Caroline Myss & Anne Lamott - Duet for Two Prayer Fiends

hi everybody i want to begin by thanking you for being here but mostly hello annie hello thank you um everybody knows who annie is but i just want to mention some of her wonderful books in case and i'm sure you probably have all read them all but among them and here's my favorite is traveling mercies and bird by bird which is really delicious but also small victories and hallelujah anyway and and is a genius and we're here tonight to do an hour on prayer at annie's invitation i was so excited when i got her email and she said let's do something together and so i'm turning this over to you what did you have in mind well i just wanted to get to be together for a little while we've we've been friends without having ever met for a long time we love each other's work and we make each other laugh and i just feel that maybe our combined love and togetherness might be medicine for what we're all going through right now absolutely mostly i just wanted to insinuate myself into your life and harolco really seriously wanted to disseminate the book the intimate conversations which i think it really is medicine and really blew me away and i just wanted everybody to have a chance to spend an hour hearing from it hearing about it hearing us just do a duet for a couple of old prayer fiends isn't that she calls us prayer fiends but i did wanted to to show you this is my new book intimate conversations with the divine and it was annie's idea that we get together and talk about that which was very gracious and generous of her so we're going to have a god conversation and a conversation on prayer and you want to toss out the first question no not yet i just want to say okay i brought this book months ago muslim four months ago and um and i i i just at the time just felt so sick and scared and sad about what was going on in the world and it wasn't long after the uh the un um paper on climate change you know and it was not long after all of australia had been on fire and i just i remember how it seems like so long ago now but yeah i just felt sad and empty and um this book came and i uh immediately went when got in bed with it and i'm started reading and i felt uh a flush of hope and i felt because when somebody speaks the same language you do you you're just your soul relaxes you know it'd be like being in a foreign country and suddenly hearing an american radio station or something and you go oh okay i'm gonna be okay and i felt that way with this book i felt on the by the first page i felt inspired i felt guided i got a second wind and i felt relieved to be back in your hands again and i thought before we go on to the first question i just want to capture for the people listening tonight the whole essence of the book can be captured on um you know within the just the first couple pages it's kind of hilarious um so let me just read um when we do not know what we believe in when we do not feel empowered to have an intimate personal conversational relationship with god we are susceptible to believing the most potent voice in the room and sometimes that voice comes carrying a dark unimaginable it takes a lot of light a lot of faith to sustain yourself around the kind of darkness that appears in the vacuum of religion and politics you have to sustain a field of grace around you which comes from being mindful of what you believe in mindful and prayerful so um mindful and prayerful yeah this whole book is like uh it's like rooney had that beautiful line that through love all pain will turn to medicine and that was my experience with intimate conversations is that everything i was going through through love your love for me who we've never seen until a few days ago had turned to medicine and then i became a medicine woman and i could carry it out spread the word that one of what is true which is mindfulness and prayer and god and love with a capital l so that's why i wanted to do this with you that that is more i don't know how to thank you for that i i really don't um they say that feeling of being understood or your deepest reasons for writing something mm-hmm that when what motivated me to to write a book on prayer or to share my prayers because you're exposing the most personal part of yourself to um to the public you're saying this is these are my prayers this is how i talk to god and you're and and you're saying how much you believe in that which so many people find difficult to believe in but for me nothing is easier to believe in you know and and it's it's quite a journey when the non-physical world is as is is more to you in many ways than the physical world and and the passage that you read actually couldn't be more timely and i could write an actual book on writing right there the vulnerability that we are living because of not knowing what it is we believe and i and i see it as a medical intuitive how often i if i could would write the next book on diagnosis how much i would emphasize that the stress and anxiety people are experiencing is because they don't know what they believe that that is an actual stress that needs to be understood clinically that the absence of faith that the absence of not knowing what it is you believe makes you so vulnerable in this world that you will gravitate toward anything that looks like it's something you can believe in mhm yeah well it's also that you believe in this and then the rug