petitioninggod.com Blog

(Or any other kind of blues, for that matter!)

I always return to Kierkegaard on this, how he wrote so forcefully (and so opaquely at times, if you’ve ever tried to read him!) of the simple fact about human nature that we are created with a need to connect ourselves to our Maker, so that that’s the only way we can escape despair, yet we’re also created in such a way that our natural inclination is to avoid such connection by any means possible. (If that sounds like a catch-22, I think it was the only way God could do it & still make us truly have free will.)

The reason I know Kierkegaard is right is because I’ve been thinking about the question of happiness, and observing human nature, ever since I was a teenager, when I could already tell that the things people thought would make them happy—jobs, possessions, activities, even relationships—didn’t. I think the main reason I knew this was because my mother had some really rich friends, who could have everything they wanted all the time, & they were just as miserable as everyone else.

For a while, I even thought the secret to happiness was the opposite of the rich people’s situation—that people who didn’t have it all but had to work for it, were thereby happier than the others, even though they frequently didn’t realize they were happier at the time. (And I do still think the working ones are usually closer to happiness than the rich ones.)

As I’ve gotten older (I’m 55 now), it seems clear that the normal pattern of life on this earth is that even if things are “good” for a few years or decades, then the whole thing is going to blow up in our faces in one way or another. Kids grow up, leaving people feeling empty & useless; careers become unfulfilling or cease to exist; parents die or become disabled—or disease, depression, or poverty strikes us directly.

To me, the message here is that this life is short & temporary, & the only way we can overcome the suffering is to base ourselves and our happiness elsewhere. Just as Jesus said, we need to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, or live in the spirit instead of in the flesh.

(That other wise teacher, Buddha, said the same thing, only in slightly different terms. Life is suffering, therefore the key to happiness is to detach ourselves from it, learning to focus instead on the peace deep within us.)

Actually, I’ve been incredibly lucky about all this myself. Ever since—as I write about in the opening paragraph of my book, available elsewhere on this website—God zapped me at a junior high Bible study when I was 14, I’ve been acutely aware that the reality of life is beyond the here and now.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t had to struggle, though; it just means I knew where to look for answers. The fact that I have had to struggle (at least sometimes) has led to much greater joy & peace than I would have experienced otherwise, and—most importantly—it’s enabled me to potentially help others by sharing my story.

Lots of people say things like “I need to work on my spirituality.” Well, that’s the secret to curing the blues! Every one of us is a unique soul, and we have to do the work of nurturing that soul if we want to find peace and joy. YOU have to do it yourself, and the way you relate to God will be slightly different from the way everyone else does, but it will also be like everyone else’s in a lot of ways, because everybody who connects themselves to God is connecting to the same Holy Spirit.

So, if you want some help trying to find God, I can direct you to other pages on this website (petitioninggod.com), including but not limited to the book chapters themselves. The other pages of the website are things you can read even if you only have a few minutes; frequently it’s only a few words a person reads or hears that lead to their discovery of God within their own hearts.

Also, nearly every post on this blog is universalizable, because I always try to do that when I write them. So even though I don’t write many new posts anymore, you could browse a little & see if anything grabbed you as something you’d want to read to see if it helped you connect to God. Some of the posts that seem to have clicked for the largest number of people are the one about loneliness (December 2008), the one about praying to the moon (January 2010), the one about practicing resurrection (June 2010), & the immediately preceding post of December 2010, although that one is a tad long & over-comprehensive. (But you could just read part of it if you wanted, or read part one day & the rest another.)

As for how you can actually go about getting in touch with your Maker, I think the phrase “getting right with God” is overused and meaningless to a lot of people. It seems too easily shrugged off as a sort of momentary nod to God, without any prescription for transformation, which is what we’re looking for here, aren’t we, if we really want to cure our blues?

“Getting connected to God in your mind” seems a better way of saying the same thing, since it implies aligning your heart with God (who, as Jesus came to tell us, is love) and listening to God in the deepest recesses of your mind, so that you can know what tasks of transformation God has in store for you.

See, the main thing I’ve learned in several decades of studying how to get prayers answered is that God is always wanting to transform us into our better selves, but only with our consent (and our help), since we’re created with this wonderful thing called free will. So the secret to all this is that once we get connected to the God within ourselves, then, if we want to find happiness, we need to say YES to whatever projects of transformation he (or she or it) proposes for us. We have to do what Deepak Chopra calls “learning to cooperate with God.”

