I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment the little daily dose.

It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us not what ought to be in us.

To think of our prayers as just causes would suggest that the whole importance of petitionary prayer lay in the achievement of the thing asked for. But really for our spiritual life as a whole the being taken into account or considered matters more than the being granted. Religious people dont talk about the results of prayer they talk of its being answered or heard.... We can bear to be refused but not to be ignored. In other words our faith can survive many refusals if they really are refusals and not mere disregards. The apparent stone will be bread to us if we believe that a Fathers hand put it into ours in mercy or in justice or even in rebuke.

A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.

For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.