Last Sunday, the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA) meeting centered on the 11th step:
“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
Some of the shares at the meeting were about how we, as individuals who were hurt emotionally or physically as children, stopped trusting in an all-powerful or loving God. With good reason many ACAers either lost trust or had it severely limited. This makes it very difficult for us to take our hands off the wheel and trust God’s navigation skills.
Fortunately, for me, most of my father’s “brutality” manifested in my adolescence and into my adulthood and it was all emotional abuse. As a result, I think I was able to retain some trust which helped me to pursue a faith journey.
Fast forward to the present, I utilize two different types of prayer to connect with my Higher Power. I refer to them as formal prayer and active prayer.
Formal prayer is what I do in the morning on my yoga mat. It’s the things I say under my breath before going onstage or when I am in the car on the way to an important business meeting or when I’m about to enter into a challenging relationship dialogue.
Active prayer is what it sounds like. When I’m talking or listening to Beth, interacting with cashiers, waitresses, teachers, students, writing an email or just walking in the woods, it’s the quality of connection I bring to each of those experiences. In all cases, it’s an opportunity for unconditional love or in today’s mindfulness parlance – kindness without judgment.
IMHO, the Divine isn’t just wanting us to get down on our knees in humility, though that’s a fine way to practice giving up control and honor Spirit. I believe that the other and perhaps more important way to be with God is to walk, talk and act as a loving being.
This allows me to forgive myself for not being 100% focused on God as an entity all day long, a goal I would fail at 99% of the time! Instead, a belief in Active Prayer puts me in the mindset to “be the change you want to see in the world” and to feel like I have acted on my faith and my values. It gives me a way of being a living, loving actor on the world stage.
Most of the people I know do this regularly. All day long and almost everywhere I travel, I am greeted with mostly genuine, gentle, simple kindness. Yes – there are some that are having a tough day (or year) who project anger and the like, but those are usually hurt souls, people who need our kindness even more.
Today, for example, we encountered a woman who was quite brusque and immovable while we went back and forth over email. Truly, we felt like we were being brutalized.
No one likes to be disrespected, but here’s the thing: as soon as we met this person in the flesh she was easy to get along with and pleasant. Evidently, she is not practiced being kind in the digital sphere as she is in person. Or, she was having a truly bad moment and got emotionally activated.
It took me awhile, but I was able to regulate my feelings and actively connect with her. I know how to do this because I have met thousands of people – including some in my own family – who have challenged me regularly for my entire life. I’ll bet many of you do this, too. It’s not brain science, but it is emotional intelligence.
I think God’s will for me is to continue on this path. He or She keeps challenging me and it feels like I’m getting a PhD in connectivity. I’m okay with that. The tuition is free and the reward is serenity.
