Tuesday, August 24, 2010

It's About Faith

I pray a lot.  I always have, since I was little.  It's become so much a part of my life now that it's almost like hunger, I feel the need.  The amazing thing about prayer now is that I get answers.  Not always and not complete solutions, but I get nudges in the right direction. 

I've recently had a very profound prayer experience and while I would love to share it with the world I don't yet have the words for it.  Let's just say I felt/saw/intuited/became aware of something I've never experienced before.  I have always believed that as humans, we have so many abilities we don't use.  I think we wall-off psychic ability out of fear of exposure and vulnerability.  I think we forget our intrinsic connection to everything in the tumult of daily life.  I think we lose faith to the machine of complacency.  I am so grateful that I've not lost this.

I'm not sure why I have always had such a strong and abiding faith in God.  From Catholic upbringing, through Baptist churches, through general Christianity, through Wicca straight into the Witch I am today, my belief in and connection to God have not waned a bit.  To me this is the seed of faith.  That even as a child, when I was aware that the things the church said were not true to my life, I still believed in God.  I must have had some borrowed wisdom then to have known that God did not belong to the church, that God is in our hearts and everywhere. 

Over the course of my life, while my connection stayed strong, my understanding of Deity grew and changed.  Obviously I no longer think of God as a male.  I believe Source is indefinable and genderless, but to make prayer easier on my little human brain, I choose to focus on the God and Goddess as balanced polarities and a complete whole.  I have never believed in being "judged" by God, only that our lives lead us down the course we choose to take.  When awful things happen, some people get angry at God, as if this could have been avoided and they can't understand why God (who they heard was great and good) would allow them to be in such pain.  What people don't take into consideration is that we are all here to learn.  If a bad thing happens to you, it is not necessarily a result of something you did wrong in the past.  That happens, we sew the consequences of our actions into the fabric of our futures.  But often things happen simply because they must.  They become our challenges and it's up to us to decide how to grow through them.  These are the worst, and maybe most common, times to turn our backs on Deity. 

So back to my amazing prayer experience.  I had to ask myself why I was shown this, why I received this gift.  What had I done to deserve this?  I have not been an avid studier of meditation, I have not committed myself to diligent prayer.  It took a friend to shine some light on it for me.  She told me that I've earned this path through trust.  It took a minute but that started to ring true.

Over the past few years, I've prayed a lot about finding my path.  I'm so shocked and saddened by the state of the world and it hurts me so deeply.  I've been begging for a way to help everyone.  I've continually given my life up to Goddess (God, Source...) and offered to do any work that will help.  I've said I don't care what I do, as long as I can make a difference, make something right.  I can't say that I can see what that work will be, but I do feel as if I've been heard.  I feel that my path is opening for me and I can start this work now.  I have to keep reminding myself- how many times do I have to quote this?- to BE the change.  If I am praying in rapture, if I am confident and believe in the power of Love, if I am positive and believe we can fix this, then those beliefs may just migrate into other open minds.

I don't think I have a point in this post.  Maybe it's this: prayer works.  Another thing I've learned recently: we can keep anything out of our lives by not being open to it.  If we JUST ALLOW, amazing things will happen. You would be surprised.  That message- just allow- came to me in prayer a few months ago while I was fretting over something I had to let go of.  I surrendered my armor and told Goddess it was up to her what happened, that I would not get in my own way.  She delivers quickly! 

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing a beautiful experience. Your faith is strong and wonderful.
    Hence the path is placed before you.

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  2. What a beautiful, insightful and sincere post.

    I am so glad you seem to have received a special response to your prayers. I share that faith with you. My prayers never go unanswered. Though I don't always like what I hear, I know the lessons are there to guide me.

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  3. YogaSavy- Thank you! The way you express your beautiful path inspires me!

    Myrna- It's so important for people to acknowledge that, if we don't like the answer, it doesn't mean there wasn't one.

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