Robbins Hopkins

Spiritual Health: Being at Peace in Everyday Life

Archives for January 2009

Praying with Power

Prayer can be more than tepid thoughts, fear filled words or memorized prose. The purpose of prayer is to actualize the Divine Presence in all aspects of our lives.  We may strongly feel the need for “help”, “healing” , “relief” for another or for ourselves but our strong sense of need does not charge a prayer, nor necessarily make it happen.  This is because all that is needed already exists in the Universe.  All That Is really means All That Is.  So, what is  praying with power?

What are we praying for? by Silverlinedwinnebago

When we charge our prayers with determination, envisioned wholeness and balance, we draw on Infinite Power.  Powerful prayer brings form to the Universe of Divine Love that is all around us waiting to be actualized in daily life.  When we  see, sense, or envision, the Presence of Divine Grace for another, or for ourselves we are praying in power.  When the envision wholeness we give form to prayer so that the energy of Divine Love which is all present, all knowing and all powerful can be “harnessed”, “directed” and “focused ” for another.

We are working in the midst of Love Energy all the time. That Love Energy can be activated or not, focused or not, directed or not.  If we plead, beg or seek to inform our Higher Power we are essentially giving credence to a “God” separate from us and manifesting a world view of  “in-completion, loss and need”.  Even if we don’t fully get that we are One with All That Is and that we are made of the same substance as the Divine Energy itself, we can pray in the power of this energy and have our prayers be filled with direction, power and focus.

Prayer 1

Dear God,  I hope you will hear me.  I really, really,  want you to help Nancy because she is in so much pain. She desperately needs your loving touch, care and attention. She is suffering terribly and needs healing.  Help me with my deep sadness. I don’t want her to suffer and die.  Please heal her and don’t let her die.  She is a great mother and doesn’t deserve any of this. Her children really need her.  I hope she does not die.  Thank  you so much for your help.

Prayer 2

Spirit of the Living God, I open a sacred healing space for Nancy.  Nancy, beloved child of God, be healed.  Receive the healing energy of the Great I AM in all areas of your being, thought, emotion, spirit and body.  I call the Divine Healing Energy which is all knowing, all p0werful and everywhere present.   Come Divine Healing Energy of All That Is.  Fully actualize in Nancy’s being.  I cast out all blocked energy in Nancy’s field which is now manifesting as pain and imbalance.   I call in the Presence of emotional (mental, spiritual) and physical peace.  I see Nancy as whole and balanced in all ways.  My thanks for the Love of the Divine Wholeness/God/Universal Oneness.  And so it is.

The first prayer has a pleading tone and sees Nancy as lacking something, suffering and in need of  something to happen to make things “right”.  The prayer is informing God of Nancy’s pain, her mothering skills and her need for healing,  as if God does not know this intimately.  The person praying gives form to his/her own fears and sadness, rather than to the vision of balance and wholeness for Nancy.  This prayer sets God apart from the person praying.  This person praying thinks that Nancy is being punished because she doesn’t “deserve” this treatment.  On every front, this prayer is leaking power and energy.

The second  prayer affirms the limitless power of All That Is in all directions.  It is full of commands, be healed, receive, come and fully actualize.  The commands affirm the energy of WE ARE ALL ONE, even God and I.  This prayer is calling the formless energy of God/Eternal Oneness  into actualized form in Nancy’s energy field.  This person sees Nancy as  “whole and balanced in all ways”.  The pray-er is  giving form to the Divine Energy at the human level by envisioning the wholeness which is already there.  There is also recognition of the need to call out blocked energy Nancy is carrying which keeps keeping her from manifesting wholeness at the physical level.

