Whenever I get ready to sink into an affirmative prayer, what is also called a treatment, I first glance to my outer surroundings. I don’t know why I do this and I’ve learned not to question why in such matters. But I believe this practice is a simple way for me to move into the first of the five steps of a treatment, which is to acknowledged that god is everywhere present.
Today as I went to move into a treatment, I looked out the window and noticed the wind. I can hear the wind, making whooshing noises as it moves around out there. So I knew it was a windy day. But I saw the trees moving around and thought, “oh look! God is dancing in the trees!”
And then I moved into the second stage of a treatment, oneness, which is where I acknowledge that if god is present everywhere, it is also present in me, and so my next thought was, “oh look! God is dancing in MY consciousness!”
And then my next thought was the third step of treatment, which is to state my word. And so I know that God is dancing in my consciousness, and always has been, but today I feel it. I feel that glorious presence of spirit moving through me as divine right and perfect energy. I feel It as the ideas that are coming to me, from both within me and from other people. I know this God stuff dancing in my consciousness is the result of fully feeling the feels of loss, fully appreciating the healing journey, fully knowing the gratitude for that has been and all that will be, and I also know that my every intention is now come to fruition. All those beautiful ideas coming from the dance of Spirit in my consciousness are now so.
And for that I am very grateful. Which is the 4th step of a treatment.
And so I release it all, except the dance part. Because I happen to love that dance and want more dancing! And so I shall dance my way through the release of my words to that law that is also dancing with incredible joy at my words, delightfully accepting them and acting upon them. Which is the 5th step of a treatment.
Which immediately reminded me of that old saying, something about if wishes were fishes. So I googled it. (Don’t you just love google?). Here’s what came up: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a proverb and nursery rhyme, first recorded about 1628 in a collection of Scottish proverbs, which suggests if wishing could make things happen, then even the most destitute people would have everything they wanted.” And then this was also there: “K.C. Jones says when someone would wish for something, it used to be cute to reply: ‘And if wishes were fishes we'd have some fried; And if wishes were horses, beggars might ride.’ "
And this led me to a story I would like to share with you.
First of all, a bit of history: my mom was the one who taught me about the wishbone in the turkey. She would clean those wishbones and stash them someplace until they dried out, then proudly produce one, ask me to pull one end while she held the other end, and if it broke off in my favor, I got to make a wish. Somehow she managed to arrange it so that it always broke off in my favor. At least that’s the way I remember it.
Anyway, today is the day after thanksgiving and I am now prepping for annual round of turkey soup and turkey noodle casserole and of course, turkey sandwiches. And I found the wishbone.
I also had a question posed to me a few days ago by a wise friend, upon learning that it was my birthday. He asked, “so what are your intentions for this next trip around the sun?”
Now, my wise friend is a Science of Mind minister, like me, so I knew precisely what he was asking. Because in our world, we know that a setting of an intention is actually an affirmative prayer. And as I voiced to him my intentions, which I had previously voiced to no one else, I asked myself if I was really ready for this? Because in my world, this setting of intentions stuff is powerful. And the answer came back, yeah, I’m ready. Also in our world: our prayers tend to be of the affirmation type, not the beseeching type. In other words, we don’t ask a god or the universe or whatever outside of ourselves to please do this for us. We instead know that as we are, as Ernest Holmes put it, unique and individualized manifestations of god, we can simply speak our word and know.
We actually have a formulaic 5 step prayer for this stuff. Yep, an affirmative prayer.
Not a wish. Not a goal. Not a resolution. But an intention. There are very real differences between these things, which, by the way, is why I don’t do new year’s resolutions.
Back to the prayer:
Here’s that 5 step affirmative prayer in a nutshell: God is, I Am, It is done, Thanks, Bye!
Now, because I’ve been doing affirmative prayer since god was a child, I can do the shortened version of this thing and put feeling behind it and know.
But let me break it down a bit.
In Science of Mind classes, we are given an acronym for this formula. By the way, this is basic foundational Science of Mind stuff and it is taught in all beginning classes, because everything else basically builds upon affirmative prayer. Oh, and while I’m here, we sometimes call affirmative prayer “treatment.” So if you ever experience a Science of Mind person asking you if you have a treatment request, what they are really asking you is if you have an affirmative prayer request.
