Prayer is an important part of my recovery, and an important part of recovery for a lot of people. I have learned that prayer doesn't change God's mind, it changes mine. Prayer is really about endeavoring to align my will with God's will for me.
I don't write much about prayer - believe it or not, it's a little too personal for me to write much about publicly. Prayer comes from the deepest part of me, and the way I pray and the content of my prayers is unique to me. I know a lot of prayers from different faith traditions, and I'll usually run with one set of prayers for awhile, and then move on to another set, and so forth. Sometimes I really get into the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible, and then I'll ignore them for awhile. I pray for others' highest good, and it aligns my thinking into looking for their highest good. For instance, say there is someone I know whom I don't hold in very high regard; if I pray for that person's highest good, it causes me to look for it in them, and that can help bring it out. If I don't, then that person just remains a schmuck in my mind, and I can't do anything for them.
One of my favorite prayers, and one I've recently been practicing lately, is the Prayer of St. Francis (of Assisi). It has special meaning for me because he had PTSD (my opinion). St. Francis, before he was a saint, fought in the Crusades. In the Crusades, he had some experiences that deeply affected him. When he returned from the Crusades, he went crazy and nearly killed himself. This is when he had a religious or spiritual experience that caused him to live the life of a monk. The Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church came out of his practices and his band of followers. His story is really interesting. Following is the prayer that is attributed to him:
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace -
that where there is hatred, I may sow love;
that where there is injury, I may sow pardon [forgiveness];
that where there is doubt, I may sow faith;
that where there is despair, I may sow hope;
that where there is darkness, I may shine light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be comforted, as to comfort; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love;
For it is in self-forgetting that one finds, it is in forgiving that one is forgiven, and it is by dying to self that one awakens to eternal life. Amen
This is a wonderful prayer with which to start the day, because it prepares my mind to be a selfless healer, and it tells me what I need to be about today. But for the past couple of days I've prayed it and started crying, because I realized that I could also turn it inward. I can apply this prayer to those things which I still harbor inside that are injurious to me - remnants of shame and self-hatred, despair, doubt about who I Am, darkness, and sadness. I can use this prayer to help heal myself.
I've been in recovery nearly three years, and it has just been the past couple of months that I've started to really enjoy living. In this post, "Why Even Bother?", which was written a little less than a year ago, I wrote about surviving without having an automatic joy for life and living. It's not that I've been unhappy this whole time and just been faking it; it is that I've had to put in a fair amount of conscious, consistent effort to stay at a level where I can function comfortably. So, I've been chugging along comfortably, but lately, I've noticed a feeling deeper inside where I'm really starting to like living for the sake of living. I feel like I could have a day where I accomplished absolutely nothing, was of service to no one, and be perfectly ok with that - to just take some time to just be here now. It's a nice change; it's nice to be just for the sake of being. It's nice to feel like being here, without necessarily having to do something to make living tolerable. Being alive is starting to feel...natural. Wow!
Motivation brings more motivation, and success breeds success. Feeling better, healthier, makes it easier to do the things that make me feel healthy. I feel my world expanding, my consciousness expanding, and I'm getting eager for more. And prayer is a big part of that.
One person once told me, after I had been praying for them, "Your prayers are powerful." I don't think they meant my prayers; I think they meant prayers are powerful. I've known that prayer can be a powerful thing. When I was a young boy, I swallowed 3 pennies. Boy, did that hurt! I couldn't tell anyone, of course, so I prayed and asked God to relieve me of the pain, and it instantly left. I've had other occasions where prayer has been very effective, and I know it's been effective in the lives of others. But something inside - doubt, perhaps? - has caused me from time to time to stop praying, or stop believing in prayer.
Now I'm getting excited because this recent shift is telling me that I can do more and be more than I've ever been and done before. My faith tradition tells me that I already have every quality of my Creator inside of me - it would be impossible for me to not have it (or you or anyone else) - and that my job is to do whatever needs to be done to let everything go that is not me, that is not allowing the Light within to shine brightly. And St. Francis' prayer really seems to fit that purpose, if I turn it inward. It would be a lovely thing if I had all the faith in the Universe to believe without seeing, but I don't - sometimes I need to see. That's ok today - all I need to know today is that I am loved and supported, whether I'm feeling it or not.
So, like a teenage boy with a new car, I'm eager to take this new level of faith out on the road and see what She'll do. I'll keep you posted!
Namasté,
Ken
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