gets pulled out from under you and then you believe in something maybe scarier or whatever so for me prayer is really like finding a place to stand you know like left to my own to play devices which thank you jesus i'm not i my mind can be a ping-pong game between this raging ego i have and then this terrible self-esteem and you know the the 12-pound trump weight gain from 2016 and then the additional four or five from the pandemic and then and then i can ping-pong back to um to the ego and then and the but the place to land is in the truth of who i am which is that i'm a precious and perfect child of god and god never rolls her eyes at me and goes oh for pete's sake like say coincidentally my mother might god always just goes i know i know but so the place to stand is in betw not is off the ping pong table on the solid ground of divine truth so that's where what prayer reminds us of is um it's like the the english language radio when you're in morocco it's like something so deep in your soul beyond words beyond words which is where prayer takes us to that place beyond words reminds you of your the the truth of your spiritual identity that your your love would skin on you know do you have a memory of the first time a prayer was actually answered the first time you encountered what you think is was god in in a mystical way well it's funny i mean i've written as you know whole books on this but my parents were atheists they were both very very literary left-wing avant-garde so our god was like the sunday new york times and and we bowed down before it before we had breakfast on sundays and um you i was taught that um anybody who believed really in anything was crazier than they had to be now this thing in me that you've written 10 books about which was that it was my true voice it was like why does my angel is saying why is that why does the cage bird sing and this thing inside of me i found religious friends i found one of your people a catholic girl and i found a christian science girl and i still play tennis with her in hikes three times a week that's 60 years ago we were best friends at six now the catholic people got me aware of mary who has never left my side and i'm a nice protestant you know you're not really supposed to do the mary thing but i mean i wear a mary i haven't married with me at all times right let's touch our movies i know i never i always have miracles this is my dream far away from here this is my dream yeah i know the catholic friend um also told me that i was going to die and rot for all eternity because i wasn't a catholic so that made me a little bit more tense than the average bear but over at the christian science house and rubber was a healer and came by all this new thought naturally as we all did based on the work of mary baker eddie right right yeah believed in spiritual healing i blew and she read and the mother lee read us mrs eddie and scripture every you know every morning and i believed it and i had to keep it a secret because my parents were atheists and um but i had this terrible secret which was that i knew that if i said hello in the dark that something hurt me and that's my experience and that was my experience of god and i would say i weighed one pound until i was in about sixth grade and i got bullied i looked funny i had this crazy hair and i was so skinny and i was way too smart which you were too and i was really sensitive and in the 50s sensitive wasn't good like we've all fought our way back to being as permeable as we can be with spiritual healing but when i in the 50s there was this book called um the overly sensitive child and prepare i'm sure your parents had it i'm sure it was just a nightmare to have a child who is as sensitive as you are and it was for my parents and it was really kind of drummed out of me it was like oh annie for god's sake come on get a tougher skin i would have loved to have but again i had that caged bird inside of me and it stayed because of the right people because of this christian science here i loved catholic church you know most people were kids were trying to get out of church and i was just trying to get there because that was where i could hear the radio station in latin and um and so then i started when i was older was a teenager it was like the 60s in san francisco and i started smoking a lot of dope and drinking and taking almost everything i could get my hands on and that was when i really broke through to a direct conscious it was like at that point i could experience god as kind of a vertical couch you know that i old you know and it wasn't just this thing in the dark if i said hello or if i hailed mary um and um and i started reading everything i could get my myths on thomas merton has always been just huge to me and i just want to tell your readers if they're feeling trouble tonight um or for the rest of the week or forever if you just google the thomas merton prayer it's me every time i read it it says i have no idea where i'm going you know and i think and everything i think is probably something i just made up i'm a little crazy but and it says just my desire to please you i know does please me please you and i just hope i'm never far away and i know you'll never leave me alone for even a second so the thomas merton prayer and uh and henry nowin was kind of being passed around he just broke my heart with the talk of finding god in the precious community you know he