A viewer asks: “What is the connection between prayers and belief in healing, and the placebo effect?” What is Creator’s perspective?

As with any source of reassurance that is believed in, turning to prayer will have, in many cases, a placebo benefit. That is simply tapping into the innate human capability for self‑healing, to some extent, simply desiring it to happen and, in effect, bringing it about because of their focused attention on that goal. But prayer, of course, can go far beyond a placebo response in bringing a desired benefit, over time, especially. Prayer can be slow and uncertain in delivering benefit for many reasons. We have discussed this at length. There must be sufficient belief quotient, both in the divine and in the self as worthy of receiving divine assistance. Many are blocked from receiving divine help through their own inner negativity, that being the major hindrance to prayer effectiveness, but even with a high belief quotient there can be a huge karmic entanglement constraining what the divine can do, at least quickly. Humans are trapped in their karmic history of negative trauma that has their name on it and has been unleashed on them in their current life as a kind of reckoning by the Law of Karma, and sometimes even their higher self will not permit a divine intervention if a karmic lesson underway needs to be worked through the hard way. So the major limitation of prayer is there will, in most instances, be a significant delay in when a benefit appears and most times will not be associated with that prior prayer at all, and this serves to keep people underbelieving in the power of prayer.