When praying for a friend’s healing, is it best to also declare “if my friend also wishes this and this healing is allowable within the divine plan for my friend?” Won’t Creator automatically factor in these considerations, and what about the role of their higher self in determining their fate?

You defined nicely by your question the many twists and turns, and complexities represented by prayer, because this, after all, is a very high-level interaction involved in praying to Creator on behalf of the self or someone else. There are always many factors involved. The energies at all levels must be considered and this includes karma as well, the energetic obligation of all that has come before. No man is an island, as the saying goes, and this is very much true in terms of energy, as all energy has an interconnectedness within the vast matrix of the universe, so that the consciousness has links and an inter-dependence and a high-level awareness of itself in all its branches. When one reaches out in prayer, many factors are taken into consideration automatically, and so the karma of the situation very much comes into play. A person may be ill for many, many, reasons. Almost always there is a karmic reason, and this may need to be satisfied to rebalance or repay things, in a sense, and so suffering may need to be maintained and left in place to accomplish this. In many cases, healing is allowable once the karmic lesson has been absorbed and the learning is in place—further suffering is not of value for the soul’s progression and then healing can be brought to bear, but still must be requested from the human side. In reaching out to request healing for someone, this is always a high purpose on some level, even when it is a primarily selfish act because the person is focused more on their need of the ill person and fearing their loss and then losing support or the only source of love perhaps. Even when serving the self, a prayer is answered in one way or another, for all have value and care of the self is a divine duty after all. This is not lesser in rank compared to giving love to another, as many would teach. The idea of self-sacrifice is in many ways a distortion of divine truth as it serves the darkness to impair one person at the expense of another, and so this is never divine. There needs to be a raising up of all. It is perfectly appropriate to pray for someone when there is a self-interest involved. Even if the person is only focused and aware of self-interest and lacks a true and deep compassion for the sufferer, their prayer has validity and will be acted on because this is a human in need. Prayer, even though selfish in terms of the limited awareness of the person making the prayer request, can be used by divine realm to bring true and even full healing to the ill person, and this often happens because the divine realm is always aware of the sufferer but many times unable to render aid because no human is inviting us to come in. So even a feeble prayer request gives us what we need to spring into action, and we can further amplify such a notion to bring more love to the person praying, and perhaps even awaken the beginning of true compassion for the one who is truly suffering. This is a divine blessing in all the ways and is owing to the one self-involved in acting on self-interest. It is always good to reach out to Creator, no matter what the impulse, if it is for the good of someone.