and a little peace and quiet away from these two ... the false inside broken trinity from which no true prayer can escape ... some parts of true prayer must be better than others but none is bad in itself ... what makes bad prayer bad then is a misnomer ... it makes prayer bad because it makes it no prayer at all ... the only bad prayer is that conversation that can't get past itself ... that remains an interior trialogue between yes and no on the one hand and please shut up on the other ... now a lot of this bad prayer no-prayer-at-all stuff is formally addressed to god ... you talk to yourself and you pretend to be god ... but after a while it's pretty obvious what you're doing and even you catch on ... the unfailing clue is unhappiness and bad temper ... you're frazzled on the inside because you've got no grace and without grace you can't be grateful and without gratitude you can't be happy