PRAYER

When you pray, God knows already what you are going to say.  This is because God is you.  God is everything.  There is nothing that is not God. 

Why should you pray, then, if God knows in advance what you have on your mind?  Isn't your prayer, in the end, only God talking to himself?

The answer is, while God is you, you are not God.  You have God in you in the form of the Atman, but there is a manifestation, an egoic, empirical self called you who in prayer surrenders to God.  Prayer is a defusing, a cancelling of this egoic self, if only briefly, which is essential for communing with God.

Purification, as it is called in Vedanta, is another term that applies here.  Prayer, relinquishing your egoic self, is purification of a kind in so far as it removes a barrier between you and God.

 Lastly, prayer, no matter the topic, creates an environment, a medium, in which God can grow in you.  Without this, there is no spiritual advancement.