So here we go:
R U R T R?
Are You Ready to Receive?
Five steps.
The first one is Recognition. I recognize God. Now, you can flesh out this step in whatever way appeals to you. The key here is to move into a feeling space with it. This isn’t just intellectual heady stuff. Thought plus feeling equals power and when we do an affirmative prayer, we begin with this first step recognizing the existence of a god in whatever form, and we begin to feel stuff by doing that. I tend to flesh out this step with things like God is all good, all the time. I might add some qualities of spirit as we like to call them. God is love, god is power, god is peace, god is joy. And for good measure, I usually add that god is everywhere present.
Which leads me to the next step: Unification. God and I, we are one. Oneness. No separation between me and god. I usually have some fun with this step. I am a godling. A little godling running around on this earth. Notice the first person singular by the way. And if you don’t know what that is, review your grammar class but basically we do this stuff in I statements. Not you and not we. There’s reasons for this which could get me way off track so I won’t go into them now. Just speak in I statements. If you are curious and want more, take the Foundations class. Let me know. I can offer that one. Anyway, back to the unification: I am a unique and individualized manifestation of spirit. (That’s from Ernest Holmes by the way). God is living and moving and breathing as and in and through me. And one of my other favorites, I am a drop in the ocean, god is the ocean. The key is to realize here that there is no separation between us. There isn’t a god out there. Only in here.
Next step: Realization. This is a fun one. I love love love this step. Because in this step I get to affirm and know and feel as if it is already true. So we state this step in the present tense (see comment about grammar), as if it is already happening. And we get to state how we are feeling about this event. So we don’t necessarily affirm the event, we affirm the feelings we will have when the event comes true. As an example, I’m going to out myself here and give you one of the intentions I stated to my friend when he asked. You are the second to hear my intention for this next year. My intention this year is to manifest a healthy, equal, romantic relationship with a wonderful partner who is open, loving, kind and has similar beliefs to me. Now, that’s pretty specific. And no, I don’t and won’t outline that in my prayer. But I do have it mind because those things lead me to the feelings I will get when this comes true: peace, joy, a sense of companionship, intimacy. So in reality I am affirming those feelings. My prayer is for those feelings to manifest within me. The rest of it, the manifestation of the perfect guy in my life at the perfect time, well let’s just say I am now in partnership with a Law that always says yes to my word. How I get there isn’t entirely up to me, although I do have some footwork to do. Like BE the partner I wish to attract. Which means I get to also BE open, loving, kind. And I get to really know what my beliefs are. So when I BE these things, I activate the law of attraction that Ernest Holmes speaks of in an ENTIRE CHAPTER in the Science of Mind textbook. So, I affirm the feelings. I BE the qualities. Notice there is no other action that needs to be taken. Although I will freely admit that sometimes I do find it necessary to do some footwork. For example, I need to work on just how open and loving I really am. Yeah, when we affirm this stuff, the first thing that usually happens is that opportunities will arise for us to take care of our own shit. Which is why I asked myself if I was truly ready to affirm this intention. I knew what I was setting myself up for. It’s good. It’s ok. I’m ready.
Then I give thanks. Express my gratitude. Because it is already done in the Law, that delights in doing precisely what I affirm, every single time.
Then I release into that Law, which basically means I let it go. It is done. I need do nothing more with it. As Eddie Watkins Jr. sings in one of his songs, you don’t bury a seed then dig it up again to see if it is sprouting. I leave it be.
And anchor: and so it is!
That’s it!
That’s the story of how I got from a wishbone to an affirmative prayer.
Hot off the press! A BRAND NEW daily reading, written just this morning! WEEHAW! And a first: for the FIRST TIME EVER I had to resort to pulling a photo off a royalty free photo site to use for my meme. Up to this point, all the photos I’ve used for my memes are mine. But I’ve never taken a photo of grapes, believe it or not. So I had to go find one. I like this one and it illustrates my point nicely.
Here’s the reading, I hope you enjoy it:
Ernest Holmes: “It has been said that we can know God only in so far as we can become God.” Gary Zukav, from Seat of the Soul: “ It is impossible for you to come full circle in this way of empowerment without prayer. It is not enough to want or to intend or to meditate. You must pray. You must talk. You must ask. You must believe. That is partnership.”
