Prayer and Transcendence — Culture, Spirituality and the Gospel

In the introduction to Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karmazov', Prof. Marie Jaanus writes describing the experience of reading Dostoevsky...

We leave the obsessiveness and anxiety of finite time that culminates in endings and death, and enter into eternity.

While I was reading it, I couldn't help but wonder how this describes prayer so well. In our normal life, we are caught in the prison of timely anxieties, and crave for the "two seconds of pure joy" like Ivan Karamazov. Prayer lifts us away from the suffocating anxieties of everyday living. Prayer is a vehicle of transcendence that draws us into an ecstasy giving us a taste of eternity, from within the present life. This ability for transcendence frees us to enjoy our present life enriched.