| Too Stuck to Pray |  |
By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
Prayer is a powerful way to open the heart when you are stuck in
anger, fear, self-judgment, resistance or depression. When you
can sincerely pray for spiritual help in opening your heart and
taking responsibility for your own feelings and needs, help is
there. Spirit will find some way to support you when you really
desire the help. Spiritual help may come through words that pop
into your mind, through images, feelings, dreams, or through
other people - but it will come.
However, what if you are too stuck to pray? What if you are in
resistance to opening to spiritual help, or what if you don't
believe in prayer or in God?
There are many other ways of opening the heart, but none of
them will work unless your intent - your deepest desire - is to
learn about what is loving to you and take action in your own
behalf.
There are only two intentions we can choose in any given
moment:
. To protect against pain and avoid responsibility for our own
feelings with some form of controlling or addictive behavior -
anger, compliance, resistance, withdrawal, alcohol, drugs, TV,
gambling, food, and so on.
. To learn about loving ourselves and others and to be willing to
take loving action in our own highest good.
When our intention is to protect against pain, then even prayer
can be another way to avoid responsibility for ourselves. Prayers
with the intent to control rather than learn will not be answered.
When our deepest desire is to take responsibility for our own
well-being, then many things, including prayer, will help.
If you want to move out of your stuck place and prayer just isn't
your thing or you just can't get yourself there, you may be able to
open your heart if you:
. Think about what you are grateful for
. Find a way to help someone else
. Listen to music
. Take a walk
. Spend time in nature
. Open up to a friend
. Read personal growth books or spiritual literature
. Journal
. Do a creative activity
. Dance
. Do yoga
. Attend a Twelve-Step or other support-group meeting
. Play with a child or a pet
. Get held by a loving person
. Let yourself cry and lovingly hold a doll or stuffed animal that
represents the sad part of you
. Release anger by yelling and pounding
A powerful way of moving beyond being stuck is to do the
following three-part anger process:
1. Let yourself get really angry at someone in the present
(without that person being there - you do this alone). Yell and
pound, letting yourself blame this person in detail for all your
misery.
2. Who does this person remind you of from the past - mother,
father, grandparent, sibling? Let yourself yell and pound, letting
out all your past anger and resentment.
3. Finally - and this is the most important part - let the angry child
in you yell at the adult in you for how you are not taking care of
yourself, for how you are like the people in the present and past
you yelled at, how you are creating your own misery by not
standing up for yourself, not taking loving action for yourself, and
so on. This brings you to personal responsibility and takes you
out of seeing yourself as a victim of others' choices or of the
past.
Once you understand how you are causing your own
unhappiness by not taking care of yourself, then you need to
open to learning about what is the loving action toward yourself.
By sincerely asking, "What is the loving action? What is in my
highest good?", answers will pop into your mind. Then, of
course, you need to take the loving action you are being guided
to take. Without loving action in your own behalf, nothing will
change.
Think of the sad, depressed, resistant, or angry part of you as a
little child who is needing love. If you wait for someone else to
love that child, you may wait forever. It is only when we are infants
and toddlers that others may attend to what we need. As adults,
it is our job to take care of our own feelings and needs. If you
think of yourself as the parent of this child within - the feeling part
of you - it may make it easier to take responsibility for yourself.
Happiness, peace and joy are the result of loving ourselves and
others, rather than from being loved. When you really understand
this and take action based on this truth, you will find your joy.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of
eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By
You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?",
"Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To
Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE
Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com
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