You may not know this about me, but I was trained as a Science of Mind Practitioner at the Agape International Spiritual Center. I’ve been steeped in the New Thought teachings of affirmative prayer. Once I learned the power of prayer, no matter how low and desperate I felt, I kept praying. Prayer works.
I prayed so many times to simply be loving, to resist being mean and unkind. I truly was willing to let go of the past forever and I’ve been amazed at the miraculous healing transformation. That’s why I teach prayer as foundational to everything that offer.
A Course in Miracles tells us that “prayer is the medium of miracles.” It says, “Prayer is a way offered by the Holy Spirit to reach God.” And “reaching” God, that connection, heals our mind, and transforms our lives.
Prayer is often misunderstood, but ACIM is very clear, “Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving. It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness.”
For so long I really struggled with resistance and reluctance. I had a deep desire to be able to share spirituality as a minister, teacher and counselor, but I still had a deep sense of unworthiness that got in my way. Fortunately, I prayed A LOT and I found the way out of that unworthiness and now it is the foundation of what I share in all of my offerings. It’s the reason why I write daily inspiration and why I’ve been recording a new prayer and posting it each day for 17 years now.
I amaze myself sometimes! 17 years!
Prayer works. Spiritual practice heals.
Spiritual practice is more than a few minutes a day, it’s how we live our life.
Spiritual practice is an active practice of non-judgment, which is what true forgiveness is
And yet, so many times I would pray for healing, but then not allow it. I would block the healing insights, the inspiration of Love, the clear guidance. I’d block all that I’d prayed for with my judgmental and unkind thoughts.
Many of us have a willingness for healing, but still, we don’t allow it. We pray to receive, and then don’t actually allow ourselves to receive because of that ancient guilt and unworthiness.
Our own Higher Holy Spirit Self will give us all the healing we need if we allow it, but instead we treasure our judgments and opinions and build little altars in our heart and mind to keep them right in front of us, gathering evidence to try to support the case that they are worthwhile.
I finally realized that I was blocking my answered prayer by ruminating on my hurts and keeping the blocks to Love alive in my heart. I was feeding the fire of my Self-destruction, but I didn’t know it.
I thought that if I could hold onto my resentments and never forget the past hurts that I’d somehow be protected from future hurts. I dedicated so much energy to trying to protect myself, never realizing that it was those active resentments and regrets that were hurting me now.
A Course in Miracles tells us that we have no actual problems. It’s the incorrect perception of an imaginary problem. It has no power unless we believe it. When we believe we’re no longer unified with our Creator and that’s why we think we have a problem, and because we think it, we feel it and because we feel it, we believe it and on and on. That’s why we believe in punishment. We punish ourselves and we punish others.
This intense sense of separation began with a tiny mad idea. It began with a crazy thought that wasn’t even true. What was that thought? I believe it was some version of “better than and less than.” Without the belief in better than and less than, separation thinking would have died out. If we didn’t like comparison so much it would have died out.
In our Masterful Living community we say, “compare and despair.”
Forgiveness is the way out of all of this. It’s the only way out and it works. Forgiveness has literally saved my life. Forgiveness is letting go of the meaning I made of things. It’s letting go of the belief in better than and less than. I prayed thousands of times to forgive everything and it continues to work.
I prayed to forgive everything in all directions of time and space.
I prayed to forgive what I could remember I’d been offended by and what I didn’t.
True forgiveness is developing the ability to really practice the ACIM lessons. Lesson 25 helped me so much. “I don’t know what anything is for.” If I’ve gotten so lost in the tiny mad idea of better than and less than that my perspective is completely off, how can I know what anything is for? If I’m upset, I must have decided wrongly.
A lot of people say they’d like to forgive, but they don’t actually mean it. What they really mean is, I’d like to be free of this pain AND hold onto my judgments about what happened. That’s not forgiveness. That’s a fantasy of forgiveness.
When I first began teaching forgiveness workshops, in fact, in the very first workshop I ever did back in 2000, I learned a lot from the people who attended. One of the primary reasons that people were coming to my workshops or to a counseling session with me was that they had forgiven, but they didn’t feel free. They hadn’t actually forgiven, but they’d said they had. If they had truly forgiven they would have felt free.
So often I heard stories from one wonderful person after another who told me that they’d forgiven, but they were still so bothered and upset about what happened. I heard things such as, “my father molested me when I was a child. I have forgiven him so many times. I really just want to move on, but it still bothers me and I can’t seem to get free. Why can’t I let go?”
In a very real sense, it doesn’t matter why.
Our Higher Holy Spirit Self knows precisely why. Let’s commune with the Higher Holy Spirit Self by the means of prayer and simply ask Spirit to lift the burden from us. That’s what Jesus tells us in ACIM. He asks that we stop trying to do everything ourselves and actually ALLOW the healing to happen.
I learned HOW to ALLOW the healing.
I’m very practical. I’ve had enough of BS. I really don’t wish to read a lot of books and gather more information. I’m truly focused on healing my mind and sharing with others helps me to “get it” more clearly. I love joining with others. I love being the two or more gathered in the name and the nature of Christ. The technology we have today allows us to do this.
With the technology we have we can transcend time and space to pray together and to join together.
PRAYER POWER STARTS MONDAY! Learn the Power of Prayer! If you’d like to learn to have prayer as YOUR power tool that you can use at any time, if you’d like to build a MIGHTY trust and faith in Spirit then check out my Prayer Power class that starts on Monday, April 22. Four POWERFUL classes. Click here for more details.
TODAY – Sundays With Spirit, our FREE online service is today and Dov Fishman is our speaker. I hope to see you on ZOOM! Click here to learn more and register if you’re not already. Of course, there’s no charge and ALL are welcome! Register now to get the zoom link. I’ll see you there!
