wisewords
THE POWER OF PRAYER
Intimate Relationships and the Spiritual Path by Marianne Williamson
T
he common wisdom goes like this: that the myth of “some enchanted evening,” when all is awash with the thrill of connection and the aliveness of new romance, is actually a delusion… a hormonally manufactured lie. That soon enough, reality will set in and lovers will awaken from their mutual projections, discover the psychological work involved in two people trying to reach across the chasm of real-life separateness, and come to terms at last with the mundane sorrows of human existence and intimate love. In this case, the common wisdom is a lie. From a spiritual perspective, the scenario above is upside down. From a spiritual perspective, the original high of a romantic connection is thrilling because it is true. It is in fact the opposite of delusion. For in a quick moment, a gift from the gods, we are likely to suspend our judgment of the other, not because we are temporarily insane, but because we are temporarily sane. We are having what you might call a minienlightenment experience. Enlightenment is not unreal; enlightenment—or pure love—is all that is real. Enlightenment is when we see not as through a glass darkly, but truly face-to-face. What is unreal is what comes after the initial high, when the personality self reasserts itself and the wounds and triggers of our human ego form a veil across the face of love. The initial romantic high is not something to
outgrow, so much as something to earn admittance back into—this time not as an unearned gift of Cupid’s arrows, but as a consequence of the real work of the psychological and spiritual journey. The romantic relationship is a spiritual assignment, presenting an opportunity for lovers and would-be lovers to burn through our own issues and forgive the other theirs, so together we can gain re-entrance to the joyful realms of our initial contact that turn out to have been real love after all. Our problem is that most of us rarely have a psychic container strong enough to stand the amount of light that pours into us when we have truly seen, if even for a moment, the deep beauty of another. The problem we have is not that in our romantic fervor we fall into a delusion of oneness; the problem is that we then fall into the delusion of separateness. And those are the romantic mysteries: the almost blinding light when we truly see each other, the desperate darkness of the ego’s blindness, and the sacred work of choosing the light of mutual innocence when the darkness of anger and guilt descend. Marianne Williamson is an internationally noted speaker, author of 10 books, Unity Church minister and a teacher and student of A Course in Miracles. Her most recent workshops focus on the topic of Enchanted Love: Building the Inner Temple of the Sacred and the Romantic.
By Rev. Dyann Woody “Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling, arising within the mind of the one praying.” Ernest Holmes, author of the Science Of Mind describes prayer in such a way that allows the faithful to take responsibility for their own experience of life. It is clear that God does not need your prayers but rather, you do. It is incumbent upon you to be very clear on what it is you want and then to align your own heart and mind with spiritual truth. If every thought becomes a prayer, then you are creating your reality one thought at a time. There is a power for good in the universe greater than you are and you use it, but God can only do for you what she can do through you. Prayer works! To see the evidence of this, just look at your life. It will show you what you have been thinking about (or rather praying for). Although this kind of self-responsibility can be rather daunting, the good news is that the very power that seems to bind you, is also the same power that can free you. It is up to you. The power is in your hands. Rev. Dyann Woody is co-minister with her husband Michael of the Music City Center For Spiritual Living. For more information please visit their website at MCCSL.org. (Photo by Karen Will Rogers)
natural awakenings
May 2012
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