Your fearful anticipation of some unwanted moment pretty much ensures it will arrive just as expected!

Ask to Be More Than Any Visiting State

In this world that we live in, response is request. We can slightly enlarge this idea by restating it this way: The way we respond to life is also a request we make to it.

Virtually every state that comes visiting expresses its life through our own, whether welcome or not! Fear surfaces, we’re afraid; cruelty appears, we’re cruel; hostility comes, we’re hostile; anxiety jumps up, we’re uptight. Every response of ours that either embraces or denies the visitation of these self-compromising states is a secret request on our part to never possess ourselves. The visitation of every dark thought or feeling — every despairing condition that washes over us unaware — transforms our life into its own. And when it turns us into what it is, we are unable to respond to life from anything other than the content and quality of that state… which is the same as requesting all the conditions that are in line with and similar to that negative condition. Our response attracts exactly the thing we say we don’t want.

Wouldn’t it be tremendous if the next time a wave of fear came over you, you were more than the fear? Think about what it would be to be more than any mental or emotional state. The purpose of discovering your real internal life is to show you that there is something within you that is already more than any one of these states, or all of them combined.

Wouldn’t it be nice to never again be washed away by any state that compromises your real life? But you have to ask for it. You have to learn to ask in the right way for this kind of Help. And the right way is the spirit you ask from.

The way that you work at being more than the state is by becoming aware of its presence within you, and while remaining aware of it, working consciously to neither express nor repress it. When you refuse to give yourself over to any state that ordinarily dominates you, for the first time you are conscious of the state as a visitor. Emotional states are not you. They are not selves. They are part of your self only to the degree to which you identify with them, which then turns you into that expressed self.

When this psychic visitor comes, your ability to recognize it as a visitor does what? All of a sudden there’s you and the state. There’s you and the condition that before dominated you because you didn’t recognize it as being a visitor. You thought it was something you had to go along with because you thought it was you. You begin to have a completely different experience of your own life when you keep your attention; you find your new sense of “I” in the quiet revealing quality within you.

You can’t ask for this wonderful, truly empowering internal life to be yours as long as you continue to identify with every single emotional state that wanders through you. So it’s necessary to work at conscious self-detachment.

Start asking for a relationship with something fearless by doing this specialized work upon and within yourself. Learn to ask for something that is permanent. Ask for something that doesn’t shake. Ask for something that doesn’t turn into its painful opposite by learning to recognize and detach yourself from what you’ve always mistakenly assumed was your self. This is the kind of powerful request that proves itself even as it provides proof that within you dwells an indomitable spirit. Work at it every moment. Find that immovable ground that is inside of you. Learn to live there by working to not let your life be lived out by those visiting states.

This article is excerpted from The Lost Secrets of Prayer (pages 50-60).

About the Author: Guy Finley, Your Bi-Weekly Mentor, is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization. He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for spiritual discovery located in southern Oregon where he gives talks four times each week. For more information visit www.guyfinley.org, and sign up to receive a free helpful weekly newsletter and other gifts.

Click here to read Guy’s autobiography and find more of his articles posted on The Teen Mentor.