Here is a paragraph from Deepak Chopra’s book The Third Jesus.
Prayer isn’t magic. It’s applied consciousness. You cannot expect God to fulfill your request unless there is an intimate connection with spirit. Jesus was keenly aware of this, since he lived from the source of reality and therefore could change reality at will. The closer our connection with God, the greater our spiritual power. (100)
I see the following almost on a daily basis.
Person 1 is having a difficulty, perhaps an illness or death in the family.
Person 2 says, “I’ll pray for you.”
I fear that the phrase “I’ll pray for you” has become some sort of cultural convention, much in the same way a person asks another how they are doing without waiting for the truthful answer (or actually giving a truthful answer).
I believe many people pray as if it is a visit to God’s wishing well, especially in times of illness. What I have seen personally is that many people seek or offer prayers to be cured, as if God should pick them for today’s magical cure without any effort—spiritual or otherwise—on their part. The same holds true for many people that face tremendous personal difficulty. Often these people pray for help, but they do nothing to contribute in the Divine response. They ask and expect an answer like a spoiled child waiting for their gift.
Prayer is a Divine relationship. It is nurtured by constant communication and goes both ways—God to person and person to God. Chopra talks about formatting one’s prayer as to elicit a response from God. This is an interesting way to look at prayer and I believe one that can help people advance in their spiritual development.
Person 2, rather than tossing the “I’ll pray for you” coin into the well, can pray to God for guidance on how they can help Person 1 through their difficulty. Person 1 will benefit more from this help than the empty “I’ll pray for you” or the equally helpless “You’re in my prayers.”
I read this passage yesterday.
Luke 6:41-42 (NRSV)
Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.
Jesus helps us understand how hypocrisy’s log affects our ability to see—both externally and internally. Once we realize the log is a choice and put there intentionally, we can remove the log. However, this realization can only be recognized when we become mindful.
A log in one’s eye not only prevents vision—it is part of a fence that stops our ability to give totally and unconditionally to both others and to us. Just think of the implications of this in the realms of teaching, healing, or helping others; we are actually choosing to give less because of our own hypocrisy. As a future holistic health practitioner and energy healer, I have learned how important it is to have my own house in order when helping clients heal. This means I have to be healthy biologically, psychologically, sociologically, and spiritually so that my own illnesses (or logs) do not interfere with my ability help the client heal.
Most of the time, we choose to put this log in our eye and can choose to take it out. Through study, meditation, prayer, and the help of others, we can see the log and how to remove it from our eye. The stakes are high because a log in one’s eye affects both the afflicted person and the community at large.
I read this yesterday in Deepak Chopra’s The Third Jesus: “People mirror back to us the reality of who we are."
In order to see this, one needs to be awake and looking. It often takes a tremendous amount of honest self-reflection and humility to accept this truth, let alone even realize its existence. Moreover, it often cannot be done alone, since the easiest person to lie to is one’s own self. One of the most difficult and useful things a person can do is recognize and accept the criticism and help offered by others. This acceptance cannot be achieved alone. If a person believes that, the hold on their intellect is so tight that any help or progress cannot be effective.
This is what Chopra was talking about with the quote above. We need others to help show us our reality. We also need to be of the right disposition to both see and accept the help being offered. No person lives on an island—their actions and being affect both themselves and those around them. A community creation needs a community solution.
What does this look like?
A person has to let go of their intellect and belief they alone can help themselves. As a future holistic health practitioner and energy healer, I have learned how people can heal themselves. However, they cannot do it alone. It takes the guidance and love of a community to cultivate healing. This same guidance and love is also needed for a person to develop properly in all realms of being—biological, psychological, sociological, and spiritual.
A mindful person sees how to let go. A person becomes mindful when they learn to be awake and see. Study, meditation, and prayer—both alone and with others—help show a person how mindfulness works and the benefits it provides. Mindfulness not only helps a person see who they are in reality, it also helps a person see the world in reality.
Happy
New Year!
Thank you and good night. I've complete the challenge. Sweet!
I was walking home from the Metro about a half-hour ago, and had the delightful experience of stepping in a pile of shit in the middle of the sidewalk that some kind dog owner had neglected to clean up. And that about sums up my miserable day and this miserable year. I'd wish for a better 2010, but what's the fucking point?
Karen Armstrong wrote Through the Narrow Gate in 1981 as a way to work through and express the difficulties and experiences she had as a nun in the 1960s. Armstrong has a spiritual worldview similar to my own and after reading A Spiral Staircase, I was curious to know more about her. Here are some passages I found interesting.
