Most people simply underestimate the power of prayer. If you don’t believ in God, you can think of this as summoning the power of the Way through your inexorable connection to it. God, Love, the Way – whatever you want to refer to this HIGHER POWER as – tapping your connection to and experiencing a revelation from this SOURCE has unimaginably greater capacity to transform us than we realize.
The trick is this: Love does not come uninvited. True love will not inflict itself on anyone. True love waits patiently for us to invite it into our lives. If we don’t invite it to help us, it is our free will to suffer alone.
When plagued by guilt, grief, depression, darkness or despair, our minds may quickly turn towards escape strategies. Before reaching for drugs, a drink, food or the Internet or whatever your vice may be, simply try saying the following prayer wholeheartedly, because it can work instantly:
I must have chosen wrongly, because I am not at peace.
I made the choice by myself, but I can also choose otherwise.
I want to choose otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong choices if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to choose for God for me.
If you are in absolute need, a shorter version of this prayer can simply be to say, “GOD TAKE OVER.”
For sufferers, the seed of alcoholism and all manner of afflictions and addictions is unresolved guilt and grievances – dark shadowy figures in the deep recesses of our minds which haunt us. What makes these dark figures particularly difficult to deal with is how much they threaten us and our peace of mind. We may know these dark thoughts, feelings an memories cry out for forgiveness, but we recoil from them. We simply cannot handle these powerful emotions alone.
We need some Greater Source of Love to illuminate these dark places in the recesses of our minds and help us to summon enough love to forgive. As we raise each dark thought to the light of this Great Love, we discover that what we thought unsalvageable still carries the spark of the divine.
This way of seeing, is called “Divine witnessing” and is a crucial step in discovering God.