worked um in a communi he left that fame and harvard and and every hugely famous theological peak you could reach to work with a young man who for the 20 years he helped him never said a word couldn't say a word he was so disabled and that was where henry now and most experience god and then muggerage goes to india and finds mother teresa and she tells him no one can do great things no one malcolm can do i can't do great things but we can all do um small things with great love and and i had grown up on muggerage malcolm uggridge from the bbc because he was such a brilliant atheist my parents loved him and he really brought me to jesus because he brought me to mother teresa and um so little by little i was kind it was kind of like a um hof brow i remember half browsing absolutely yeah heaven for me that's what heaven will be like there'll be a hot brow but i'll be seated at the desert table but i'll wander over to you at the hospital and um but anyway um and so then i just started finding you you know you're yourselves once you're awake you're just starved to hear truth and you hear it everywhere and you hear with the hindus and you hear it with rondas and you hear it in languages you don't even speak you realize that you are groking something that is beyond words that is truth that is the flow of divine mind and you and you just keep saying i'm in right so that was how it all kind of came for me um and then when i was 31 i was still drunk and stoned and i wandered in regret traveling worse i wanted to this funny little birthday church and i left for all the jesus parts because my parents long dead had were still alive in me and i thought this is jesus like a little casper the friendly ghost you know and um and little by little um he just came for me you know and and i avoided him for as long as i could and one day i was walking home from this church i never stayed for the sermon and i experienced this little incarnational moment of god running along besides me like a stray cat and i and i couldn't shake it and for days i would like kind of nudge it with my foot i didn't want it i didn't want jesus all my friends are left-wing liberals and then and i realized if you feed the little cat you have a little cat so i wouldn't let him in the house and finally i did what i you know sometimes grace looks like exhaustion and it certainly means running out of any more good ideas and grace is almost always spiritual wd-40 and i just said oh fine come in and that's how i welcome jesus into my life bitterly like this okay you can come in and then all right now i see him everywhere i go yep yep yep yep what about you when did you first build your incarnational vertical couch of jesus or of mother mary my story is very different i always tried to get out i mean i i i i it's funny i i'll talk about it now but not it's enough i was born in a kind of a spiritual bubble that i've been trying to get out of it actually even with my spiritual director i mean i i always felt like i for me the the non-physical world was so present and it was so annie when i was a child i would go in my bedroom and i would sit down i was six five six seven years old and i'd close my eyes and when something was bothering me the next thing you know i was in what looked like a theater uh-huh and a man would walk on the stage the curtain would open the man would come out and he would say pay attention and on the stage were cut out paper dolls of the people in my life that were puzzling me say this is what's going on in this person's life this is what's going on in this person's life anyway do you understand and i said uh-huh uh-huh he said okay go home now and then i would wake up it was almost i thought this kind of education was normal and then when i was at a certain age i was eight i saw him in my room and put up my bed and he said you're not going to see me anymore for a long time and we had a conversation and um then for for for years i would think did that actually happen and then something would happen that would make me think those that agreement that i made with him that night somehow had something to do with these events that were unfolding in my life and and things that would happen i mean i've told the story a thousand times but it's the small things that actually make these big impressions i was driving home one day i worked my way through college by working at mars candy company where they made snickers and m m's and it was shortly after midnight and i'm driving down a street near my home called oak park and uh it's and i hear a voice and it said slow down a red truck's going to run the stop sign with the next block and i slowed down and this red truck goes flowing right through the runs right through the side and it would have it would have hit my car so hard that we would have died and that's when i realized that i heard his voice and my response to this was was always that is so cool it wasn't like oh my god i'm hearing voices i my with the non-physical world was always so well of course you do that of course you talk to me that way of course you watch over me that way it was never that it was unusual or rare and what i realized was i was living in a world in which i looked upon others as they're the ones that are crazy not me right i could not i couldn't comprehend how people made it through life living in doubt i just i couldn't comprehend it i i couldn't imagine how it was that they would