If you think you don’t have any transformations you need to make, think again—because we’re talking about things like attitude adjustments or changes of heart. I don’t know about you, but I always need them. There is always some attitude toward someone that’s sitting there in my heart and my brain, blocking me from being the person God (who is love) created me to be. (As well as blocking me from getting my prayers answered, since in that frame of mind I’m not forgiving others, which is the basis of Jesus’ model petitionary prayer, the Lord’s Prayer!)

If your problem with all this is that it sounds too rooted in “love” to do you any good because your main problem is ANGER—well, I just want to tell you that that’s my main problem, too. So you’ll find plenty on the subject of dealing with anger all through my writings.

So, the only sure cure for the blues is to work on your own spirituality, which is between YOU and God. My prayer is that you will find the time to do that soon, whether or not you ever read another word of my writing!

God be with you!

Sara

I started not to use that title for fear that it might sound superior, as though I have the answers to everything. But I decided instead to just remind you (or to tell you for the first time if this is the first time you’ve read my work) that the only reason I have any of the answers or suggestions I do have is because for about a decade now, I’ve tried to learn all I can about how we humans can best relate to God. (Which I believe is the only way we can live the most productive & joyful lives we’re capable of living.)

So, here we are—spiritual strategies for ordinary days. Because it seems to me that the ordinary days are where the real spiritual challenge is. Most of us are pretty good and pretty godly when we’re in crisis mode, but 95% of our lives isn’t crisis mode. So it stands to reason that if we can learn to navigate that 95% in God-centered ways instead of the self-centered ways that come more naturally to us, it will really help us out.

The basic challenge of life is that it’s up to us, every minute of every day, to choose whether or not to align our minds with God’s (who, as Jesus came to tell us, is love). The reason we need to do this is because it’s the only way to be happy!

I’m all for antidepressants if people really need them, but it doesn’t surprise me that happiness seems to elude so many of us, because in our culture it’s especially hard to take the time to look within ourselves, where the abovementioned spiritual work must be done.

We don’t necessarily have to spend much time on it, but we’ve got to be still somehow, & to look inward to find God within ourselves, & then get God to help us reorder our minds (that is, to carry out the literal meaning of “repent”), changing whatever needs changing about ourselves & our attitudes. Then, we must turn our attention outward, & serve God by doing whatever it is God wants us to do to serve the world.

As Kierkegaard observed 160 years ago, it’s human nature to do everything under the sun to distract ourselves from this need we have to hook up individually with our Maker. SK called it this emptiness we constantly try to keep at bay despair, which I think is the perfect word, although in our culture most people probably wouldn’t admit to such a strong term of desperation. In fact, as SK also observed, most of us do such a good job of distracting ourselves that we don’t even know we’re in despair. At times we may even think we’re “happy,” yet know deep down there’s something missing—well, that something is our getting connected to God & centering our lives around God and doing whatever it is God wants us to do to love our neighbor & to spread God’s kingdom on earth.

How to do this spiritual work, in practical terms?

Well, it seems to me that the only way to defeat despair is to face up to it (though perhaps only briefly), to feel your pain, & then from that totally helpless position, ask the Creator to help you out of it. The Creator will, and you’ll be stronger for the experience, with less need to continue to distract yourself.

But what about the daily challenge of continually making the effort to connect to God? How can we get better about that?

One method that’s worked for me lately is to repeat Jesus’ words on the cross: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

Some people who know I pray a lot seem to think I keep my mind connected to God all the time, automatically. (That would seem reasonable, wouldn’t it?) But the reality of human nature is that no matter how spiritual we are or how much we’ve prayed & listened to God in the past, we still have the tendency (or at least I still have the tendency) to let ourselves be oriented around our natural set of emotions instead—and those emotions are often negative & destructive. If we want to be ruled by the God of love instead of by our feelings of fear, resentment, avoidance, or whatever our negative feelings might be, we have to make that choice over & over & over again. And one of the best ways I’ve found to do this is to keep saying to God, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

For me at least, those words blast away all the negativity of this world—the laziness or inertia, the pettiness, the fear, the hatred—leaving only the love that Jesus demonstrated in its place.

Since Jesus meant for us to copy him, I don’t think it’s disrespectful for us to repeat this phrase, even though he said it in the depth of his suffering. In fact, it seems perfectly tailored for the task of getting me out of myself and into my connection with God, because it represents the dying I need to do, dying to myself & to my selfish desire to remain spiritually lazy. (The basic gesture—of submitting our wills to the will of the Creator—can be used by people of other faiths as well.)

