by Bob Fergeson
“If you are willing to realize that you cannot create your own virtues or changes; if you are willing to feel the pain of emptiness, helplessness, and inadequacy; if you are willing to wait, knowing that of yourself you can do nothing – then you will be facing Reality correctly.” — Roy Masters
For true spiritual progress, to get beyond the dualistic mind, we need to pray for the gift or grace of three things. The first is the ability to acknowledge our higher Self, to really and truthfully come to see this higher power. Second, to tell the higher power, from our heart, that we make an unconditional commitment to the truth. We will do whatever is necessary, including surrender of our will, schemes, and dreams, in favor of the higher wisdom. The paradoxical third part, and by far the most difficult, is that we then have to forget this. In practical application we have to forget it. Otherwise the ego, our little self, the petty tyrant, will take over, and surely mess things up. We must allow the higher power to call the shots.
Somehow, we must have faith in the higher power and it’s ability to set things up, to bring us the gift, the grace, of stopping our head. We have to be stopped in order to realize our ego is not infallible and doesn’t always have our best spiritual interest in mind. A paradox too, because this might have to happen before we’ll agree to any of this. We have to be stopped. This means we have to come to the point where we realize we’re helpless, and have limits. Very definite, little limits. That as we are, under the sway of the reflexive ego-mind, nothing will fundamentally ever change. And that everything is in the hands of the higher power. This is surrender.
This is paradoxical in that we have to be stopped, to realize our helplessness, before we’ll ask the higher power for help. And we will not make a commitment before we know of no other way, but yet we will do none of this, really, until we are stopped. This paradox cannot be understood by the willful mind that believes itself to be the highest form, but the heart knows it is true, and somehow, paradoxically, we just have to do it. This is also self-inquiry.
Absolutely necessary in our ascent into paradox and grace, is the ability to pray. Pray to the higher power, that unknown but somehow-felt wiser part of Us. If you have a sincere desire for relief from misery, to get away from yourself; learn to pray. If you have an intense curiosity about the truth, but know that as you are, as ego, you will never be able to stop yourself, and if you stay the same, so your life will stay the same; learn to pray. If you realize your need for true discrimination, to tell the high from the low, to know when you are being fooled, and when and how you fool yourself; learn to pray.
We pray for the higher power to make itself known to us, to stop us, and show us what we need to do. To help us.
We may feel we have little, but we can have these three things, these three graces: to acknowledge and allow the higher power to help us, to make a commitment to its wisdom, and to allow it to change us, to somehow get out of our own way. And we learn to pray, to ask our Self for help, no matter the consequence to our self. This is true inquiry and surrender.