Consciousness and Prayer Part 6
July 4, 2025
Consciousness and Prayer Part 6
We want something. Maybe it concerns our hopes, fears, dreams, or our very identity. Perhaps we pray for deliverance from something we dread or for healing a mental or physical condition. We make the prayer but for some reason it seems to bounce off the ceiling. We ask ourselves, “Why do I doubt that the answer will be granted?” We may think we are not deserving of the answer we pray for, or we may feel that God, whomever we conceive God to be, has ignored us. In such times we may despair, abandon hope, and anticipate no relief from our hardship.
But wait! When we are hopeless, it is likely that our negative thoughts are hypnotizing us and blocking us from our good. Let me explain. Sometimes our ego is so propelled by our passion, fixation, avoidance, lies, and traps, that we subconsciously believe them to be real. We are like, the person under deep hypnosis who can be so convinced that something is real that they change their behavior. For example, if they agree to the hypnotist’s suggestion that their clothes are fire, they hurriedly take off their clothes.
In a way, the ego hypnotizes us to believe our myths. And oftentimes those myths are driven by our fixation, passion, avoidance, lies, and traps. We buy into the belief that these are the only viable ways to move in the world. The ego’s myth is oftentimes interwoven with our fixations and passions such as guilt, fear, anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, avoidance of life, deceit, or pride. When this is so, negative feelings and negative circumstances inevitably manifest. The same is true when we subconsciously “agree” to our avoidances, lies, and traps.
Sometimes the ego hypnotizes us into believing that its stress point is the surest way to get what it wishes. For example, for years and years I was hypnotized by point Three on the Enneagram. The ideas at that point seemed like a logical and even alluring way to meet my needs and to deal with my fears. Point Three hypnotized me into believing that accomplishment, excelling, producing, and succeeding, would prove that I was not defective and inferior. I excelled but was exhausted, more fearful, and miserable. The lie I believed at the unhealthy side of Point Three was killing me, not bringing me what was needed.
The only real hope was to turn in the other direction. At Point Nine, I found the specific qualities of my true nature; at the “upside” of Point Nine, I was relaxed in my own skin and worthy in my own right, regardless of how much I failed. I embraced the truth that though I had defects, I was OK. But our ego does not give up. Sometimes it still pushes me in the direction of Point Three. When I feel self-doubt, free floating anxiety, and gloom, I am being re-hypnotized by the downside of Point Three.
When we feel our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, it is likely that some facet of our belief system has hypnotized us into believing in a negative aspect of ourselves that overshadows all the wonderful and positive aspects we embody in our soul child. The most practical way to STOP this downward spiral is to pray for release, and re-direction to positive energy based on our essence, our soul child. Then when we pray, the ceiling becomes the sky.
Spiritual practice: Why might you believe your passion will serve you? In reviewing your current struggle, how may your passion be trying to put you under its spell again? How are you preventing doubt from taking hold?
Self-inquiry: Why is it more difficult for us to go to our soul point rather than to our stress point?
Dear God,
I have hope when realizing the truth. But when blocked from the truth by my own agreement with an error, I am in despair. I ask for consciousness when blocked from the good on its way to me. Amen