Gratitude Relaxation Altitude Peace Excellence
Eat your grapes today!
I just had a conversation with my prayer partner, during which I was voicing to her to qualities of spirit I wished to embody for today. And we realized we had the beginnings of an acronym! So we went with it and came up with GRAPE!
Now, if you remember our wonderful form of prayer called treatment, or affirmative prayer, then you might also remember that while it is perfectly ok to pray for outside stuff, my personal preference is to go within and pray to embody qualities of spirit, which then create the outside stuff.
So today I am embodying gratitude. Gratitude for all that is. For the miracle of modern medicine. For the miracle of the power of our minds to create our reality. For my surroundings, my life, my beingness. And I further embody relaxation, simply being still, and knowing. And I also reach high, into great altitude, knowing that there is always something greater in store for me. Always higher. And I feel that grand glorious sense of peace flowing through me. And I know excellence. Excellence in living through and because of spiritual principle. Excellence in embodying those qualities of spirit I just mentioned. Excellence in living. Period.
I have a bit of a routine in the mornings after I feed the critters. It always begins with meditation, then a period of self inquiry and contemplation. Lately I’ve been noticing that during my self inquiry there are a lot of teary type emotions. I’m concerned and sad about the events of the day. A peer shared that whenever another mass shooting happens, he goes into a period of reflection, rather than immediately reacting. That seemed like a good idea to me, so I did that. And I came up with a couple of ideas that I am still kicking around, as to how I want to respond, but in the meantime, I wanted to discuss this thoughts and prayers thing. Yeah, people are tired of it. As they should be. But I want to propose that perhaps it isn’t the thoughts and prayers that we are tired of, but the ways in which we think and pray. Sending thoughts and prayers is really just a bandaid, designed to temporarily make the person sending them feel better in a horrible situation. The problem is, like most bandaids, they only work for a little while and do little to address true healing. I believe that if we keep thinking in the ways we have always thought, we will keep getting what we’ve been getting. We need to change our thinking, both as individuals and in society as a whole. And I believe prayer is something entirely different than asking for something from something outside of ourselves, in other words a beseeching to an outside entity, and when viewed the way I am going to propose, this type of prayer can lead to healing and action, which is what is needed. So, prayer, I propose, is not a beseeching to an outside entity. I believe in, and teach, New Thought, which teaches that prayer changes the mind of the one doing the praying, and that if we can change our thinking, we change our lives. This. This is what thoughts and prayers are about, or could be about. Prayers are affirmations, not asks. Furthermore, they are never directed outward. In other words, I don’t pray to crystals and candles, the great spirit out there, the guy in the sky, the universe or any other outside thing. Yes, I love my candles. I use them a lot to set the tone for things, or change the ambiance of a room. I almost always have a rock in my pocket because they remind me of wonderful things. But I never think that rock, crystal or candle or universe or great spirit or universe is going to do something because I ask it. That is not what prayer is for. Prayer is me affirming that I change my thinking so that I can better deal with what life is presenting to me. Because that is really, in the overall scheme of things, the only thing I can change. Once I change that, then I can venture out into the world and take action in the areas in which I wish to take action. Whether it is to work to educate people about racism and misogyny or host a talking circle or do a workshop or a retreat. Life happens from the inside out, always. So I go within first, get in touch with what I am really feeling on any given day and proceed from there. Sometimes I need to allow the sadness, the grief, the anger. We cannot go into spiritual bypass with that stuff, for it gets locked up inside and festers and then pops out in inelegant and sometimes ugly ways. But I’ve learned those kinds of feelings will not kill me. Once I am through those feelings, then I can inquire of myself, asking what in my thinking wants or needs to be different so that I can live even more successfully than I already do? And I always have to add this, because for some strange reason when I’m speaking to people about this, 99% of the time they go to a place of shame behind what was. No. What was worked, there is nothing wrong with it. But life is always for expansion and growth, and the only way we can do that is to change our thinking. No shame, no blame, just ever expanding and changing thinking to accommodate life’s desire to be more. So, prayer changes the mind of the one doing the praying. Today I joyfully affirm that I am always using life’s events to go within and change my thinking in the ways that result in my expansion. And I affirm that for you too.