The way the first prayer is conceived drains it of its power before it is even spoken. When we continue to see ourselves as unworthy, small, insignificant and separated before God, we are essentially turning away from our own true power, denying what has been give to us, that which is our birthright.   Our relationship with God is nothing like our relationship with humans, though many of us continue to view it with just the same limitations we might have with our sister or a friend.  There is no power in the first prayer because the person praying has not claimed that power which is there but for the asking.  It is not charged with the Knowing Of All That Is.  It is riddled with pleading, fear and the energy of being separate from God.  The words are said in love and desire to help but the source of the prayer comes from a sense of lack.

picture by gethiroshima
picture by gethiroshima

To pray with power, we have to claim the power that is waiting for us.  We have to try out a new vision of  partnership with All That Is.  We have to use all the goodness we have to see the Blessings of Wholeness and Balance for another.  Understanding that we are giving form to the unformed energy of Divine Infinity, we need to claim the Highest Good for ourselves and others when we pray.

Use these steps to infuse your prayers with power.

1. Address the power you are recognizing

2. Open a sacred healing space

3. Command the state of wholeness for self or others

4. Call the Divine Energy to the person or situation

5. Cast out all blocked energy manifesting imbalances

6. Give thanks for the Love of Divine Presence

7. Command that all that has been said is so.

Good Work… if you can get it.

Thoughts and feelings can balance us or unbalance us.  Where we place our attention and give our power determines whether we move towards greater balance or greater imbalance.  When we are out of balance energetically, it shows up somewhere.

How does imbalance affect us?
taken by aeu04117
MB Balances Rocks (by aeu04117)

It can show up in disturbing dreams, inability to sleep, imbalances in eating habits, impatience, “down days”, arguments or colds and infections.  If we have been out of balance a very long time, the immune system can become compromised.  We can begin to show patterns of recurring colds, chronic pain or infections, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety or even osteoporosis, cancer or diabetes and everything in-between.  We may have recurring patterns of unsuccessful relationships, jobs, financial investments or failure to generally thrive due to being out of balance.

Our bodies as well as our thoughts, feelings and sense of connectedness to the greater whole are all energy.  Further our emotional, mental, spiritual and physical bodies are all related.  We are one large, completely connected web of flowing energy.  When one area of our life does not flow, we will be given all the chances we need to attend to this.  We always have the choice to attend in the present or put it off until later.  However, as long as there are imbalances in our energy field, these will  show up in our daily lives in one way or another.

Our response to energy may not be the only reason we are manifesting imbalances in our daily life.  There may be environmental factors, situational factors or hereditary patterns which make us more susceptible to certain imbalances in our lives.  However,  if we  couple  environmental or hereditary factors with also being out of balance emotionally, mentally or spiritually, the results at the physical level will be exacerbated.  The more we are out of balance, the greater the chance this will show up in our daily lives in one way or another. This is the most practical reason for attending to our spiritual health that I know of.  Thankfully, though,  we can change how we think and feel if we can figure out what blocked energy we may be carrying and how it is affecting us.

At the park with my daddy! =) (by Photo ChicK DoraliS)
How can we change our thoughts and feelings?

The way we attend to energy directly affects our health on many levels.  Suppose you are having on-going tension with a child.  You may have tried “everything” to clear the air with this child and are having no success. Usually when we come to this place with any relationship, it is time to look inside at our own thoughts and feelings about what is actually going on.  We can affect our thoughts and feelings if we can understand the “unseen” reasons we have specific thoughts and feelings.  However clearly we can see in others what they need to change, we can only bring about such change in ourselves.  Each person has the free will to choose conflict or balance, change or status quo,  harmonious relationships or contentious ones.   When we do decide to release thoughts and feelings which are creating imbalances,  it affects everything around us including the specific relationship we are focused on.

Enter into Silence and open a sacred healing space for yourself.  Ask yourself,  “when I argued with my child, what fears were fueling my thoughts, tone, emotions and words”?  It might be the fear; for your child’s safety,  of your child’s failure,  that (s)he is making poor decisions,  that your child does not respect you,  that you do not have the relationship you want with your child, or another fear.

What do I do if I am too angry to think straight?

If you can’t get to defining fear because of the anger that is present, list the specific anger you have.  Include every type of specific anger you are experiencing.   This might include something like,  I am angry with Kevin because I ask him to clean up his room,  then he doesn’t do it until I get angry and yell at him.  List everything you can but keep your work to blocks of no more than 15 minutes.  More than that can be overwhelming.  Keep returning to this set of tasks in 15 minute blocks until you are finished. When all the specifics of your anger are listed, move on to what is behind the anger that most upsets you.