What happens on “ordinary days” when I don’t do some spiritual exercise like this? All kinds of crap, to be honest! I can take on the most immature attitudes, such as complaining about activities coming up that I think I don’t “want” to do, or not caring about doing my best at whatever task awaits me in my work or other activities, or worrying about my far-distant-future financial security, or being PO’d at someone for something, usually something really stupid. None of those attitudes would feel good even if there were no such thing as God, but since there is a God & God loves us, the attitudes are that much dumber for me to dwell in, because to reject them & turn toward the “light of the world” is so much better!

Maybe this is what original sin is—our inability to stay in the right mood without repeatedly turning our minds over to God and asking God to adjust our attitudes for us.

(By the way, the turning over of your mind also leads to your being able to get more of your prayers answered, as I write about in my book.)

Another experience I want to share is something that happened to me on an ordinary day recently, although it wasn’t something I deliberately planned for, so in that sense it’s not a “strategy.”

What happened was that late one afternoon in early November, I swept my front walk to get up the red magnolia seeds that dot it that time of year and get stuck in the bottoms of people’s shoes. The task was nicely short & manageable, only taking about 15 minutes from start to finish. I wasn’t surprised that it also had the spiritual effect of sweeping out the cobwebs in my brain.

But my sweeping did something else as well. About a third of the way through the task, I suddenly realized I was being engulfed by Peace. Then when I finished, I stood there for a minute or two, facing in the direction of the soon-to-be setting sun—and I felt the mild, clear November air, and saw the amazingly beautiful grass and trees amid the blue of the sky, and I was overcome with gratitude for such splendor.

(And believe me, my yard is nothing special! I mean you could do this anywhere, even in the middle of NYC!)

This blessed event, in which I was positively seized while in the middle of doing something very ordinary indeed, is probably not something we can plan for, but I think we can get close to it deliberately. At least, we can try to be open to these momentary experiences of joy that God wants to send us—and afterwards, we can draw on the memory for a spiritual booster shot whenever we need for things to seem holier than they’re seeming at the moment.

Because, even though we’re hard-wired to notice them only occasionally, two facts are clear: we are surrounded by grandeur, and we have the potential for peace—the “peace which passeth all understanding”—deep within our souls.

As far as a method for drinking in as much as we can of the feeling while it’s available to us, & then drawing on the memory later—well, for me, breathing in deeply and relaxing while exhaling helps me do both those things, as it does just about everything spiritual that I try to do.

Of course, we still have to make the choice to do this, to draw on the memory rather than being completely swept up by the million different things that are always competing for our attention in this world of chaos & instant communication. But we can choose it if we want to. It’s up to us.

In a recent Sunday school series on spirituality, my wise minister talked quite a bit about how spiritual growth is a choice. He also said we can choose from three ways of responding to the fact that we find ourselves thrown into this imperfect, seemingly godforsaken world. We can either be angry at God, or we can stoically remain tightlipped as we navigate whatever life throws at us, OR we can choose to “stand with the story” of the Gospel, which enables us always to believe that God will bring good out of evil, and turn suffering to joy.

In another class, the same wise minister talked about how with the holidays coming up, it’s extra important for us to choose to attend to our spirituality amid the hoopla. This intentional focus could, he said, prevent the “January blues.”

In any case, it’s also a good outlook to have for that 95% of our lives that consists of “ordinary days.”

God be with you!

Sara

Shortly after Easter, the Episcopal bishop of Mississippi wrote of the “spiritual discipline” of “practicing resurrection,” which he noted “often must begin with a choice”—a choice to live in the real hope of resurrection instead of letting ourselves become bogged down in the pain & destruction all around us.

I think the ability to do this—to use our imaginations to take us to places of hope when otherwise there may seem to be no hope—is a gift the Creator gave us very deliberately! That is, he or she knows we need it, & means for us to use it!

But this choosing to set our minds in the realm of joy & hope for the next life is one of those spiritual practices that we in our human nature are inclined to do just about anything else under the sun instead of. Just like Adam & Eve, we prefer to use our own power to try to make things right—or at least to register our complaints that things aren’t right—rather than relying on God’s promises.

The poor are in a different category. The reason it says Jesus proclaimed the good news of salvation to them is, I think, because they’re the only ones who are normally interested in listening to it. The rest of us are too busy not only trying to control events by our own power but also chasing happiness (or at least diversion from our despair) by other means.

Mary Oliver’s poem “Spring Azures” shows why the poor are closer than the rest of us to hearing the message of salvation. Young Blake, “in the dirt and sweat of London,” sees “the bobbin of God’s blue body” on the sooty windowsill as he stares out into the darkness. Though he’s terrified, he at that moment turns away from the filth & destruction “to a life of the imagination.” He knows it’s his only way out.

