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I’m doing a lot of experimental spirituality lately, and I am reaching a point of kind of enjoying it. Once we get over smarting from hitting a bottom, brush ourselves off, look around, and become willing to just say BLEEP IT, put our hands together and pray, there’s actually a lot of fun to be had if we stick with it.
Can I pray over here?
Can I pray over there?
Can I pray in a hat?
Can I pray to a cat?
What happens when I pray like this?! Or like this? Or for this?!
I’m being sort of silly, but that’s because I have a lot of hope and feel like I am allowed to have it after finding a little faith. As part of this experimental spirit, I am very much attracted to this idea of acceptance right now. After willingness to believe, which is the number one step in faith (including in recovery work), acceptance is one of the big ones. We have to accept our current circumstances. We have to look around at whatever bottom we have reached and accept that reality. It’s akin to peeling back some denial and maybe giving up some resistance as well.
These things don’t happen overnight and they are not easy, but they are worthwhile exercises, especially when we have a little hope and/or faith. What’s wrong with setting a baseline? What’s wrong with staring our reality in the face before we set off on a grand spiritual journey? Isn’t it nice to know where it all began if we finally have a little hope in a better future?
Louise Hay writes a lot about reaching a point of being willing to release dysfunctional patterns. The step before releasing an old, problematic behavior is actually admitting that we are doing something dysfunctional and accepting it doesn’t work. As part of this grand spiritual experiment I have undertaken, I have had to look at some of the pieces of my life that are not working for me. I have had to reach a point where I am willing to look at and accept my part in the problem.
When it comes to love (and pretty much anything else, turns out), Hay writes, “… ask yourself if you ARE WILLING TO CHANGE. When you remove these patterns, habits, and beliefs from your thinking and behavior, either the other person will change or he or she will leave your life” (Hay, 2004, p. 100).
I have written about some recent complications in my love life, and as newly minted faithful person willing to take a chance on God, I’ve been saying a lot of prayers to release negative patterns and anyone associated with them. And, lo and behold, some people in my life are choosing to stay and some are not sticking around, just as Hay describes. Fascinating.
Whether that is because God or Good is actually involved or because I’m just dropping my guard, changing my behavior, releasing resistance, reframing the issue, or otherwise letting life live itself a little bit doesn’t really matter. What matter is that something had to give, and it did with a little patience and Grace.