The Best Prayer I Know

For a long time I carried around a half-remembered line, one I believed came from Paramahansa Yogananda: something like "Lord, tell me thy will." It felt like the kind of prayer you reach for late at night, when a decision has been sitting on your chest for days and you just want to set it down — to let something larger than yourself carry it for a while, so you don't have to.

I think most of us know that feeling. The moment before a hard choice, when you'd give almost anything for a voice to simply tell you the answer, so you could stop turning it over and over in the dark.

But when I went looking for the exact words, what I found was different — and quieter, and somehow more grounding than what I'd been carrying around.

The Prayer

Paramahansa Yogananda taught it like this:

"O Father, Mother, Friend, Beloved God! I will reason, I will will, I will act; but lead Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right things that I should do."

Read it again, slowly. Notice what it doesn't ask for. It doesn't ask to be told what to do. It doesn't ask for the weight to be lifted entirely. It's a promise, made before anything else: I'm still going to think. I'm still going to choose. I'm still going to move. And only after that promise, a request — stay close while I do.

Why It's Different

The line I originally remembered — "Lord, tell me thy will" — is a prayer of waiting. You hand over the decision and wait for a sign, an answer, a feeling of certainty before you'll move at all. I understand the appeal. Certainty is a relief.

But this prayer asks for something else, something harder and, I've come to think, more honest: to reason, to will, to act — and to be guided the whole way through, not just at the finish line. It doesn't relieve you of the work of living. It asks for companionship inside that work. You still have to show up, think clearly, and choose. You simply don't do it pretending you're unaccompanied.

An Example

Say you're deciding whether to leave a job that pays well but has quietly been draining you for years. You could sit and wait — for a dream, a clear inner voice, some unmistakable sign that finally tells you what to do. Weeks pass. Nothing arrives. The waiting itself becomes its own kind of paralysis.

Or you could sit down, be honest with yourself about what you're actually afraid of and what you actually want, and say something like this prayer before you begin: I will reason through this clearly. I will make an actual decision instead of drifting. I will act on it once I do. But guide me — let me know, in whatever quiet way You choose, if I'm about to go wrong.

Notice the difference. You're not waiting to be handed an answer from outside yourself. You're doing the work — reasoning, weighing, choosing — and asking for company and correction along the way. Sometimes the guidance comes as a sudden clarity mid-thought. Sometimes it comes as a friend saying the one sentence you needed to hear. Sometimes it comes only in hindsight, once you're already a few months down the road and can finally see that you were, in fact, led. But you never would have gotten there sitting still, waiting for the sign to come to you.

I'm told this prayer was used, in Paramahansa Yogananda's own community, before real decisions were made — a few quiet minutes together, then these words spoken aloud, and only afterward the talking and choosing began. It was never meant as a replacement for thinking. It was what steadied the thinking that followed — a way of walking into the work of a decision instead of standing at its edge, waiting to be pushed.

Praying It

I say it slowly now, meaning each part as I go, and I'd invite you to try the same:

I will reason — I will actually think this through, honestly, instead of just reacting to fear or hope. I will will — I will actually decide, instead of stalling forever inside indecision. I will act — I will follow through, instead of only planning and never moving. But lead Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right things that I should do — and I ask to be guided the whole way, not just handed an answer once it's already over.

It's not a prayer that lets you off the hook. It's one that keeps you in the work — steadier, less alone, and trusting that the same hands that gave you a mind to reason with haven't gone anywhere while you use it.

Source: Paramahansa Yogananda, "Quickening Human Evolution," in Journey to Self-Realization.