Anger almost always covers fear or doubt of some sort or another.  Ask, “what is behind the anger I am feeling” ?  Specific fears and doubts cover probably 98% of the blocked energy manifesting in contentious relationships. This is called diagnosing the situation. If you can’t figure it out yourself, go into Silence, be still and ask Divine Knowing for insight around these issues.  Listen to the guidance.

How do I get rid of these thoughts and feelings?

Diagnosis is good.  Clearing the blocked energy is better.  Take the specific fear or doubt you have identified and take it into sacred healing space.   Open the sacred healing space, ask that the fear/doubt be consumed by the Divine Presence.  Call for all core or source energy manifesting now as this fear/doubt to be release into Divine Light.  Call for the Divine Healing Presence to permeate this relationship and give thanks for this experience.  Your taking these steps will be met 100% of the way by Divine Presence/Divine Knowing/Source.  This healing energy is first experienced at the unseen level usually in the form of different feelings and thoughts.   It takes a little while for shifting energy to show up in our physical lives.   Watch for shifts.  Give thanks for the shifts both unseen and seen as they come and eventually the energetic context of this relationship under scrutiny will shift.

You may have to work on other aspects of fear or doubt over several weeks or months to completely allow you to be in relationship with this child, free of fear.  However, each time you undertake this type of healing with the Divine Presence,  you will actually change the energy around you, especially that with your child.  Keep it up.  “It’s good work… if you can get it. ” (Dave Wilcox. “Good Together”, 2002)

Right Relationship

Coming into Right Relationship with aspects of our lives is another way to think of seeking Peace.  Right Relationship refers to the highest form of connection with a person, place or situation for this place and time as defined by Divine Knowing.  Right Relationship is a concept which requires us to let go of defining that fully for ourselves and simply seek this increasingly in our daily lives.  For example, when I am irritated with a neighbor or colleague, I am out of Right Relationship with that person.   I may not fully know what Right Relationship looks like with a specific person, however, when I am out of Right Relationship, I usually know it.  I feel anxious, irritated, on edge, confrontative, nervous, when I think of them or when I am around them. This is a good place to begin seeking Peace.

Japanese Rock Garden (Photo by vgm8383)

The contrast between balance and non-balance becomes gradually clearer as we are increasingly in Silence.  The challenge is what to do about it.  If we are out of Right Relationship with a person and we want to re-balance, what can we do?

One main principle in seeking Peace is that others do not make or break our Peace.  We make or break it.  We choose to get angry, to feel judged, to feel mistreated, to feel betrayed, to feel irritated or insignificant.  However, we often talk about this as “so-in-so made me feel sad, mad, glad”.  Actually the truth energetically is more like this, “when I think about or I am with so-in-so, I feel mad, sad, or glad”.  The choice to feel that way is ours.  The choice not to feel that way is also ours.  This later realization usually spurs shifts in how we work these issues in our lives.

What does being out of Right Relationship look like?

Years ago I got irritated with one of my colleagues who always had to have everything we worked on perfect to her standards of perfection.  I was clearly out of Right Relationship with this person.  Let’s call her Sonya. Every meeting I had with Sonya always devolved into her stating what was wrong with the efforts we had made on a joint project.  Sometimes the issue was the “clarity of the brochure”, sometimes the issue was the appropriateness of the pictures we had used, or the font, or the unstated messages, and on and on.  What I needed to work on was why I got so irritated. After some Silence with this issue, it came to me that I really, really resented feeling controlled.  This type of experience is something that I also had in other areas of my life, surprise, surprise.  What was this about?? How could I release it?

What can we do about being out of Right Relationship?

Here’s what I did.  I sat down and wrote in my journal about all the experiences I had ever had when I felt controlled by another person.  I went back to my childhood, I wrote about my marriage, I wrote about other work settings. I wrote until I was finished with all these experiences.  I learned that Sonya was not the creator of this experience, I was.  I learned that what I really was working with was the fear of not measuring up to other’s opinions of me.  When I got this clarity, I asked during one of my meditative sessions, to have all this fear of not measuring up to be lifted from my energy field. It was.