I knew only too well how much my parents longed for me to go to Oxford. Nobody in my family had ever gone there before and it seemed a paradise to them, a fairytale world intellectual perfection.
“No,” I said slowly. It was no good allowing them to cling to this hope. I felt their disappointment sharply fill the room. “No, I don’t think I want to do that now.”
“But what do you want to do?” my father asked unhappily.
“I want to be a nun.”
In the silence that followed, I sat, trembling slightly, feeling sick and excited. I had dreaded telling my parents, but now, for good or ill, the die was cast. (44)
The courage it takes a person to tell a loved one they are going in a different direction than expected is incredible and scary, especially when it involves religion. Armstrong captured this well in this passage and the ensuing discussion with her shocked parents.
“That’s the start [9 pm] of what we call the Great Silence, which lasts until after Mass the next morning. It’s a daily retreat, really,” she [Mother Albert] explained, “a time when we lovingly prepare to receive Christ in Holy Communion each day.” (81)
The idea of a set time of silence each day is intriguing. Some would say we are silent when we sleep. However, I am thinking about silence while being awake. I often seek silence in what I see to be an increasingly noisy world. This silence is both audible and visual.
She [Mother Katherine] paused and looked straight at me. “They’ve failed in courage somewhere. They’ve let themselves get enslaved by the training, by the letter of the rule and not its spirit. Of course we must be obedient. Of course we have to love God more than anyone else. But we’ve given Him ourselves and He wants us too. As we are, as you are. And the hard thing is to hang on to the inner lights that God sends you. To use your mind and your heart. The training is there to ensure that God always comes first, not our petty selfishness. But God.”
“How do you mean, they’ve failed in courage?”
“By clinging to the rules as to the rail of a swimming pool. Not being willing ever to go out of their depth and trust that God will hold them up. And, Sister, there’s too much of that in the Order. Far too much. The training, the way our superiors have ruled us, make it very difficult indeed for people to stop being afraid like that.” (247)
This idea of tightly clinging to human rules rather than succumbing to spiritual direction is so common in the human psyche. From my experience, rules provide needed structure during spiritual development. However, the line between reasonable structure and thoughtless obedience is fine. I needed spiritual structure at the beginning of my spiritual development. Once I reached a certain level of development, I needed the freedom to branch out and grow. This is where I needed permission (mainly from myself) to let go of the rules and go where God (the generic name I use for the Divine) is guiding me.
This is not the last post in the 104p52w challenge. Tomorrow I will post the last one in the challenge and then wait for Dabysan to start proclaiming victory and whining about how I need to send him a pie. Of course, he's wrong, but what can you do? If I didn't have to pay a mortgage, I could make it my life's work pointing out to Dabysan all the times he's been wrong and will be wrong. But, you know, I got shit to do.
What that shit is, I'm not sure.
Since it's New Year's Eve Eve I'm feeling a little reflective. 2009 passed in a sort of boring blur, which is a damn shame. I have only myself to blame though. Only boring people get bored, right? My resolution for 2010 is to be less boring. I need to start carpeing that diem.
Viva la 2010!
This quote is often attributed to Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
People often complain about the characteristics of other people. Yet, many of these same people possess the very characteristics they despise in others. This is a lack of mindfulness, which is the inability to see reality.
Many people do not see they are everything they hate in other people. Their lack of mindfulness leads to harsh judgment of other people. However, this judgment is really a judgment of one’s self. Since there is a failure to see reality, a lack of compassion develops, and negative energy is emitted.
Once a person chooses to become mindful, they awaken to see their lack of compassion for another person is cultivated by hatred of their own self. They see how their choices affect others (both negative and positive). Mindful people learn to love both their own strengths and weaknesses. This love nurtures compassion, which shatters judgment.
One chooses to be mindful by letting go.
Let go of your grip on the past.
Let go of your grip on the future.
Let go of your pain.
Let go of your intellect.
Let go of your need to be right.
Let go of your need to express your opinion to others.
Let go of yourself.
Once a person lets go, they gain power to change. However, a person has to desire change and choose it freely. Coercion from outside sources does not work. Letting go is a choice. All one on the outside can do is to offer honest support to change, not justification of a person’s negative choices.
I expected - back when it first came up - to derive no small amount of joy from making birthday mixes for my niece. And I haven't been disappointed. But what I didn't expect - at least not right away - is that I would enjoy equally what they had to teach me about music. I'm officially retired from the cutthroat sport of bad karaoke, but it's possible I just might win KttD X anyway. After spending almost a week in Ohio with a couple of die-hard Hannah Montana fans, this song has jumped to the top of my short list.