leave their house in the morning so unaware of how the non-physical world was so intimate with them yeah that they they couldn't see it they they they had they hadn't established that rapport yet and i would think how do you get how how do you function and then eventually as i down the road as i started to work with people that's when i realized how afraid people are of the non-physical world of the sacred world yeah i am terrified i just want to interrupt you for a second okay this whole book is really about um how we find our way to um a prayer life that is um not wrote and not not because we think we're going to get something from it but because it really ultimately we are our prayer life we are that's what we have to offer one another is i'm praying together being together in the shared understanding of a of a divine of a of a of a love energy let's say that animates the universe animates me and inside me and animates all that there is but what um people will find this when they read the book but how do you define how do you define the divine to which we're praying well what i what i realized for all my theological background which is considerable and all that it's like tom it's like when aquinas said everything's straw the moment he had a mystical experience he said i'm tossing it all out what i realized was that my years as a medical intuitive taught me about us about how we work about the precious creative force of the soul and the soul is really this incredible creative engine holy engine inside of us that um that when the mystics finally would say i surrender it wasn't give like i give up it's like i realize how powerful this is and i don't want to screw it up so i'm surrendering when you talk to me and i'll do what you want me to do it is such a high mystical act and the more readings i did and i've done thousands now the more i started to refine and refine and find to where i had to get down to recognizing that every thought we had actually was influencing you know i was going to interrupt let me interrupt you again because i wanted to read something that is from your book that is so profound that um about how every okay um every word we say was that okay to interrupt you yeah interrupt every word we say has the capacity to hurt or heal to lift someone out of darkness or to plunge them into despair this is the power of language recognizing that we hold this power is what it means to become conscious for we indeed co-create our reality right down to the micro level the tool god gave us for this effort is language every word we speak is a brick we lay building the world we live in how am i going to speak about this experience is it a crisis or an opportunity a blessing or catastrophe words are vessels for light they are how we exercise our mystical and creative power they are literally the expression of god pouring through us the proof that god hears everything is found in the ability to create and destroy with our words just as words can be made holy through sincerity they can be weaponized through negative intent this is the great gift and also the profound responsibility of being on a spiritual journey today so perhaps this is like on page two of carolyn's book perhaps you can begin to see the importance of prayer so um has your are you a retired medical intuitive oh yeah oh yeah i mean you know you know i'll jump in for any a friend as you know i will can you tell looking at me tonight if there's anything really wrong with me first okay um so i wanted to ask you an important question which is that how is your understanding of prayer evolved oh it has become so intimate because what i realized is that god is law that this whole creation is completely an impersonal divine holy playground and that it's poor and that the nature of god is law law is consistent there is no off planet man all right the the nature of that that nature that our nature are we we're micro planets sharing that are part of this macro and it's in there that a bio spiritual ecological theology is forming and and so every all life breathes together so this is all we are this is all the breath of god we are existing within that which we call god so so yeah there's a um story we tell my sunday school kids of a little girl who's just freaked out one night trying to get to sleep she's just scared to death and her mom keeps coming saying oh don't worry just ask jesus to help you jesus is right here on the bed with you the mother leaves goes back and little girl's just so sad she calls her again and and it keeps happening and the mother keeps oh just like jesus said right here don't be afraid and about the fourth time she comes in the mother says jesus is right here you can just reach out and touch him and she the little girl says i need someone with skin on [Laughter] don't you love it i love it and and i think that's who we are with we're god with skin on you know for each other when somebody when you're when you've sort of um uh where you get in you know you get it we were talking earlier you get into that kind of double vision sometimes and i really get into it during publication so i just i just i reached out because i thought publication is me at my most double vision do you know and especially during a pandemic and i just wanted to say i am so here if you need a cute girlfriend who knows really how stressful and weird it is but at any rate um when i forgot i was saying okay never