There’s a spiritual maxim which tells us that ‘we always get what we ask for.’ It’s a tenet of the law of attraction. It rings a bit like scripture, and it is, but this philosophy looks at the phenomenon of prayer from a different angle. Bluntly put, it means that if we are experiencing something today, whether good or bad, whether we realize it or not, it’s because we somehow asked for it yesterday. That seems like a harsh accusation to lay on someone who’s experiencing grief or hardship. Why would we ask for problems? The implication being that we are a failure at even daydreaming?
Of course not. We never ask for sorrow. We have simply been trained to trust it more than joy.
Our culture has a tendency to promote a paradigm of service to others at the expense of self. That second part is the flaw. ...at the expense of self. That’s the part which only ends up encouraging a polar opposite of “service to others” to occur: The exploitation of others to the benefit of self. The more we teach people that we cannot truly be of service to others without some large sacrifice, the further we drive people toward looking out for only themselves.
Service to others is essential for our species. It has been taught since the first days of sentient humanity. But along the way, that thread has been pulled here and there. Plucked from its natural warp and woof by an outside force, bending it unnaturally for a time.
Allow me a sidebar thought. Prayer is not exclusively metaphysical. For those who do not believe in anything conclusively regarding the mystical or miraculous, this is for you. Prayer is just a loaded term we use to describe the way we mindfully apply our conscious thoughts toward an idea or emotion. For some that idea is God. But that is not the point of this discussion.
In practical terms, when we are directing our thoughts toward something it becomes more noticeable to us. We are paying attention, literally attending, to it. We learn faster because our attention strengthens our understanding of it. We uncover the finer details of how to incorporate it into our lives. We naturally experience more of it as a result. That is the technical function of the act of prayer. It is off limits to neither atheism nor agnosticism.
This is where we start to wonder what we are really asking for, aka subliminally attending to, on a daily basis and from what part of ourselves are we asking? Does our mouth or conscious mind do all our asking? I would argue that we ask with every part of our existence, both known and unknown, conscious and subconscious. If we truly do possess an eternal higher self, I’m sure it’s a part of what’s doing the asking. If we do not, that changes little. We will always experience more of what we’re paying attention to.
Winding back on the thread of service to others at the expense of self we see that we have been trained to feel guilty for thinking of ourselves. We forget there is enough love in a grandmother for all her grandchildren, no matter how many. It is not a vessel one can empty. The same goes for simultaneous service to both ourselves and others. They are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, interdependent. A lack of awareness of this poisons us.
Remember the golden rule which states that we should ‘Do unto others as we would have done to us?’ We say it but live only the first three words. Do unto others, but with an underlying assumption that it should benefit them in some way that excludes our own. We forget that we are the sustaining part of the golden rule. The fuel in the tank. We are the “us.” But as the “us,” we have a responsibility to know ourselves first in order to sustainably serve others.
Some early religious thinking which declares us to all be unworthy, unfit, unclean and perpetually sinful has infected the way humanity thinks of itself to this day, religious or not. We have been taught to be ashamed of ourselves, of our bodies, of our sexuality, even our love. How do you think that affects us, or the way it makes us subconsciously frame our desires?
What did you “ask” for yesterday? Did you ask for comfort yet perhaps subconsciously feel you are undeserving of comfort? Did you ask for fulfillment but think you have no right to want it? We don’t consciously invite sorrow upon us. It has been invited upon us by the dark thoughts of others in our history. But they are dead. Good. We are alive. Also good. We have the capacity to change our inner narrative.
This is not something that will be solved tomorrow. It’s not an action item on a task list we may someday check off. This is a direction to consciously face. For life. It will not prevent sorrow. But it will hold your hand while you go through it. It will not prevent problems. But it just may give you the presence of mind to solve them with grace.
we rarely see a lime-red-baby blue colored volkswagon beetle until we buy one. Then for some strange "miraculous" reason, we seem to see them everywhere. Are there more of them, likely not, but what we are most aware of becomes our life reality. Sadly however we are also reactionary individuals, reacting to what life throws our way inhibiting the need to tend to self. You can't give what you don't have. I've always said if you were stranded on a deserted island with your 3 kids, who do you feed a little first. the answer, yourself. Feeding yourself insures you are full enough to be able to feed others. xo
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