But there comes a time when surrender is needed more and all we can do is let God do the work. I believe the practice of silence is where this great work happens.
I wrote this statement in last week’s newsletter, then entered into a week of complete resistance. A disappointing event occurred and all I could do was sulk. We love to sulk, don’t we? It’s a warm bath of self-loathing or self-righteous (or both), depending on the situation, our egos love to stew in. In an attempt to regain whatever power I believed to be mine, I armored up and refused to be consoled. My disappointment was mine to have, dammit, and I was going to do with it as I pleased! But resistance never works in our favor because when we damn up our lives from suffering, we shut out the Flow of Divine Love that longs to move within us and out from us. It took a long day of silent contemplation to recognize my own unwelcoming spirit to the things I cannot control.
There is truth in the saying “What we resist, persists.” because resistance is the way we gain the muscle of disconnection and disconnection feeds the self-reinforcing loop of the false self. Another term I like for the false self is the small self. This smaller self is quite vulnerable to any sort of offense or disappointment. The smaller self must use disconnection as a primary tool for its survival. We disconnect from pain, from people, and from ourselves, then guard our small selves with every tool available to us which for me is usually sharp and potent resentfulness. I could barely receive a hug from my husband that day. I resisted reality with all my might and all it got me was 24 hours of being in a bad mood.
Mary Mrozowski, a spiritual teacher, wrote and taught a spiritual practice called The Welcoming Prayer. My day of disappointment was on a Tuesday and I learned about this practice on Thursday, it’s humorous how the Divine works. I wish I would have known about this before that Tuesday but would I have actually learned it? Sometimes we have to feel and recognize our smaller selves to understand what needs to be surrendered. I sat with my small self for a full day and coddled her like an infant. Then I read the Welcoming Prayer 48 hours later and I knew exactly what needed to be surrendered: Above affection and esteem, above security and safety, I want control and freedom.
Thomas Keating called these basic human needs our “energy centers” which are:
the need for security & survival
the need for affection & esteem
the need for power & control
Though these needs are natural, fundamental, and biological, by the time we reach our age of reason (around 14), if we have experienced any sort of perceived or real deprivations of them we began to form unhealthy and unhelpful behaviors. We then become experts, even artists in rationalizing, justifying, and glorifying such behaviors, this is what leads to the formation of our false selves (which is by the way mostly unconscious!) This is why so many mystics and spiritual teachers focus on spiritual practices such as silence and contemplation because this is where the unconscious rises to the surface of our conscience. It is one of the primary ways we recognize our false selves!
So for an entire day, I stewed in my false self. Then I took another day to sit quietly, read, and process. Then I read the prayer by Mrozowski:
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within.
Amen.
It’s so simple and yet, excruciatingly difficult. It’s difficult not only because of my own self-reinforcing loop but it’s also a cultural conditioning embedded in my brain. All my life I have been taught in church to fight and resist the devil, to flee from sin, but this is just another form of resistance that continued to reinforce a false self. Instead of developing unhealthy behaviors to meet my needs, I became an expert craftsman at morality. I didn’t actually address the false self, I just dressed her up in Christian virtue and called it transformation. Yet when true pain and suffering came, she buckled like a tower of cards in a windstorm. But what if I learned to welcome my thoughts and behaviors instead of fighting and resisting them? What if we start by admitting our powerlessness as the first step in recovering our truest selves? Sound familiar?! It’s the first step for those in recovery and honestly, we should all learn the 12 Steps of AA! Our addictions may not be getting drunk at 9 AM, they are likely to be more subtle and covert but let’s not fool ourselves, they are still present.
The Welcoming Prayer is a prayer of surrender to be used in our everyday, ordinary, and quite messy lives. If I would have welcomed the disappointment that day, I would have been able to connect with the true feeling that lurked under the surface: grief, a complex web of grief that had to do more with our childlessness, our limitations both physically and financially, and the isolation that follows. Instead of embracing my limitations, I braced against them, reverting back to old, small self behaviors of resistance.
This practice of welcoming what I cannot control is something new and frankly, a bit terrifying. Richard Rohr suggests speaking out loud this phrase when we are faced with any sort of situation:
“Welcome, (fear, anger, disappointment, frustration). “
Rohr says to repeat this until we sense that we are embracing and receiving the feeling. Because truly, what we resist, persists but what we receive, concedes. We can’t practice surrender if we can’t be honest about our reality. We will resist surrender if we refuse to feel whatever emotion is rising up in us. Instead of embracing the feeling, we will armor up, brace ourselves and fight back with the weapons our false self has created (to the detriment of ourselves and those who are closest to us).
Welcome, disappointment.
Welcome, disappointment.
Welcome, disappointment.
Welcome, grief.
I spent three years in counseling to process our infertility journey which ended in childlessness. Most of our sessions were spent learning how to make room for grief, to set a place at the table for it, my counselor would say. For the first half of a ten-year journey, I lived my story outside my body, it was the only way I knew how to survive the uncomfortable and painful procedures, and the monthly grief of a negative pregnancy test. I became adept at being unwelcoming to anything painful, learning to move at a faster pace than my grief. This only kept me anxious and resentful. It was when I allowed grief to be a part of my story that I was able to see the Bigger Story. I was able to embrace small Colette with the loving arms of my larger self, my divine self, my God-rooted self. Because the small self doesn’t need protection, it needs healing. It needs the companionship of the Healer. Another pithy saying that rings true all the more is: what we don’t feel, can’t heal.
It takes a lot of courage to embrace reality as it is and don’t mistake weakness as the embracing of it. We need to stop seeing the reality of our lives as continual bludgeons to our soul but invitations to see more of the story, a Bigger Story. Then and only then, can we truly welcome whatever comes our way because *reality check* it’s coming! And we can either choose to brace ourselves for the next blow and set a place at the table for it.
May you have the courage to welcome your story, the candor to name it what it is, and the acceptance of healing offered to you.
Many blessings,
Something New
Hello, my courageous and candid friends (my favorite kind of people) ~
For some time now I have been tinkering with the idea of creating a paid subscription to Courage & Candor but wanted to develop material that would be worthwhile. Since writing the above post, I would love to offer a deeper dive into the practice of the Welcoming Prayer through bi-monthly reflections and helpful practices. I hope to publish these on Wednesday of the 2nd and 4th week of each month. I want to create a space for conversation about this practice through discussion boards as well as offer helpful resources and maybe some printables that you can post around the house or stick in your journal.
Hope you will join me on this new venture. The first paid-only newsletter is coming out this Wednesday, July 12!!
What we resist, persists. We’ve to feel it to heal it. Whew! Right there with ya. Some of life’s most valuable lessons rights there. I also love the phrase “we’re only as sick as our secrets” - the naming and carrying them in our larger self arms into the light. What a beautiful journey you’re on! Love you!
Wow, this prayer is shattering me this morning and I suppose it's a good thing. In a season of intense anxiety, I'm well aware that it's roots are in the desire for control, security, approval - all the things of this prayer - and in resisting the very real emotions that are present in real life every day. Thank you for sharing this. Practicing welcoming today, and I have a feeling it will be a moment by moment sort of welcoming.