I’m wondering if the oil spill might be the perfect state of affairs to get those of us whose situations are less dire than Blake’s into the habit of practicing resurrection. The gushing well, the growing slick, & the oil making its way to the marshes & beaches may be destructive & dirty & relentless enough to where the only way we can get even momentary peace of mind is to take ourselves out of this world entirely by dwelling in the new world promised by God.

In addition to making this conscious choice to think in resurrection terms, another way we can find joy is by taking on the role Jesus ascribed to us in the Beatitudes, as providers of mercy and peace to the poor and meek, like Blake. Thus we can practice resurrection both by looking to the next life and by spreading the kingdom of God on earth. (Praise be!)

If you have a hard time imagining the joy God’s got in store for us, just think of the most deeply joyful you’ve ever felt, and it’ll be like that, except even better and much more enduring.

If you think you haven’t felt any joy, think again—of things like the joy of music, or the joy you felt when you did something remarkable as a kid, or maybe when you simply did something that pleased a parent or other loved one. Or maybe the birth of your child. Or maybe community activities that made you feel uplifted because you knew you were serving the greater good. Or maybe some experience of the wonders of creation.

All these hints of heaven are, in my view, not only evidence of what it’s like but proof that it and God do exist! How else to explain the beauty and order and the deep connection we feel to the objects of joy?

God be with you as you practice resurrection!

“May I be careful to have my mind in order when I take upon myself to speak to the sovereign Lord of the universe, remembering that upon the temper of my soul depends, in very great measure, my success.”

Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John & Charles

I ran across this quote a few weeks ago, & it blew me away. The temper of my soul when I pray is precisely what I’ve been trying to observe for a decade, in hopes of writing about it in my book.

I won’t try to approach Mrs. Wesley’s level of eloquence, but maybe I can suggest some of what she might have meant by this captivating phrase.

Her other remarkable phrase, the sovereign Lord of the universe, makes me think of the humbling of ourselves that I’ve found is absolutely necessary if we want to have “success” when talking to God. The Bible says (doesn’t it?) “Be still and know that I am God,” and that’s exactly what we have to do.

One way of doing this that works for me is to walk outside at night & look up at the starry sky. Notice how small you are compared to this infinity, yet also how close—you’re really contained in the same space as it is. Think about all this power & goodness, to have made these wonders of nature as well as our ability to appreciate them. (I don’t see how blind chance could possibly be responsible.)

Then, if you want to relax into the arms of the Creator of all this glory, take a deep breath & lean your head back so that you’re looking directly up into the sky. Focus on a star or constellation if you want. The important thing is to relax and take deep breaths, imagining your troubles being exhaled with the air, and your self-centered will being submitted to God’s will. Look at the moon & let it represent the face of God as you speak to him or her. I do this all the time, it’s not idolatry! It’s getting my soul into the right temper to communicate with the Almighty.

Once you’re feeling both your own smallness and the Creator’s power, you then need to listen to him or her as much or more than to talk.

Several other aspects of getting our minds in order before talking to God were offered by Jesus himself.

The most obvious of these is that we must have faith. And that is a major requirement. But Jesus gave at least two other tips for getting prayers answered just as explicitly, yet we tend to ignore them. (Maybe because they require something of us beyond merely trying to believe we’re getting what we’re asking for.)

The first is forgiveness. The Lord’s Prayer gets right to the point: if we want our petitions to be granted, we must begin by forgiving others. At another time (Mark 11:25), Jesus explained more completely, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone.”

I don’t know about you, but for me, there’s pretty much never a time when I don’t, in my heart, have anything against anyone. To get my soul into the right temper, I have to stop those angry, irritated, or complaining thoughts in their tracks and ask God to take them away.

The second of Jesus’ tips was that we need to be sure we’re praying “in [his] name.” He didn’t say exactly what he meant by this, but since the essence of Jesus is mercy and love, then praying in his name must mean, at the very least, praying with mercy and love. Which means not just pretending to love others as ourselves, but truly loving them, even the ones it’s hardest for us to love. Here, again, I have to let go of my natural feelings and ask God to change them. It’s not easy, but it works if I stick with it.

What’s more, if we can get in the habit of doing all this pretty regularly—getting our souls into the right temper & listening to God as we ask God for help with our difficulties—we’ll discover that it not only leads to real solutions but also has the wondrous side effect of—surprise!—bringing us deep peace & joy. (And, after years of research and observation, I think I can safely say that this is the only way we humans can be truly & lastingly happy while on earth.)

