For some persons prayer helps further their psychological growth. For some persons prayer helps them enter and move along the inward journey which implies not only a movement toward wholeness and holiness but also a consciousness of one's relationship with God on that journey. For other persons prayer actually prevents and hinders their personal psychological growth and prevents entrance into the inward journey. In making such observations, I am not implying that the main purpose of prayer is to foster personal and psychological growth nor even to enter into the inward journey. Hopefully this activity we call prayer will not hinder one's personal psychological growth, nor one's journey inward.
Prayer is good in itself, just as friendship is good in itself.
Yet we judge the health or authenticity of friendship by the effect on the growth in each person. Personal growth through the friendship would seem to be an indicator that the friendship is healthy. With all this we have to listen to God's voice and allow him to speak to us in every corner of our being. This is very hard since we are so fearful and insecure that we keep hiding ourselves from God. We tend to present to God only those parts of ourselves with which we feel relatively comfortable and which we think will evoke a positive response.