Spiritual Solutions

Have you ever had a feeling of being “at the end of your rope,” hanging on desperately, afraid to let go? If you have, then you know how uncomfortable and devastating it is.

Someone may suggest, “Get hold of yourself; get a new grip on life,” or “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” It may see like good advice, but life is not something to be gripped, to be held onto desperately to keep it from slipping away. Life has hold of you. You do not live life; life lives you. It animates you and expresses itself as you. It is living you this very moment. It will never let you go.

The “hold on for dear life” attitude leads to the kind of mental tension and physical congestion that is at the heart and root of most physical ills. The truth is that no “grip” or “knot” is needed. What is needed is the will to relax and to let go.

Tension, anxiety, fear, and “holding on for dear life” cut off the flow of the vital juices that sustain life. Life will no more, of its own volition, cease to flow through you than the Colorado River would abandon the Grand Canyon. If there is an impediment in the flow of life resulting in weakness and deterioration, it is because unconsciously you have closed off the flow by your tense desire to hang on.

You are never alone. You are not really bobbing about on the seas of life at the mercy of the winds and storms of fate and circumstance. You are a whole creature, an expression of God, completely at one with Infinite Mind, in complete unity with all life. There is no possible way you can be separated from God, any more than a wave can be separated from the ocean.

No matter what is happening in your life, fretting about the conditions never helps you nor anyone else. The apostle Paul says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom. 12:21) Don’t fight the apparent error, the injustice, the darkness. Instead, return to your own point of unity of all life. This “returning” refers to solitude and meditation. When man really believes that life is lived from within out, he will place as much emphasis on the contemplative recharging of his batteries in disciplines of prayer and meditation as he now places on eating.

It is in “returning” that we are not only able to let go; we also gain a growing ability to “let God,” or as Meister Eckhart said, “Let God be God in you.” In letting go, we remove or reduce the obstacles to the flow of Spirit and move toward the experience of the presence and activity of God within us, through us, and as us.

Jesus stresses the importance of what we might call “inner prayer.” He infers strongly that God does not force Himself into man’s consciousness, any more than air forces itself into man’s lungs. The Infinite waits patiently for the recognition and acceptance of the finite.

Jesus says, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matt. 6:6)

Man may be amazingly creative, artistic, productive, inventive, vigorous, powerful and dynamic; all this is the outpicturing or “exhalation” of his true being. But there must also be a regular period of inhalation, or else he will “come to know want.”

Most people are good “achievers” but poor “receivers.” We set our minds on the achievement of things and positions in the world. But because we do not look within for support, we do not receive the wherewithal to keep on achieving. Living beyond our spiritual means, we are overdrawn and overextended. The answer is to get involved in the discipline of solitude and meditation. And to have much success with “inner prayer,” we must cultivate “the art of letting go,” and this takes a lot of practice.

Every one of us must determine for ourselves whether we are going to go through life worrying and fretting over the challenges that come through change, or whether we are going to let the activity of the whole Spirit of God (Holy Spirit) express in and through us. Letting go and letting God is a fine art, achieved only through the discipline of practice. Fear tends to hold on, but faith lets go. Practice faith. Human love holds on, but Divine Love lets go. Practice Divine Love. “Let God be God in you.”

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
————————————————————
Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at
www.alanrowbotham.com
————————————————————

Tweet This Post

I have heard some people say that they never feel the flow of inspiration, that they never have original ideas. So, I suggest “Why not take time to get still and listen?” It’s impossible to experience the inflow of creative ideas if one constantly surrounds oneself with activity and noise and a ceaseless babble of conversation.

When we consider the word “listen” we think of listening with the ears, but you really listen with your mind. Listening connotes receiving an inward vibration or response to an outward stimulus, and it implies sensitivity to it. Vibrations are everywhere, and we can and must cultivate the ability to hear and to heed the message of a transcendent spiritual source within and in the world around us. Shakespeare points to this in As You Like It when he acknowledges the existence of “tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” And, as Emerson says, “There is guidance for everyone, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.”

In the book of Ecclesiastes we find this wise observation: “In everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven . . . a time to speak, and a time to keep silence.” In our complex way of life today, though many of us pride ourselves in the way in which we order our lives, I wonder how many of us really find the time or make the time to keep silence? Every one of us has a deep and compelling need for solitude, for quietness, but often do not realize this need.

In the Gospel of John we find a reference to “The same light that lighteth every man coming into the world.” The implication is that there is a common mind, a common source of inspiration within us all, and that each of us contains within the same fountainhead of ideas and power that is occasionally revealed by the genius. Only a few acts upon it, but the Truth is that each of us is a spiritual being with an inner potential guidance and strength. Anyone who cares to may cultivate the inner side of life, and release a tremendous potential.

We need to know that God is forever speaking to us in the form of a creative flow, and that we must cultivate the attitude of listening in prayer, in quiet meditation and silence. It is true that many turn to prayer to correct the problems of life, but there is prayer and there is prayer. For the average person, prayer is an attempt to contact an outer agency through which his experiences can be righted. His prayer may be words, form, ritual, in which there is no letting go, no stillness, no inner contact.

There is a kind of prayer that is called “The Silence.” It is inner prayer, not just a prayer of words, but a time of quiet realization, inner communion, stillness, and oneness. And the interesting thing is that all the really great people of all time have unconsciously realized that to make the journey through life solitude and silence must be practiced. All knew that occasional retreat from the surface rippling of experiences into the hidden depths of silence within is the source of the best vistas, the newest ideas, and the closest contact with the great heart of the allness of God.