One more thought on the Wesley quote. One way God doesn’t give us what we ask for when we don’t have our minds in order is simply that as long as we stay in self-centered moods, we can’t access the answers God’s trying to send. In angry, self-absorbed, or otherwise negative moods, we aren’t able to receive the gifts or feel the joy. So this is another way that the temper of our souls when we pray is absolutely essential for the success of the whole enterprise. People who never get themselves into the right attitude and right relation to God never experience the joy and bounty and peace and power that they could be experiencing while on earth. They’re saved in the end if they want to be, but they miss out on a lot of joy that they could be experiencing now. (Maybe this was what Jesus meant by the “abundant life.”)

Thank you, Mrs. Wesley, for writing down your wisdom for those of us who came after you!

Several bits of advice I’ve written recently that the recipients have said worked (thanks, God!):

1. One friend of mine, newly diagnosed with diabetes, said she had been overwhelmed at first, although she was now regrouping and facing things bit by bit. She wrote that she was feeling stressed & apprehensive about her upcoming plans to accompany her sister’s family to the beach.

I prayed hard before writing this reply:

>>>Sounds like you need a beach vacation! My advice for the week is to try to turn your troubles over to God in prayer, then get out there & enjoy God’s incredible creation.

“Baby steps” (as you mention) is really all we can do about anything—that, plus prayer & continually asking God to help us have the right attitude (faith, hope, & love!).

Even I, as trouble-free as my life is, have to work on my attitude at least once a day!

Take care & God bless your trip to FL.<<<

2. This one was to a guy who wrote wondering why there's so much depression in the world:

>>>A big part of the wisdom I’ve gained in recent years is that depression is the normal state of humankind, unless we make the choice over & over again to align our minds with the God of Love (who also happens to be the Creator of the universe). When people are younger, they’re frequently able to distract themselves from their depression, or even may temporarily not feel it at all, because of romance, children, or career concerns. But past a certain age, these things fail, & if we want to be happy after that, we have to do what Jung called the work of the second half of life, which is to get in touch with our souls and God, however we understand God to be.<<<

This God is the source of all love & creativity, & we humans have the choice whether or not to align ourselves with him or her. If we do, we can be happy. If we don’t, we can’t.

This is not to say that some of us don’t also need our brain chemicals restored by medication. But the most potent antidepressants in the world are not the solution to existential despair.

Interestingly enough, these same techniques of aligning our minds with love are also what it takes to get prayers answered! Think about it–forgiving others, submitting our wills to the will of the universe, & maintaining faith!

God bless all who read this!

Sara

In the Bible passage for Monday’s Forward Day by Day devotion, Hebrews 12:2 reads: “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, . . . and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I never before thought about this idea that Jesus followed through with his sacrifice partly for the sake of the joy that was set before him, but it really works as a confirmation of one of the principles I write about in my book; it’s nothing less than “smart selfishness” on a cosmic (and divine!) scale. This means that whenever we need motivation to continue on the path that we know we “ought” to continue on, we can recall that not only did Jesus endure the cross because he wanted to reconcile us to the God of Love, he also did it because he knew that he personally would experience greater joy that way than if he had backed down from the challenge he was faced with. He models for us not only that we “should” persevere in our trials, but also that if we do, we will be happier than if we don’t!

That’s a tip for why we should persevere in doing whatever we know deep inside we ought to do. A tip for how we can best do that, as well as how we can best accomplish all our purposes in life, was the subject of an email I wrote recently to a guy who felt he had prayed and prayed about something yet continually failed to get the result he wanted.

My message was based on John 16:24: “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.” (Italics mine.)

Who knows what Jesus meant by “in my name”—but it seems clear to me that it’s something each of us has to figure out for ourselves, in prayerful back-and-forth dialogue with God. And, based on the experiences I detail in my book, this requirement of our prayers being in Jesus’ name usually has something to do with learning new things about God and about ourselves, and making changes in our attitudes and our paths, so that we are continually becoming more & more loving of others, as Jesus suggests in the “new commandment” to love (John 13:34).

(Of course this commandment is an echo of the second of the two great commandments Jesus talks about in the other gospels, but for me at least, it’s helpful that here he mentions only the love of others and not the love of God. That’s because I’ve always been pretty good about loving God, but not so good about loving my neighbor. When the commandment about God was up there too, I could conveniently focus on it and pretty much ignore its pesky companion commandment to love my neighbor as myself.)

