we have denied ourselves the opportunity to know the wisdom that created us.
The search for happiness outside ourselves rekindles an idea that we are not whole and relegates prayer to the status of a plea to a boss/God. We are then asking for favors rather than seeking a manifestation of our invisible, inspired self.
Prayer, at the spiritual level I am writing about, is not asking for something any more than the attempt to become a manifester is asking for something to show up in your life. What I call authentic prayer is inviting divine desire to express itself through me. It is a prayer for what it is that is for my highest purpose and good, or for the greater benefit of all mankind. Prayer at this level expresses my experience of oneness with the divine energy.
This may sound like a radical or even blasphemous notion to you, but it is the source of all spiritual traditions. Here are a few examples.
Christianity: The kingdom of heaven is within you.
Islam: Those who know themselves know their God.
Buddhism: Look within, you are the Buddha.
Vedanta (part of Hinduism): Atman (individual consciousness) and Brahman (universal consciousness) are one.
Yoga (part of Hinduism): God dwells within you as you.
Confucianism: Heaven, earth and human are of one body.
Upanishads (part of Hinduism): By understanding the self, all this universe is known.
Overcoming your conditioning in this area is crucially important. At first, you may be able to accept this idea on an intellectual level, but be unable to make it your authentic experience. So, I suggest you make prayer your experience by using it to replace the random, continuous thoughts that you have all day. Use your trust to commune with God rather than to be in a constant state of chatter.
Replace thoughts about your experiences with the experience of prayer. For instance, praying in this sense can be a sentence such as “Sacredness guide me now” or “Sacred love flow through me now” silently recited instead of thinking thoughts. Prayer in this form is tilling and clearing the inner self of ego chatter so that what you desire and what desires you can grow. My personal practice of prayer is participating in a communion with God wherein I see God within me and ask for the strength and the inner awareness to handle whatever confronts me. I know that I am not separate from this vital force that we call God. I know that this force connects me to everything in the universe and that by placing my attention on what it is that I want to attract to myself I am really doing nothing more than manifesting a new aspect of myself.
I then let go of the results and let the universe handle the details. I retreat in peace and keep reminding myself that heaven on earth is a choice that I must make, not a place I must find. It is my choice to live with the God force flowing unrestricted through me, and it is the way of co-creating my life at this moment. Trust, then, is the cornerstone of my praying, and with it comes the peace that is the essence of manifesting.
PEACE: THE RESULT OF TRUST
The highest self wants you to experience peace, which is a definition of enlightenment. You may recall that I wrote earlier in this book that I define enlightenment as being immersed in and surrounded by peace. The more you trust in the wisdom that creates all, the more you will be trusting in yourself. The result of trusting is that an enormous sense of peace becomes available to you.
When the ego insists on winning, comparing or judging, you will be able to soothe and calm the ego’s fears with the peacefulness born of trust. When you are able to trust, you know that God and you are one, like the glass of ocean water and the ocean itself. You are what the God force is doing, just as a wave is what the ocean is doing.
As this awareness grows you will discover that you are a more peaceful person and, consequently, that enlightenment becomes the way of your life. Being independent of the good opinion of others and being detached from the need to be right are two powerful indicators that your life is shifting toward a consciousness of trust in yourself and trust in God. Yet there are many people in our lives who disturb our state of peacefulness. Then, the question is how to handle those who consciously or unconsciously disturb our experience of trust and peace.
I once wrote an essay in a somewhat facetious tone titled “Your Soulmate Is the Person You Can Hardly Stand.” The essence of the essay was that the people in our lives who we agree with and share similar interests with are easy to accept and actually teach us very little. But those who can push our buttons and send us into a rage at the slightest provocation are our real teachers.
The person who is most capable of disturbing your state of peace is a person who is reminding you that you are not truly in the state of peace or enlightenment that results from trust. At that moment, this person is your greatest teacher. This is the person whom you want to treasure and thank God for sending into your life! When you can transcend the rage, anger and upset which that person appears to provoke, and instead say, “Thank you for being my teacher,” you have acknowledged a soulmate relationship.
Everyone in your life who can still push your buttons and send you into that frenzied state is a master teacher disguised as a manipulative, inconsiderate, frustrating, non-understanding being. The peace that is enlightenment means that you are not only at peace with those who share your interests and agree with you, and with strangers who come and go, but also with those master teachers who remind you that you still have some work to do on yourself.
Give thanks for those great spiritual masters who have arrived in your life in the form of your children, current or former spouses, irritating neighbors, co-workers, obnoxious strangers and the like, for they help you stay in an enlightened, peaceful state. They let you know each day how much more work you truly have to do and in what ways you have not mastered yourself.
Peace occurs when your highest self is dominant in your life. When you begin to feel peace as the result of trust, you are enjoying a healthy soul. Keep in mind that there is only one real soul, and that your personality is a vehicle for the whole. You cannot divide the infinite. There is no division. You must trust this awareness.
When you divide, you have moved out of identification with the God force and have taken up shelter in the ego. It is here that you will find an absence of peace and also an absence of trust in the wisdom that created you.
There are many things that you can do on a regular basis to make this second principle of trusting in the oneness a reality in your life. Here are a few suggestions to nurture trust in yourself and in the oneness.
HOW TO TRUST IN YOURSELF AND THE WISDOM THAT CREATED YOU
• Begin by admitting your confusion or failures. When you do this, you are dismissing any illusion of trust, which is in reality a false self-trust. Remind yourself that genuine trust involves letting go of all conditioning that teaches you that trust in yourself is based on being special or separate.
When you are honest with yourself about every aspect of your life, you discontinue identifying with separateness. You then become ready for the insight that trust in yourself and trust in ultimate truth are one and the same. Remind yourself often that you are a child of God and that you have the God force within you. Let the statements “I am it” and “It is me” rise from your inner being.
• Keep in mind that you cannot go to a higher ground if you are hanging onto a lower level. You cannot leave the physical world if you are so attached to it that you refuse to let go. The concept of trust involves surrendering and trusting the God force.
Imagine yourself falling from a precipice while clinging to a huge rock, believing that it will protect you. Letting go of the rock is a metaphor for surrendering and trusting. You will continue to live and breathe in the physical earth plane, but you realize that you are not only your body and mind, and that the rock is not your salvation. Your needs and demands cease, and you are one with the manifest consciousness.
Of course, you are literally still in the body, but you have also joined the manifest consciousness.