Myself or My Self? Which Matters More?

Myself or my Self? is probably not a question we ask often. It may be a question we’ve never considered. How we answer the question and where our answer takes us, can be an exciting journey.

Lesson #358 of A Course in Miracles is

Let me not forget that myself is nothing, but my Self is all.

My first reading of ACIM, 10 years ago, sent me on the journey to discover what was meant by “my Self”. Google existed 10 years ago and immediately showed me what I’d forgotten from some 100 days before. Lesson #253 says

My Self is the ruler of the universe.

It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept.

Unity Principles and Science of Mind

Consider how thoroughly this aligns with the Unity Principles. That we are created and guided by the perfect Power and Presence…and the creation provides each of us divine Spirit…with which we are able to co-create our reality with Spirit…with whom we have the beautiful, creative joy of communicating…so that we can actively express our unity with Spirit by who we are and what we do.

And here’s another something I (may have) learned 8 years ago when I first enjoyed Ernest Holmes’ Science of Mind 365

Beautiful, uplifting feelings of harmony, peace and love flow through me like a river, elevating my consciousness to a new and higher level of acceptance and unity. (February 7, p.44)

When I read that yesterday morning, I felt it was describing my Self, rather than myself. I decided not to worry whether my Self is me feeling the harmony, peace and love or is the actual river of harmony, peace and love. Either way is a blessing. Both are blessings.

Who Is My Self?

While both are blessings, I feel that by distinguishing one from the other, I increase my ability, eagerness, and my ease in actively listening for the special direction my Self receives, and that myself may too often overlook.

I believe myself is accurately defined by the Oxford Language dictionary that says

I or me personally (used to emphasize the speaker).

ACIM must give “myself” the same meaning with the added clarification that it’s fueled by my ego.

I am comforted knowing my Self as my conscious awareness of Spirit’s universal power and presence and Its power and presence in me. I appreciate that my Self identifies the divine Spirit with which I am blessed fully. It acts from the faith that my concentration of the Godmind creates my reality. Praying, I love the unity with Spirit with whatever medium we are conversing. It is my Self that takes direction from Spirit and messages to my mind, to my body, however, I express our unity.

I welcome your sharing your Self-perceptions. Feel free to leave a comment.

Giving Thanks for My Self

Living, loving Spirit,
I believe that you created my Self
and that you gave me freedom to create myself.
I thank you that you did the good part.
More than that, I am grateful that you continually help me
realize – more and more – the identify of my Self.
And that identity is united with you, is part of the Oneness
of your creation, is tuned in and readily receiving
your plain and simple, powerful and supporting message:
Love. Peace. Joy. Harmony. Grace. Forgiveness.
My Self thanks you, Spirit.
So does myself.
And so it is that I am glad I am. Amen.

Love & blessings,

 

 

7 February 2021

 

 

Praying: Scheduled or Spontaneous?

Should praying be scheduled or spontaneous?  That question probably doesn’t occur to many people. In fact, I’d wager that all the people who pray with any frequency, which is more than once a month, fall pretty equally into thirds:

• One-third practice scheduled praying. They follow a scheduled routine. They pray at a certain time, probably a familiar, repeated prayer.
• One-third enjoy spontaneous praying whenever the spirit (literally) moves them. That is probably also wherever and however they feel like praying.
• And one-third apply both schedules and spontaneity to their praying. They likely reserve some prayers for times, places, reasons. They probably also have moments when they pray just for the moment.

So, should praying be scheduled or should it be spontaneous? I answer that question with two questions:

Need praying be one or the other?     Can’t praying be both?

Or more simple perhaps is this: Does it matter?

As I believe there are infinite ways to pray and all of them are right: some are right for some people, others are right for other people. And none of them is wrong.

It’s like that with scheduled praying and with spontaneous praying. I won’t take a stand in favor of either because I fall into that one-third that does both described above. My praying includes a cadre of prayers that are definitely scheduled (not just by time). I also follow the active tendency to pray at the drop of a hat. Or the wink of an eye. Or a whisper of the wind. Quite often I pray about those things, just because they let me want to.

Here’s my point. Whatever praying works for you, works for you. Keep at it.

I also offer this point. It may be a treat to try something different. Praying variety has a lot going for it. Freshness. Surprise. Discovery. Excitement. Release. Relief.

Scheduled Praying

Here are some of ways I apply schedule to my praying.