The upshot of all this is that for whatever challenges in our lives we’d like God to help us with, I believe there are nearly always things we need to change about our thinking in order to render our prayers more truly “in Jesus’ name” than they have been in the past. I also believe that whatever these spiritual improvements are, God will lead us to them if we truly open up & listen to him.

There’s a Kierkegaard quote I have as an epigraph to one of my chapters: “A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.”

I wish everyone good listening to God! Happy Easter!

If you’re familiar at all with the scheme I write about in Petitioning God, or perhaps even if you’re not, the spiritual task I’m faced with is that of letting God change me to where it truly doesn’t bother me no matter how low the Dow goes. This seems impossible, but hey, if that’s what it takes to get God to grant my petitions for my own prosperity as well as everyone else’s, you bet I’m willing to give it my all no matter how hard it is. If I could let go of my desire for romance with “Belinda,” as I describe in the book, I can do anything! So, taking a deep breath and opening my arms to the heavens (touching on that peace that’s the subject of the previous entry), I pray: God, batter my heart and rip out this clinging-to-my-life attitude that I and most other Americans have with regard to our money! And then, as soon as you can, please, fix the economy but in the most equitable way possible, with the most positive change for the most people possible. For poor people, give them more means of support, and for the rest of us, help us see the lessons we need to learn and the spiritual growth we need to undergo. Thanks!

This task doesn’t mean I have to get to where I don’t care whether the Dow is up or down, but I do have to get to where I’m completely accepting of whatever it does, going down as well as going up. And perhaps more to Jesus’s point, I have to get to where I’m completely unfearful no matter what it does. Because in his instruction that we pray (faithfully) about all things instead of worrying or fearing lies the fundamental challenge of this life, the challenge we must learn to meet if we want to continue to grow spiritually and find joy rather than stagnate and feel anxious. So, batter my heart, God, till I truly reach that stage! Because as it is, in many moods I’m still “betrothed unto your enemy” (that is, unable to stop worrying about something mundane) in the person of the Dow!

Whether we hurry-it-up Westerners realize it or not, relaxation is necessary for peace of mind and happiness. And in these extra stressful times, more people than ever can benefit from various organized forms of relaxation, such as meditation and yoga. Both of these are ways of quieting the mind and spirit, by focusing one’s attention on a single thought (meditation) or a physical position (yoga) that may be challenging to hold but that relieves stress by causing the mind to forget everything else but the bodily effort. (By the way, you don’t have to take classes to get the benefits; with a little practice you can learn to focus your attention on your breathing, your thoughts, & your movements so as to reach this state of occupying your mind so that it can’t worry. I do it frequently while running, stretching, & doing floor exercises.)

To take this discussion a step further, it seems to me that in all these instances of relaxing our worrying egos, we are reaching for (and hopefully finding bits and pieces of) nothing less than the “peace that passeth all understanding” from the Christian Bible. It’s been my experience over and over again that God is both within us and outside of us, and that our unconscious minds are part of the mind of God, so it stands to reason that by quieting our own conscious minds, we can touch on that peace, getting a measure of healing from it.

Many others in many different venues have indicated the same thing. After a Sunday school class last fall, I asked dreamwork teacher Karen Mori Bonner what advice I could give to people who asked me why they couldn’t experience God as vividly as I did, and her reply was, “Tell them to RELAX.” Liz Gilbert, in her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love, writes, “‘the universe is a great spinning engine, & you want to stay near the core, in the hub of calmness–that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you . . . . Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace.’”

Interestingly enough, relaxation is also a major technique for getting prayers answered. We may be afraid that if we relax we’ll lose control, but the larger truth is that it’s only by relaxing our puny egos into the vast creative power of the universe that we can actually accomplish many of our most cherished goals. More on that in my book.

Back to the subject of feeling good, if you want to feel the very best that you possibly can, get out there either literally or figuratively (such as on the ‘net) and help people who need it! Your “peace” may be momentarily interrupted, but that’s going to happen anyway as long as you’re human. And this carrying out of the second of Jesus’s two great commandments (to love thy neighbor)–and not merely the first (to love God)–is the key to that abundant life he promised us. Reach out and grab hold of it, it’s yours!

