"The Serenity Prayer and Addiction"

Why do people pray?

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Who, or what, is god and what is serenity? These are the questions that come to mind. The answer to these are not readily available and not universally accepted. What we can answer, and deal with in a very practical way, is what are those things I cannot change. So what are they?

Most often we are faced with things involving other people. It could be in the form of a spouse, a neighbor or society in general, which is after all just people. Its not that we can't change things. What is apparent is that things don't seem to change as fast as we'd like. This is due to several factors but the one that is most helpful when understood is that we are not the only ones involved. If we concentrate our efforts on those things we can change we'll have a much better time. We have, if we've been keeping pace, already went from not being able to see ourselves to having a more realistic picture. So we know that we can change the way we look at things. We know we can look at people differently having looked at ourselves. But people are extremely annoying, right? They won't listen and they don't want to change. Neither did we. What happened that we were able to? Didn't we want to be free of pain? Wasn't that our motive? Whether it came to the brains notice or not wasn't that what made things different? When we look at this we might see the situation with others differently. That person who is driving us crazy needs to stop, right? What if we were to decide to approach this situation from the motive of being helpful? Now the situation changes. Our practicing a principle has changed the world, for us. From this motive, do I focus on making them stop doing whatever it is that's bugging me, or consider how I can best be of service to them? With this change in motive we'll experience a change in our feelings. Principles work like that. They can be counted on

As prayers go this is a very useful one. I don't personally "pray". I don't even know what it is. I don't like the word because it reminds me of church and religion. I do ask the great unknown for guidance. I ask it for direction. I ask that I be directed to what is best for everyone and everything. As a matter of fact I don't really even ask anymore. I kind of align myself. I see it more as a movement rather than focusing on any given single entity. As if I am joining the direction of a flow. It's kind of a joining in. Joining in with serenity. It is pretty much impossible to put into words because, in this area, I've intentionally let go of word descriptions or the involvement of words at all. Anyway, I'm more serene. Serenity is good. Few will argue with that. Through asking ( gotta have a word to write, right? ) to be directed to what is best for all things I have learned a good deal about life. The more I learn the better it looks and the more serenity I get. We can find some serenity in accepting the fact that things don't change as fast as we might like because that isn't what's best. How can that be? How can it not be? We're not here by ourselves. We're all here as a race of beings and what's best for you and me is best for all mankind. Could you accept someone forcing you to change? Do you expect others to be different? Everything has to move as one. It is all moving as one, because it is all one. It just doesn't seem that way if we don't feel connected.

Life never forces anyone to do anything. Here we are faced again with the choice of operating within the principles of life or trying to fight against them to wrest an outcome that suits our brain. Our brain will give a lot of advice here and while some of it might seem sound its a lot of work discerning the rational from the self centered wackiness. Fortunately for us we now have a reference manual. We don't have to know what's best. We just have to know if we're operating according to principles. In the A.A. literature ("A.A. reference Archive") we are told to pray "that the person we are having trouble with get all the things we would like to have for ourselves". We simply channel whatever is best to that person. This works best. The best thing is: it works.

Its so simple that it may not seem like the answer to a great deal of what's held us prisoner was just given. It was, that's it. What is involved when practicing this new, be helpful, think of what's best for others motive? What happens in this process is that we've practiced several principles again. We were honest in seeing that we share some fault in the situation. It's no one else's fault we were going out of our minds. No matter how kooky or inconsiderate some people are, loosing our cool is on us. So we accept whatever role we play. We don't have to know exactly to what degree we are at fault. Just being honest and saying, "OK, I share some blame in the emotional event", is enough. Next, or prior, we were open minded about the whole thing. We don't say that they are bad, we are right, and proceed to force them to act different. Next we were willing to try a different tack. We say, "Maybe, there's another way, maybe I'll try something different". The nice thing in going about our lives this way is that we can see a difference right away. This may be due to our alignment with some harmonic life resonance...you think? Whatever the case, this reorienting of motives, is closer to what could be termed a spiritual solution.

Does this work in all cases big or small? Will it work on the IRS? This is always a question that comes up with people. Not the IRS per say, but what if I'm up against some foul institution and I want the best result. Should I just ask for whatever is best? What's the alternative? There really isn't any. The IRS is an, if not illegal, certainly dirty organization. But if we want to be happy we are left with no choice but to practice principles that have been proven over time to work. This falls somewhere in the wisdom to know the difference part. When enough people wake up the IRS will cease to be. They got there while we, the populace of the republic, were napping. I see that one by one we are waking up. Becoming conscious. At some point in this process everything will change seemingly overnight. This is not the case, but it will appear that way. If I ask for whatever is best and my only motive is to be helpful I don't have to consider outcomes. Any move towards reality is a move towards sanity. This move away from fantasy is always the road to complete happiness. The important thing, at first, is that we do it and see what results. Once we get a good result it deepens our confidence. There are levels of being convinced. We may start out convinced that doing things differently can't be worse than doing them the way we have been. After a few months we may find we automatically think differently when presented with a familiar situation. We are forming better habits. At some point the situation that once sent us off to Nutsville will generate a spontaneous desire to be helpful. That's usually the second thing that comes to mind for me. It still takes a little while some times for me to get through the first ingrained insane reaction. It's getting better.

Making up your mind does not mean freeing yourself to believe what you want - but examining so closely that you know the result.
Alan Gregg

While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
Lewis Carroll