A key point to understand […] is that your root guru and Guru Rinpoche are responsive to prayer. Do not think that you are praying as a mental exercise with the sole purpose of cultivating devotion. You are also actually talking to them; they are actually listening. Guru Rinpoche said, “For those with faith, I have not gone anywhere. I sleep outside the door of everyone with faith in me.” For each person there is an individual emanation of Padmakara. Sometimes people think that Guru Rinpoche was in Tibet, but left. However, he essentially did not go anywhere, and those with with faith continue to see him face-to-face. Depending on the person’s faith, there is an emanation of Guru Rinpoche potentially available to everyone who prays to him. So never regard your root guru, inseparable from Guru Rinpoche, as distant; never think of him as far away. The closer you bring your root guru and the more you can mix your mind with the mind of your root guru, the more blessings you will receive and the more spontaneously both experience and realization will arise within you. If you think that the guru is distant or if you regard the guru as something out there and inherently separate from you, then it is very difficult for blessing to enter because you have actually split the medium of intimacy. But if you think of the guru and your mind as inseparable and if you think that the guru always resides in your heart and in your mind, then the blessings will automatically enter, and experience and realization will automatically blaze without the need for any other special technique or device.
[From Ngondro Instructions for Practices in the Termas of Terchen Barway Dorje by Lama Tashi Topgyal. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]