Snake Oil
I run the risk of coming across as a snake oil salesman of some sort. Cynics and sarcastics would probably have a lot to say about me and my journey, but I really don’t care anymore. My preoccupation with what other people think has held me back for a long time. Life is too good and too short to put a lid on what a willingness to believe is doing for me.
The last three weeks have been fascinating. I have dealt with moments of universal alignment before, but that was also during times of significant doubt. Any serendipity, opportunity, or just pure connection would happen and they would pass by almost without meaning. If anything, they caused me more stress because I had not yet allowed myself to believe I was worthy of and could rely on Good in my life. There was no savoring the best in life, no appreciation for life’s blessings. I didn’t have the time for joy. I didn’t really have a way to make the most out of life. It was on to worry about the next catastrophe. It was exhausting.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten many chances to savor a moment, reframe a negative mantra, and had bizarrely positive shifts in long-standing, totally busted up dynamics. The great luxury of having faith and operating with a willingness to believe is that I am finally willing and able to believe Good (or God) is working in my life and I am worthy. I have let go and let God, as they say in recovery programs, and it is such a relief.
My friends and family have no idea, although some clearly sense a shift within me. They look a little suspicious or perplexed if I go on too long about how good life is. It’s not that I am quite hiding my newfound commitment to faith from them, but I am certainly not proselytizing at the dinner table either.
Some might argue that this blog is an attempt to proselytize, but I don’t see it that way. I do hope it encourages others to focus on and have faith in Good, but that’s kind of it. What you choose to do beyond that isn’t up to me, nor would I want it to be. Whenever I tried to turn to faith before, I got hung up on the complexities of religion. I was waylaid by which meditation pillow I should buy and where I should put it, what my prayers should be about and Who/What might be listening to them. I got preoccupied with getting intention or manifesting “wrong” or when my prayers might get answered.
It only occurred to me three weeks ago that maybe it needed to be simpler than that. Maybe my idiot mammalian brain just needed to believe that I was destined for Good things and that I should treat that like faith, no other strings attached. I don’t have to sit on a meditation pillow in order to meditate. I can pray anywhere I have to. I don’t have to believe in guardian angels or bearded wizards. I don’t have to understand how it works or why, I just have to focus on Good and believing in Good. I just have to focus on a positive future and be willing to say prayers that ask for and imagine what I want and need in life. And I need to be willing to do anything to make that vision happen. That anything includes looking at and letting go of my own bad habits, like worry, fear, doubt, criticism, or judgment. It means letting go of others, what I think they are or should be, and just trying to love them and pray for them exactly as they are, even if they can’t be in my life anymore.
Recently, I realized that we often let the harms that life has inflicted on us stand in the way of having faith in Good (or God). We think, How could I believe in God when BLANK PERSON did BLANK to me? But that’s like letting the horrors of others stand between us and our own happiness. That’s allowing the harms others have inflicted on us cause us further pain by letting their poor choices or misdeeds get between us and a chance at real happiness. I have let that happen in the past and it made sense to me at the time, but it doesn’t make sense anymore.
I firmly believe that we all are worthy of Good things in life and just a willingness to believe in Good is the best, simplest place to start. It’s a doorway to having real faith in positive outcomes, and I am here to encourage anyone willing and interested to go through it. If that is snake oil, then I guess I’m selling it.