by Ross Bishop
Why do we pray? Sometimes, we pray to get help for things we have no control over, like the illness of a friend or other things outside our purview. Then too, sometimes we pray for relief from situations we have created. When we bring our beliefs into interactions they can turn them into situations, sometimes even into conflicts (either internally or externally).
When we pray over situations like that we are asking for help to fix something we are unwilling to address ourselves. We don’t want to look at it that way, but we pray for a relationship or financial abundance while at the same time sabotaging what we say we want because of our deeply held belief that we don’t deserve these things. We pray for health, while at the same time, we ravage our bodies with stress and tension.
Because we have free will, things can get a bit confusing. The Creator can’t or won’t interfere with our free will. So, you ask for X, while at the same time, perhaps without realizing it, you are pushing it away with a conflicting belief.
Your prayers are always answered. The Universe always responds to our true desires. Regardless of your expressed desire, if your inner belief is contrary to what you are asking for, The Universe’s only alternative is to reflect back to you the beliefs you hold that conflict with what you say you want. In an effort to help you, it creates conflict, either within yourself or with others, around your beliefs, so that you can become aware of them and change them. Then you can have what you wish.
If you want a loving relationship, for example, but are hanging on to feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness, or shame, The Universe will create situations (conflicts) to bring your issues to your attention. It is important to remember that none of your beliefs can be true, so in bringing them to your attention, The Universe is doing you a great service. It is just not in the way you might like.
In the moment, it doesn’t feel like help, but The Universe is doing the only thing it can under the circumstances – because it cannot disturb your free will. Ideally, then, being put on notice, you will take the opportunity to address your beliefs. But from the human perspective, having things this way can be a real pain!
Most of the time we feel cheated by life. You have asked God for love and support and you have received difficulties. Projecting out the reflected image is saying to life, “If you hadn’t brought this to me, I wouldn’t have to deal with it.” The truth is that you don’t want to deal with your beliefs and the woundedness and pain that lies underneath them, and you are looking for an easy out. So you go through your days wondering, “Where is God?” “Where is the one who says he loves me?”
We want to be rescued rather than having to deal with our stuff. And suffering never feels good. But The Universe has this unpleasant principle called persistence. Pushing the lesson away only guarantees that it will come around later in another form and with even greater intensity. You can reject the blue one today but that means that you’ll get a bigger green one tomorrow. And the more you ignore, the more the intensity increases. Eventually, you get hit by The Universal two-by-four. It’s how the Creator ensures that you will someday get what He is asking of you. Remember, dealing with this stuff is why you came here in the first place! Therefore, it behooves you to take this seriously and deal with it NOW!
You cannot have whatever you say you want until you take out your garbage. That is The Universe’s way of honoring your desire. And it does honor your real intention. But as a result, you feel abandoned, rejected and unworthy. That is why so many prayers seem to go unanswered. If God just gave you what you wanted, you wouldn’t have to take out your garbage! Everything would be fine. Remember Janis Joplin’s, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”
To continue the analogy, if you don’t take out your garbage, eventually it starts to stink, and then you will have lost the option of whether to deal with it or not. Your gifts are lessons, but remember what Winston Churchill said, “I am always willing to learn, but I do not always like being taught.”
The healthy alternative is to accept that it is your stuff and address the inner woundedness and your false beliefs and change them. That’s easy to say but can be challenging to do. I have written two books on the subject Healing The Shadow and Journey to Enlightenment. (You can find them on my website: www.rossbishop.com.)
Doing this puts you into better alignment with The Universe, and it moves you closer to the center. And, being centered allows The Universe’s vast resources to better support you. In that place, you connect to the Creator’s infinite wisdom and strength arises spontaneously from within instead of having to survive on your own. You are not required to change today, but until you address this issue, it is not going to go away, and later is always more painful than today.
Although we generally respond by trying to avoid these difficulties, some cultures understand the value of working with what is brought to an individual. In Tibetan Buddhism, “appropriate difficulties” are considered of such great value that a prayer actually asks for them. It goes:
“Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be fulfilled.”
The thing is, you are going to have to do this anyway. The Creator designed LIFE to be a one-way street. There is only one way out of this dilemma and that is to deal with your beliefs. You can take a detour, but that will just cause you more pain, and your pain will eventually bring you to the truth anyway.
copyright2024@Blue Lotus Press