A few weeks later Sonya and I had a meeting. I had asked her to just go ahead and make all the changes she wanted to before our meeting on the brochure we were writing so that it was exactly as she thought it would work.  There was no tension, no angst. We negotiated some changes without the irritation I usually had felt.  I felt really clean and balanced.

I knew that something really different had happened for me. I had sought Peace and in that seeking, it had been given to me.  It was not given without my effort but rather as a result of trying to clear the energy that was taking me out of balance. This spiritual principle has been shown to me hundreds of times since then.  When I take steps towards Peace and Balance, all that is needed is provided.

Welcome

Welcome to this blog!  So glad you found us. We will be exploring Inner Peace and spiritual health in daily life. We will look at how to get there, what keeps us from staying in a state of Peace, what triggers our anger, guilt, fear, pride, judging, forgiveness and hope and  how to work our way into greater and greater balance and wholeness.

We are here to seek Peace in all areas of our lives, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically. The question is, how do we do that? It begins with facing the areas of our lives where there is clearly a lack of Peace.  We know these areas as places of tension, arguments, irritations, anger, strain and stress.

Whenever we are out of balance, we are not in a place of Peace. Arguments, frustration, anger,  and irritation are the outward indications of inward imbalances.  We may not realize what those imbalances are, but we get all the chances we need to identify areas of imbalance because they keep presenting in varying ways until the root cause of the imbalance is cleared from our energy field.  What is most amazing about spiritual health is that as we fully release blocked energy from our own energy fields, we see positive changes in the outward expressions of those difficult imbalances in all areas of our lives.

No one else can do this work for us. We have to undertake this effort ourselves.  However, we also get all the help we need as we set the intention to come into greater and greater Peace.  It is as if the Universe around us is attuned to those seeking Peace and rushes to help us in the most amazing of ways.  When we are seeking Peace, even before we have arrived at Peace in some area of our lives, there is help.  We simply have to be silent and take that help in, which comes vibrationally from entering into Silence.

Help can come from many other ways as well.  We can become renewed and more peaceful by taking a swim, by working in the garden, by seeing a good friend, by watching an inspirational movie or by creating something lovely.  These ways of connecting with positive energy can also very helpful to us at times when seeking Peace.  However, in certain areas of our lives, where we are stuck in old energy, old patterns and old ways of thinking, we need a higher knowing , a higher connection with Divine Energy.

The process of seeking Peace is one that is most powerfully undertaken with Divine Partnership in all its many forms.  That is because, there is an Infinite Knowing way beyond our human knowing which kicks in when we make an intention to seek Peace.  When we first make that commitment, or set that intention to seek Peace, we don’t have a clear vision of why we are out of Peace, why we need Peace, what we are thinking, feeling and doing which is at odds with Peace.  That knowing comes to us in Silence, if we enter into it regularly.

This is a best kept secret. Within the Silence is the deep Knowing that is the key to lasting Peace.  For when entering Silence, we leave our outer roles, concerns, responsibilities, thoughts, lists, and self-judgments outside of that time and space.  With some practice, we are more and more our own true selves in Silence.  We can more easily “free-float” in that Silence. Then the contrast between that sense of Peace in Silence and our daily, outer experiences of being out of balance make themselves increasingly known to us.  Without some experience of “letting it all go”, as one experiences in meditative Silence, where would we learn about the feeling of Peace in our own experience?

Take a few moments in the beginning of your day to simply be still and “know that I am God”.  Whatever your experience is will be perfect.  Even if there is a swirling cacophony of things to do, places to go or people to see in that first effort, it is a beginning.  If you have already had experience with Silence try expanding your time a few minutes or simply try to be more accepting of the experience you have in that time of Silence.  Silence is a gift to ourselves and it is within this journey that we find Peace that passes all understanding.  Begin with opening the Silent space with the Highest I AM/Divine Oneness/God energy of the Universe.  You will be in good hands this way.