• Every morning I say a prayer affirming that I will get my stuff done today. Having said that prayer for so many mornings in a row, it’s now a pretty static prayer. The words don’t change much from day to day. Maybe I’ll change it if ever I feel like I’m not getting enough of my stuff done every day.
• Before I start my work each day, I write down thanks for what will happen today and for what already happened yesterday. Yes, it’s written prayer and years ago when I started praying with my pen and journal, it was spontaneous. Early in the first of what’s now 28 prayer journals, it became scheduled.
• Then there’s my Prayer Box. This is the most scheduled of my praying. Every morning I take the slips that have names out of the Prayer Box. I love turning each slip, seeing the name, and reciting the Prayer Box Prayer that is printed on every slip. This is the ultimate of scheduling.

I tell you these praying practices just to make clear what I mean by scheduled praying, not to encourage you to take any of them on. They work for me. You already know what works for you. And if you’re looking for something new that will work, you’ll find it.

Spontaneous Praying

And for exactly the same reasons, I offer you these examples of my spontaneous praying. By the way, there’s a comment click at the bottom if you want to share your scheduled and/or spontaneous practices.

• Certainly, anytime anyone asks me to pray with them, that is spontaneous. When I first became a Praying Chaplain, I sought security in using a pro forma prayer. I didn’t find security the first time, so there was never a second time. Listening to what the person seeks from praying is really all you need to know.
• I find myself praying anytime I am moved to pray. That’s not as much circular logic as it sounds. I am moved to pray just about anytime I think of praying. I am moved to pray almost anytime I am moved by something I see or hear or smell or taste. In truth, the more I pray, the more I am moved by even the simplest things I experience. Maybe it is a circle.
• Being still is perhaps my favorite spontaneous praying motivation. When I let my body and my mind rest, my consciousness does too. And when that happens, gratitude comes to me in waves. And what better praying than to express thanks? Meister Eckhart’s quote is still my favorite: If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

And for a great read on spontaneous praying: Edward Hays’ Pray All Ways.

Shall We Schedule Our Spontaneous Praying?

Good Friend God,
there is beauty and joy in being able to consider
whether we shall schedule our praying
or let it flow with spontaneous freedom.
We are grateful that we have the choice.
And our thanks, too, that we have freedom
to make a choice; we can choose
the grace of praying what we know and repeat
in certain ways at certain times
and of praying when the emotion or the idea
springs into our heart or pops into our head.

A prayer that we have said for years and know by heart
and the prayer that flows from our being in an instant
are so different and no different in their grace and beauty.

Thank you, Good Friend, that we may have praying both ways.

And so it is. And so we let it be with joy. Amen.

Love & blessings,

 

 

2 February 2021

 

Praying with Our Sense of Humor

Praying with our sense of humor can be as natural and as pleasant and as beneficial as we let it be. We presume praying is serious business and it is. It can also be as playful and as joyful and as releasing as we let it be. It only takes a little humor.

Humor is  a life skill: hum….human…humor

Research says that both men (90%) and women (81%) believe that humor is the most important characteristic in a successful life partner. If humor has the power to make a our human relationships succeed, it must have the same power on our spiritual relationship with God. Or maybe greater power.

Humor lightens what’s heavy.

One time I started to pray for forgiveness about something rather shameful I had done. I spent some time and energy building the courage to take it to prayer. When I finally was ready—or thought I was ready—I started my prayer, “God, you’re not going to believe this…” Then had to stop short and laugh thinking I could surprise Spirit. The prayer flowed easily from there.

You cannot worry and laugh at the same time.

If love replaces fear, then humor in the form of laughter, replaces worry. It’s not possible to laugh and worry at the same time. That’s multitasking, and if you don’t believe me, believe science that tells us multitasking is really impossible.

I know three people who are incessant laughers. The other thing I know about them worrying is this: they don’t very much.

Humor is a good stress eraser.

Their laughter is always present when any of the three is discussing something stressful. Or when they are about to discuss that something. It’s a certainty that the laughter lets them erase the stress and go forward with the discussion. Now, think about the most common reasons for which we pray, not counting thanksgiving. Aren’t most of those prayers to get us over, around, or through something stressful? So if praying is good for easing stress and humor is good for erasing stress….praying with humor must make it easy to erase the stress.

God has a sense of humor, too.

Still doubt it? How about this…

You’ve surely heard the adage, Make plans, God laughs. Growing up I was always making big plans for a sleepover or a bike ride or camping out in the backyard. My parents—OK, mostly Dad—would laugh. With that laughter always came the offer to help make the plan succeed. It usually did.

We notice the power of a sense of humor. Consider how much, how often we evaluate each other’s sense of humor. If we are spiritually in God’s image, where else does our sense of humor come from?