Back in my 20s and 30s, when most of my peers were married & raising kids, or at least spending their free time chasing the opposite sex, I, being single, childless, & gay, didn’t have any friends to hang out with. I lived with my mother (the best mom in the universe), & I can remember being occasionally embarrassed by the fact that I didn’t have anything to do. (Although I had never come right out and told her I was gay, simply because we didn’t talk about such personal things in the first place, I’m sure she knew by that time because she could see that I was simply not interested in men, period.) Anyway, on Friday and Saturday nights, I would frequently go out in the car & drive around by myself, or go to the mall, just to make it look to Mama as though I was at least going out with friends. But I wasn’t, since they were all busy with their honeys or children or whatever else. The point is that during this time, which was many years ago, I had plenty of practice in dealing with loneliness. Since, apparently, most people don’t deal with their own loneliness until middle age (such as when they divorce), I think I should try to share what I did, because it worked. I never ever feel lonely anymore.

I think the key that most people seem to miss is that in order to triumph over our loneliness, we must confront it head-on, which means we have to allow ourselves to BE alone and to BE lonely if we want to be able to get to the point where we are no longer vulnerable to loneliness. Our culture is partly to blame for this mistake, since it teaches us 24/7 that the normal thing to do is to be not only involved with people but also with them just about all the time (or at least talking to them on our cell phones). There’s basically no cultural recognition of the value of solitariness or solitude. Also, the prevalence of antidepressant medications (which I am not against if the person really needs them!) means that many of us are encouraged to treat our unhappiness (our existential despair, if you will) with pills instead of spiritual advancement, of which coming to terms with our aloneness is an important part.

Anyway, let me try to describe some of the things I did that ultimately worked to bring me to a position where I was comfortable with my status as a solitary creature, so that I never felt truly lonely again, no matter what happened. I say “truly” because sometimes I still do feel occasional brief bouts of loneliness, usually after spending more time with others than I’m accustomed to spending, but it’s never a lasting or deeply rooted feeling the way it was before I did the work. However, let me make this point upfront: overcoming your own loneliness does not mean you have to become a hermit like me! It simply means that you’ll be able to enter into and maintain relationships that aren’t based on your need to escape your lonelness. And yes, I do have plenty of deeply fulfilling friendships and family relationships, even though I am a self-imposed hermit about 90% of the time. So I hope no one will shy away from doing this work for fear of becoming like me! I love my life but I know most folks wouldn’t.

The first thing you have to do in order to confront your loneliness is simply to let yourself BE alone instead of doing the more common human thing and seeking out others at all costs. (Scott Peck didn’t call the process of psychic and spiritual maturation The Road Less Traveled for nothing.) In addition to spending some time alone, you have to feel the pain of loneliness. So resist the temptation to medicate it away or distract yourself from it in any manner. You don’t necessarily have to try to make the pain even worse than it would normally be, but you do have to FEEL it and embrace it in your mind. This isn’t fun, of course, but actually you may experience a certain relief over knowing you’re feeling your pain & loneliness, yet surviving. Also, it is perfectly alright to cry. (No honest show of emotion is ever wrong when we’re alone before God.) I personally don’t recall ever crying over general loneliness, only over feeling rejected by specific people, but I’m positive crying is OK with God.

In order to fully confront your loneliness, I think you need not only to feel the pain of not having anyone around but also, if you possibly can, to experience the sensation of dangling, solitarily, over the abyss of space & time, of feeling as completely as you can your own quota of existential despair. This means trying to imagine your aloneness in all its horror, just as vividly as you can. There’s a house on my running route that looks kind of like a haunted house against the night sky because it sort of frames a small portion of the sky so that all you can see in that portion is gray desolation. You can tell it’s the sky, & it’s vast & even infinite, yet there’s also, eerily enough, nothing visible in that particular patch of sky. No stars, no moon, nothing. Just gray bleakness. This seems a good illustration of the abyss we find ourselves in when we confront our aloneness in the universe.

Another location for the emptiness is within. As you try to confront, with your heart & mind & soul, the void of aloneness & nothingness, if you’re like me you’ll find that right there in your own stomach is the first place you can find that void. If you don’t like the idea of feeling the aloneness, you can reason it into view. I remember one time decades ago I was talking to an older person whom I admired because she seemed to depend only on herself and God for her happiness, and she pointed out to me, “You live alone & you die alone,” and I knew what she meant. No matter how much togetherness we have in our lives, each of us is alone in our corner of the abyss and in our relationship to our Maker.

Which brings me to the grand finale of the process of confronting your loneliness and triumphing over it. When you get to rock bottom (or before), you can then tune into your faith in the higher power that created you, and put you (and all other humans) into this abyss, and also created all the joy and wonder and order and love in the world as well. So you can conclude that your challenge is to believe in the Creator and the promise that you’ll soon be lifted out of the abyss, which is every bit as reasonable as the fact that we’re here in the first place, since we have no idea how that happened either! The glimmers of joy we’ve already witnessed (and surely all of us have witnessed a few, in the form of music & singing if no other way) are ample evidence of what the Creator has in store for us in the hereafter. Maybe we’re here now for the purpose of learning to align our hearts and minds with God and creativity and love instead of with the abyss of loneliness & despair.

