God, teach us to love and forgive ourselves so that we may better love and forgive others and do Your work well…
Category Archives: Prayer
Learning To Pray
I remember kneeling down in the chapel up North to take a 3rd Step and hoping that I’d be able to connect deeply with the prayer. Don’t get me wrong, the prayers in the Big Book are beautifully written, but they aren’t written by me. I realized that if prayer was going to work on a daily basis, if it was going to access this Power that existed, then it would have to be much more personal. Prayers that were written 2000 years ago are lovely, but they’re not exactly our ‘language’, so to speak. So I started praying in my own language, in my own voice, using my own words. And I don’t attach all sorts of rules to my prayer. I don’t need to be clean before praying, or only pray on a special mat, or only pray in church, or make sure to pray before a certain meal, on a certain day, in a certain way. If you want to pray in the shower, on the toilet, or in front of a urinal, go for it. And make it your own.
God, please keep me out of my fucking head today. God, please give me the power to walk through this exhaustion and get my ass to work. God, please help me not freak out on this Masshole driver. God, please give me the patience to talk to this annoying person. God, teach me how to meditate. God, help me to think one thought at a time. God, help me to be more honest. God, help me walk through this fear and make this amends. God, be with me as I go to work with this sponsee. God, teach me to better love and forgive myself so that I may better love and forgive others and do Your work well. God, help me to let go of my fear, anger and resentment… and instead live by Your principles of honesty, love, compassion, tolerance, courage and strength.
And for others:
God, please give this sponsee the power and willingness to take Steps thoroughly so he may find You. God, please embrace this relative and teach them to love and respect themselves. God, I pray for this annoying person I resent to have everything I want for myself – happiness, love, joy, abundance, health and inner peace. God, help me to be willing to go to any lengths to grow spiritually so that I may better serve You. God, please help me to think about others more often. God, please teach me how to better serve others. God, please bring the opportunity to help someone…
Watch out for that last one. I guarantee you that praying for the opportunity to help someone will work every time. It’s an unselfish prayer, and these are by far the most powerful. My sponsor once said that God isn’t Santa Claus. I wish we could embrace that truth on a macro-religious level.
God, teach me how to pray…
Pray For Those We Resent
What happens if we write inventory but a resentment continues to haunt us?
Pray for that person. I suggested this to someone who my wife and I were trying to help and her response was, “I’m not praying for that bitch! I pray that she rots in fucking hell!”
She relapsed about two weeks later, becoming delusional once again.
If you can’t pray for someone whom you resent, then you probably aren’t cut out for the Steps. If we don’t have the guts or the courage or the willingness to grow spiritually, than relapse is inevitable. Swallowing our pride and ego and anger is a sign of maturity, but a refusal to mature and evolve will surely lead to failure. We will relapse, cause more pain to others, and eventually leave behind an unresolved life after a premature death.
From Alcoholics Anonymous, p.552:
“If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.”
When we pray for others in this way, we harness the power and willingness necessary to diffuse our anger and judgement. Trust me, letting go is pure and total freedom.
God, please give me the courage and willingness to pray for those I resent…
God Isn’t Santa Claus
What is prayer? And why doesn’t selfish prayer work? I was taught that prayer is supposed to be an unselfish action of humility that grants us access to God, to something greater. It can open up a telephone line between me and Power. When I’m engaged in selfish thought, word or action, I am shut off from any connection to God. That is why selfish prayer doesn’t work. We cannot reach or connect to God when engaged in selfishness.
Early in recovery, sure I prayed for myself. But it wasn’t for cars, money, or a promotion. It was for the willingness to walk through a fear I was having, or the patience to make an amends to someone difficult, or the power to walk through my exhaustion and get myself to work. I had to pray for these things to 1) get better, and 2) to become more useful to God and to others.
But as we continue to grow up and get better, we learn to pray unselfishly. Generally, unselfish prayer isn’t directed toward self anymore. We start praying for others. We pray for others to have joy, peace, happiness, love, courage, strength, prosperity, and God in their lives. Sure I sometimes do this for selfish reasons. I pray for someone whom I resent to have everything I want for myself. I do this to relieve me of the resentment, and that of course, is selfish. But ridding ourselves of resentment is also unselfish in the sense that it cleans us and allows to us then be more useful.
I still need to pray for myself at times. I pray for help being more honest, more tolerant, more willing to grow spiritually. I pray to become a better man. But you should be able to feel it in your gut if your prayer is purely selfish and therefore wrong. If we find ourselves praying for something to feed our ego or pride, we should feel that it is wrong. And we should feel shut off from Spirit. When we pray unselfishly, there is an immediate internal shift. Sure it may be subtle, but we should feel a quietness, a calmness, a humility, a connection. We have officially tapped in.
God, teach me how to pray unselfishly…
Rushing Out
Addicts shouldn’t be waking up and rushing out of the door first thing in the morning. If I don’t wake up and take some time to pray, breathe, be still, read some passage… the rest of my day is a total, utter disaster. The days I rush out are the days that drivers cut me off sending me into a rage, the days creditors call and accuse me of being a deadbeat, the days that I cut myself and have to turn around and drive home to bandage myself up, leaving me late and stressed out to some appointment. Those are the days that I cop resentments about everything because everything pisses me off, the days my mind starts racing again and I feel myself going nuts, the days that remind me how NOT better I really am.
On the other hand, when I remember to wake up and stop first before speeding out of the door, the day is entirely different. It’s almost like magic. I just have to remember to get grounded and connected before subjecting myself to the endless noise of the world. Trust me, addicts need peace and quiet as much as anybody. I don’t care if you live in the city or in the middle of nowhere, alcoholics and drug addicts usually have a much lower tolerance for too much WORLD, if you will. We need to buckle up and tune in before we go out for the day.
But why? Why is it that when I forget to pray in the morning does the rest of my day blow up right before my eyes? Conversely, how is it that I can better handle life and the stresses that smack me in the face when I stop and pray first? Well, I guess because prayer works if I’m not praying selfishly. But there’s more to it. Stopping and praying helps me to let go. It literally changes the chemistry in my brain so that I’m not solely relying on my will and my screwed up head to guide me through the day. It allows God’s will to take my hand, which helps me to instinctually know what to do next and how to do it. I realize that sounds pretty fluffy but, like anything, it’s hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it.
For sure, there are two ways to get through life. One is the addict’s way and it is filled with struggle, chaos and failure. We are always butting heads with something, attracting conflict and running into bad luck. Nothing really works out living life this way. And sure by exerting my will and trying to run and control my life, I may achieve great success. But am I really successful? Am I really succeeding if I am void of one, fundamental thing – peace? So it’s either the addict’s way (the way of the Self) or it’s God’s way (or whatever you want to call it. Doesn’t matter.) One way is frantic. The other is much more sane and mellow.
God, help me remember to stop, be still, and listen to You before rushing out in the morning…