Besides all that, would so many things be funny to all of us, to some of us, or maybe just to you, if God didn’t have something to do with it?

Praying with Humor

Laughing Spirit, what a pleasure to imagine
your being the completeness of humor
as you are the completeness of joy
and peace and love and harmony.

The gift of letting us know our praying
can turn the corner from serious to funny
is the wonderful realization that prayers
can let us laugh rather than make us be stern.

I am thankful I still laugh at the seriousness
of Michael asking our Vacation Bible School teacher
“After we pray, why do we say ‘amen’?
Jesus was a man, wasn’t he?”

And so it is. A-man.

Love & blessings,

 

 

25 January 2021

Keep the Dream

 

We can still keep the dream.

Martin Luther King Jr’s famous I have a dream speech delivered in Washington, DC, August 28, 1963, will never be forgotten. It should never be forgotten. Not his speech—the most famous words of which were ad-libbed—and certainly not his dream can ever be lost to memory.

Now is the time and here is the place and we are the owners of the dream. We have the opportunity to renew the dream. To put it forth full-force and to make it real. The dream did not die with Dr. King’s death less than 5 years after his speech.

While his dream—an end to racism—lives on, we have an opportunity, a true duty to our world, our human race, and to each individual Self. The dream may go by several names:

A New World

Let us today open our minds and our hearts to see fully the world of which we are each a part. We can see a world of one people: every individual and the total human race as expressions of Spirit. That Supreme Being can go by any name we choose—God, Allah, Elohim, Yahweh, Buddha. The truth is our opportunity to see and know that all of us are children of the Spirit, no matter the name. As we look beyond the world we know as nations, tribes, religions, political stands, we have the power to see us all as One, as All, as children of Spirit. If we allow ourselves to be friends shaking hands, saying ‘how do you do’ even continents apart, we’re really saying I love you!

I offer these suggestions:

• Post a statement of your view of the New World in Facebook or Twitter or Instagram
• Send an email invitation to your New World to 10 people: 5 whom you know well, 5 whom you’d like to know better
• Go old school and get on the phone with friends to make plans for the New World

A New Peace

From the New World that we have the power to create comes the New Peace. Peace resides and speaks and grows and shines in every single heart. Starting today and continuing from today, ours is the chance to make that the New Peace, to feel it, to know it, to let it flow from our hearts to our minds. And from our minds the New Peace instructs our voices what to say, our faces how broadly to smile, our arms how warmly to embrace one another. Peace is too often addressed only as what is desired (yet too often missing) between countries, races, political parties. Peace is so much more fundamental than that. Truth is that peace exists in each and all of us. It starts there. It has the power every time we share our personal New Peace with others.

If you’re wondering how you might generate the New Peace, consider

• Write a song or a poem or a nursery rhyme celebrating New Peace
• Create a New Peace product, like a takeoff on Love Potion #9
• Compose a flyer that advertises New Peace (doesn’t have to be a real event, but it can be)

Now, be sure to share your creativity….Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, bulletin boards, telephone poles.

A New Blessing

A blessing is a gift, a present of the grace of God. Let’s fashion and share a New Blessing. As we each have the divine blessing of Spirit, we are each co-creators of the good that Spirit is. We can be and make and share the New Blessing that is our 2021 expression of love and joy. We can share the New Blessing in any of a hundred or a thousand ways.

Blessings are a lot like prayers. Praying provides a good way and a good place to share your New Blessing. You might also

• Call a bunch of friends—now or long-ago friends—just to share your New Blessing with them. See what kind of conversation follows
• Invite some of those (or other) friends to join you for a regular meeting (for now, think Zoom) to discuss New Blessings and how they relate to your New Peace and our New World

Prayer That We Still Have a Dream

Good Friend God,
this special day we celebrate our power to dream
and our energy to make our dreams come true.
The joy and love, the grace and faith you give to us
enable us to co-create and manifest with you
the New World we want now as ours.
It is a world that knows only peace, only equality,
and surely only love.

The peace our New World knows is built
from our New Peace. The New Peace reaches from
every heart of every one of us to the hearts of everyone
of every nation, tribe, race, and opinion.

The New World and the New Peace are fueled
and carried as our New Blessing, a blessing
from you to us to share with all that is,
to share our thanks and our intention,
our commitment and our strength.

We thank you, Spirit, for our
New World and our New Peace and our New Blessing.
And so it is. And so we gladly let it be! Amen.

Love & blessings,

 

 

18 January 2021

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