If you don’t believe in any kind of higher power–well, I’m sorry, but I don’t know of any solution in that case. Maybe this is why it’s impossible to be truly happy in this life unless we believe in God.

Suppose, however, you do have a measure of faith and you have worked on confronting your loneliness, and you do feel better about your position in the universe. Now what? How can that translate into your actually learning to enjoy, or at least not be miserable during, the time you spend alone?

Well, since you now know that God is your only hope for happiness, then maybe you can imagine yourself in partnership with God trying to do whatever good you can for the world around you. Because this is what’s meant by spreading the kingdom of heaven, isn’t it? Or at least by the church as the body of Christ, doing his work in the world. And learn to pray, about everything you do, and for everything you want. I demonstrate the prayer aspect extensively in my book excerpts and sample chapter elsewhere on this website. When, by these and other means, you begin to make yourelf into a vital component of the kingdom of heaven, you can then feel close to everyone else who’s a part of it, as well as to God.

Getting into the habit of carrying on a dialogue with God may take a little work, but I think the fact that I carry on such a dialogue is a major reason I’m able to stay happy all the time, even when earthly things aren’t going so well. With regard to loneliness, you can try asking him or her not, “Why Me?,” but, “What do you, God, want me to learn from this experience of spending time alone, or of being alone in the universe? What godlike character traits are you trying to help me develop by putting me into this situation?” And then, try to put into practice what the philosopher Kierkegaard said he learned about prayer: that prayer is not talking but LISTENING.

Another tip about loneliness that helped me in the past was suggested by my dear friend & college roommate Dale, who pointed out to me that plenty of people who are in full-time relationships or marriages are lonely as well. This thought has helped me a great deal over the years. (Thanks, Dale!) Considering what I’ve learned about how the purpose of life is spiritual growth, and one impetus for spiritual growth is pain, it makes perfect sense that our existential aloneness and our propensity for feeling lonely are common conditions of human life. But this means that as soon as we acknowledge the possibility of growth & change in the face of loneliness, as opposed to the more natural responses of feeling sorry for ourselves or distracting ourselves with activities that are meaningless to us, then we’re already on the way to the happiness & deep joy that will be ours when we truly undertake the project of growing from the pain instead of stagnating in the face of it.

Another thing you can do to constructively deal with alone time is to get out in public and spread joy & kindness by interacting with others, even if it’s “only” the clerks at the all-night grocery store. (They usually put on happy faces while working, but that doesn’t mean they don’t desperately need your small kindness of eye contact & a bit of warm conversation.)

Another trick to staying happy when you’re alone, perhaps especially when you’re working, is to imagine someone you admire finding out about whatever you’re doing and being impressed. This is probably not as deeply useful as working on your spiritual growth or spreading kindness to others, but I use it occasionally, & it works for me.

I guess this is enough on this subject for now. (Sorry for the length of this post but it feels necessary to do justice to the topic.) Let me close by returning to that notion of finding the emptiness within my own gut. When I’m allowing myself to be disconnected from God (from the God of Love), I think my body does feel empty, even when I’m healthy. But when my mind is connected to the divine, my body is transformed so that it doesn’t seem empty at all, only a tad puny in comparison to the Almighty!

GOD EXISTS, GOD IS LOVE, and GOD LOVES US. Amen.

One more thing that can help us deal with the uncertainty is simply to get out there and do the best we can to help others, including those less fortunate than we are, instead of feeling that the crisis gives us an excuse not to concern ourselves with them. No matter what our personal situation may be, there are millions worse off than we are, including those who’ve lost their jobs or their homes, or both. There may also be many who are not worse off financially than we are, but who may be having an extra hard time dealing with things, and may need help for that reason.

That old secret of God’s still works: we will feel better if we do things for others rather than sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves or worrying about the future. Healing (salvation, if you will, as explained in the post “Salvation as salve instead of forgiveness,” April 2008 archive)–healing comes not from seeking our own healing but from being an agent of healing for others.

Also, I hope none of us decide not to donate as much as we normally would during this holiday season. Believe me, I understand the impulse to tighten our belts, but if we can just keep up our giving this year, the hurting world surely will be the better off for it, and, who knows, maybe by the following Christmas, this nightmare will be nothing but a distant memory.

God bless all who read this!
Sara