There is that within you that knows your needs. Jesus said, “The Father knoweth what things you have need of even before you ask him.” And in the Old Testament we read, “Before they call, I will answer.” Has it ever occurred to you that whenever you have a need or a problem of any kind, the answer, the guidance, the help is as close to you as your inmost self? We live too much at the circumference of life. We act and react on the level of the human, the material, and the superficial. We feel strain and tension and mental and physical depletion because we are out of tune. The need is to relax and let go, to be still and know our spiritual unity is with God, to be charged and re-charged by the creative Spirit of God within us.

Man is never quite mature in a spiritual sense until he cultivates the silence, this inward stillness, until he realizes his unity with the Infinite and takes time regularly to listen to the inner voice.

Perhaps the words of prayer we say are not for God at all, but for ourselves to condition our minds and hearts to become receptive to the voice, the spirit, the feeling of the Infinite. Perhaps our words need to be directed to our errant thoughts, our tense minds, our worried hearts – to cultivate the true feeling of “letting go” so that we can truly “let God.” This requires humility, relaxation, and a complete trust in the Truth of the inward reality. We must be willing to accept the fact that our own imperfect thoughts are insufficient, and that of ourselves we can do nothing. We must make a supreme but gentle effort to get completely relaxed, and this means finding the time and the place. And we must stir up the belief that we are spiritual beings, and that when we let go, God takes over.

One important point relative to inner prayer – though we usually pray when we have a problem, we pray for help or healing or supply, the practice of the Silence has no other goal than the refreshment of spiritual breathing. Just as an electrical appliance cannot function unless it is plugged in, so man is inadequate and incomplete until he is in tune with the Presence within.

This evening, as you retire, resolve to spend the last few moments “laboring for an inner stillness.” Become relaxed and still and then quietly breathe some words, such as “There is nothing in my life but God. I live in God, and God expresses through me. Without God I can do nothing; with God I can do all things. I and the Father are one.”

Just relax; know that you too are one with the Father, that the Infinite power of the Universe is your resource, your help in every need. Just relax and accept it. If you go to sleep tonight feeling this unitive relationship with the Infinite, you will awaken in the morning feeling like a new person. If you practice this Silence every day . . . you will be a new person.

——————————————————   

Tweet This Post

It seems that people are constantly searching for something to fill whatever seems to be missing in their lives, whether it be relationships, education, experience, thrills, pleasures, food and drink, or the acquisition of all manner of things.

The basic ingredient that we are really looking for in life is the understanding that we are spiritual beings; that we come into life with the dynamic to unfold, power to release, love to express, a veritable Kingdom of Heaven to outpicture.

On occasion a prophet has appeared telling of the world within, but instead of following him into the deeper experience, man invariably has made a god of the prophet, worshipped him, built monuments to him. Thus he has been trapped in religious practice that contains no within. The missing link in traditional religion has been inner prayer.

Man has built shrines and temples, has orchestrated lavish ceremonies employing ornate accoutrements for worship; however, this has but fulfilled the human longing for pageantry and his prayer has merely satisfied a sense of duty to pray which seems without life and ineffective in healing life’s problems.

Prayer must be an effort to harness the depth potential in man in meeting life’s experiences at the circumference. Prayer should not be simply a formal act that requires a sacred place or a special sacrament.

How free is the person when he realizes that at any time he can get still and find an inner place of quiet and oneness. Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity movement, used to say, “There is a place within us where there is a church service going on all the time; we need but to enter in and listen.” In this place, the still, small voice within comes forth easily.

True prayer is inner power, the true man is the inner man; thus, the true way of prayer is inner prayer. Listen to what Jesus says of this: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” This is Jesus’ ideal of inner prayer. It is not so much words as it is realization. It might be described as communion, stillness, oneness.

Man can live out his life second-handed, leaning on others for inspiration and creativity, at the mercy of the continuous stream of outer problems, or he can live from within out. He can thereby find his own inner guide, having a first-hand and immediate experience of God. We are told that there is a spirit of man. There is that within you that knows, because there is that in you which knows itself to be the very individualization of the Infinite.

Man must start to realize that spirituality is not something to be acquired by outer search or worship, but something to be released by quiet meditation and soul reflection and self-realization.

Prayer is not an attempt to locate God, to find God; God cannot be found because God is not lost, never has been lost. Prayer is rather an effort on our part to find ourselves consciously in spiritual unity with the allness which God is. This can never be severed because we can never have existence outside of God.

Prayer is the key to realizing and releasing our inner potential; it is the key to finding inner peace and spiritual security. It is a means fo perceiving ourselves as we really are. Thus it may be said to be the key to embarking on the role of acting the part of our divinity. Prayer is listening. Any speaking of words is simply a prelude to prayer.

If we speak words but fail to listen then we are like a student arriving in the classroom, telling the teacher a thing or two, and then departing before the instruction begins. This does not mean that God tells us to do this or to do that; the voice of God is a wordless voice. We receive it through feeling and then we interpret the feeling in the words and thoughts and images of our own consciousness.

Man may have hopes and aspirations; he may have hunches or flashes of insight, but when he knows the dynamics of inner prayer he realizes that these showings reveal the inner power to produce them. The key to inner prayer is that we are not trying to change things or to do anything; we are simply trying to release, to let things be done. So we meditate on the truth, realizing that which is changeless and beyond appearance.

Reflect on your depth potential, on your spiritual reality. Then, use the great formula of divine creation - Let there be! Not there must be, or there shall be, or make there be, dear God, please – but only, Let There Be. No suggestion of effort, no strain, no hurry or force, no anxiety or doubt. Just simply, “Let there be light,” and there was light. “Let the dry land appear,” and it appeared. This is inner prayer in its most effective use.

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

—————————————————–   

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

——————————————————   

Tweet This Post