mind now i want to go into another story i wanted to tell you that um how my prayer has evolved and changed a little bit is it used to be more elaborate you know of course you go you at some point you're praying for for what you want and what you're just positive would be um just the very best thing on earth for you and everyone if you got it and then you stop praying zach and you stop um you start you start moving into the um the silent you know the the god of presence instead of god of rescue and god of you know bell being a bellhop for you getting you what you think the god of christmas can i have some stuff yeah can i if you could just this one tiny thing if we could just i won't ask for anything else ever but this woman um in 12-step meetings years and years ago had a horrible oral cancer so she had part of her jaw part of her tongue removed and um chemo and radiation the whole thing she was fine she was very religious you know and just always gave thanks to god and glory to god and um and and was of service you know it's like you come into this 12-step program as kind of a know-it-all and uh and and they kind of um teach you they kind of help you work your way up to servant and she was like a servant of god so she was happy most of the time came back the cancer came back she was going to have to go through the chemo and the radiation again so i had a meeting she just shared it again and everybody um automatically feels panicky they want to fix and save and rescue this woman right because they're not re you have to be a retired higher power right and so and i've retired as a higher power but these other people are going oh you don't have to worry about that because you know my cousin's beautician had that and it was fine and they they're still lineball and and she just waved it away like smoke and she said you know what god's got it and that was it period and so i have a necklace that says god's got it and that's basically my prayer and i was like oh wait you know god's got it oh that's my prayer go ahead you know the important thing that's brilliant and it's it's worth commenting on exactly what does that mean like god's got it to actually take your hands off right well you know i bet we share this one thing which was um falling in love with the nine stories by jd salinger when we were 15 right and there's that incredible story at the very end and um it's a i think it's called teddy but it's not that little boy who's a mystic that's right called teddy and he's been i bel and he's on a um cruise back from the continent back from europe back to america to new york i think he lives in brooklyn i think his parents are jewish and he has these terrible wagon shorts on and there's a journalist there that wants to talk to him because he's blown the mind of all of these scientists in in norway or wherever it was and um and there's a journalist there who just wants to get a scoop and he's like pumping him for questions and he says when did you first realize the mystical truth of nature of the world and he said well you know i have this very annoying baby sister and she just drives me crazy about half the time and um but one day i saw my mom giving her a bottle of milk and i realized it was god pouring god into god and that was his his spiritual awakening that there was only god either got into god or it was god receiving the god of god which was from the divine mother so um anyway let me i just have so many questions i love this book so much i wanted to keep holding it up like vanna white but i loved it and i meant to work i meant to do a lot of things and i don't have it here so maybe you could just hold up the cover it's really important for people to see covers to too far too close yeah tiny bit back there it is conversations with the divine and um okay now here's a trick question um is there such a thing as an unanswered prayer no no uh and of course your big girlfriend um teresa of avila says more tears were shed over answered prayer yeah can you answer that i'd say again is there such a thing as an unanswered prayer oh never never but but but i think the wise that not the wise but the true the mystical approach is answer prayer say a prayer and take your hands off the steering wheel yeah and don't ever think that you know how a prayer should be answered ever and you have no you you have no idea um you have no idea what's in your own best interest you really don't you think you do in the moment because you think in terms of pain or pleasure or you or or your own security but you are always thinking of just right now and never the long view of your life or even the next life which is something you can't comprehend or the lives of other people that you have yet to touch [Music] you you do not have a 360 degree view of your life but the answer to a prayer covers a 360 degree view and that's just not something we can comprehend you know one of the tools in 12-step recovery that goes along with this is a god box you know it's it's in a lot of traditions it could be any box it could be this little prayer box of matches it could be a precious little something somebody brought you back from india and you write a word or two um dinner tomorrow night um my marriage my work and you two and you fold that this is my way of doing it you fold it up into a tiny little bit and you put it in the god box and i say to god whatever you know the fourth great prayer whatever and