petitioninggod.com Blog

If you’re familiar at all with the scheme I write about in Petitioning God, or perhaps even if you’re not, the spiritual task I’m faced with is that of letting God change me to where it truly doesn’t bother me no matter how low the Dow goes. This seems impossible, but hey, if that’s what it takes to get God to grant my petitions for my own prosperity as well as everyone else’s, you bet I’m willing to give it my all no matter how hard it is. If I could let go of my desire for romance with “Belinda,” as I describe in the book, I can do anything! So, taking a deep breath and opening my arms to the heavens (touching on that peace that’s the subject of the previous entry), I pray: God, batter my heart and rip out this clinging-to-my-life attitude that I and most other Americans have with regard to our money! And then, as soon as you can, please, fix the economy but in the most equitable way possible, with the most positive change for the most people possible. For poor people, give them more means of support, and for the rest of us, help us see the lessons we need to learn and the spiritual growth we need to undergo. Thanks!

This task doesn’t mean I have to get to where I don’t care whether the Dow is up or down, but I do have to get to where I’m completely accepting of whatever it does, going down as well as going up. And perhaps more to Jesus’s point, I have to get to where I’m completely unfearful no matter what it does. Because in his instruction that we pray (faithfully) about all things instead of worrying or fearing lies the fundamental challenge of this life, the challenge we must learn to meet if we want to continue to grow spiritually and find joy rather than stagnate and feel anxious. So, batter my heart, God, till I truly reach that stage! Because as it is, in many moods I’m still “betrothed unto your enemy” (that is, unable to stop worrying about something mundane) in the person of the Dow!

Whether we hurry-it-up Westerners realize it or not, relaxation is necessary for peace of mind and happiness. And in these extra stressful times, more people than ever can benefit from various organized forms of relaxation, such as meditation and yoga. Both of these are ways of quieting the mind and spirit, by focusing one’s attention on a single thought (meditation) or a physical position (yoga) that may be challenging to hold but that relieves stress by causing the mind to forget everything else but the bodily effort. (By the way, you don’t have to take classes to get the benefits; with a little practice you can learn to focus your attention on your breathing, your thoughts, & your movements so as to reach this state of occupying your mind so that it can’t worry. I do it frequently while running, stretching, & doing floor exercises.)

To take this discussion a step further, it seems to me that in all these instances of relaxing our worrying egos, we are reaching for (and hopefully finding bits and pieces of) nothing less than the “peace that passeth all understanding” from the Christian Bible. It’s been my experience over and over again that God is both within us and outside of us, and that our unconscious minds are part of the mind of God, so it stands to reason that by quieting our own conscious minds, we can touch on that peace, getting a measure of healing from it.

Many others in many different venues have indicated the same thing. After a Sunday school class last fall, I asked dreamwork teacher Karen Mori Bonner what advice I could give to people who asked me why they couldn’t experience God as vividly as I did, and her reply was, “Tell them to RELAX.” Liz Gilbert, in her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love, writes, “‘the universe is a great spinning engine, & you want to stay near the core, in the hub of calmness–that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you . . . . Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace.’”

Interestingly enough, relaxation is also a major technique for getting prayers answered. We may be afraid that if we relax we’ll lose control, but the larger truth is that it’s only by relaxing our puny egos into the vast creative power of the universe that we can actually accomplish many of our most cherished goals. More on that in my book.

Back to the subject of feeling good, if you want to feel the very best that you possibly can, get out there either literally or figuratively (such as on the ‘net) and help people who need it! Your “peace” may be momentarily interrupted, but that’s going to happen anyway as long as you’re human. And this carrying out of the second of Jesus’s two great commandments (to love thy neighbor)–and not merely the first (to love God)–is the key to that abundant life he promised us. Reach out and grab hold of it, it’s yours!