then i say to god i am going to keep my sticky fingers off the controls of the spaceship until i hear back from you and i can tell you i've been doing this i've been clean and sober for 34 years for 34 years i found little boxes all over my house i open them up and there's 12 bits of paper and i open them up and i remember the crisis and and how beautifully how perfectly impeccably it was resolved and could really only resolve because it's god pouring god into god absolutely absolutely when i think of how many people have you know presented their problems to me and and i've said you know if you look at other things in your life that have worked out that you didn't even realize were problems and and i said did you worry about those things working out did you worry about meeting a good friend did you worry did you think oh god if i don't have a good friend i don't know what and and a good friend came along and they never even thought about that and i and i said there's so many things in your life that were set up for you that you never even thought to worry about they just happened all that all those opportunities to worry that you just let pass you by and things just organically happened because you didn't it didn't occur to you to worry they just took care of themselves when it occurs to you to worry it's because you've decided your insecurities take over and you've you have a vested interest you're afraid of being humiliated you're afraid of being and that's when the narratives start and that's when you get yourself in trouble and your prayers really should be about never mind what's happening god stop stop i gotta talk to you about the way i talk to myself that's how you pray i gotta stop this i get because because when i talk this way i make really seriously bad choices and i can't even hear you telling me to stop yeah but that's where most spiritual um growth and healing begins is kind of gripping your own wrists and saying stop you're just making up these crazy stories and then acting on them you know punishing people based on stories that you actually spun out of thin air really i think it's um complicated because we i think we do have dual citizenship you know we have we're children of the most mighty we're children of divine love of the one of the of the heart of god the very heart of god the very breath of god and you know you're on book tour during a pandemic you're biographical i'm 66 my pants are tight it's not the dryer i think the driver is working fine but um you know we have a biographical and historical reality too that has such a deep impact on us and um and and and so part of this stopping is is just to get the ping-pong game to stop and to breathe and um and to um like i pray i pray i know god's got it and i touch i have a guadalupe here today now our friend janine whose son has cancer i met her 13 years ago in a meeting i'd never known her before and she had a sick kid with a brain cancer and i said if you ever want to pray by phone i didn't i didn't know her from adam's house cat literally just that she had the same addiction that i had as if you want to pray by phone call me i love i love to pray and um and i gave her my number but but i was really just being nice no one has ever answered my invitation to pray by phone ever she called the next day and i was so surprised i ended up giving her my mary which was this tiny little enameled mary and i had to go out she's never given it back i won't hear a harsh word said against her but she's never given it back and i had to get my own again um but it's guadalupe but if i touch guadalupe i remember the truth of who i am i'm the child of the divine mother and you know which what guadalupe said to the little indian the indian boy i guess he's a young teenager don't be afraid i'm here don't be afraid be not afraid i'm here he's not afraid i'm not afraid i'm here and what she reminds me of is this rat because she loves me in such a on beyond zebra kind of way she reminds me to take the action which is radical self-care and i do what i would do with you or either of the guys your case workers that are helping us do this event tonight i give them a cup of tea you know i'd say why don't you just sit for a minute i'm going to get you a lovely cup of tea my mother was from liverpool this is what you do and let's just sit here and pretty soon we're laughing and once we're laughing we're home because laughter is carbonated holiness and it's another form of the divine and then we're we're back in our truth we're back at what rom dolls called the heart cave boy i'm it's about getting out of this crazy ping pong i'm just crazy what's it called pinball machine right what i should be doing i wonder if i remember to turn this on or this off i'm getting very spaced out at 66. i had a neighbor come in the other day and asked me if i'd meant to leave the engine running for two hours and at first i tried to make it sound like oh yeah there was a perfectly good reason i always run it off and take the keys out but and then i just said thank you whatever right right but i i think that um i am convinced danny that what people are looking for is that mystical contact with the world we're describing yeah i am convinced of it i am absolutely convinced of it and i think that because we've become so um rational so intellectual but at the same time we've become mystical we've crossed a kind of multi-sensory rubicon so that our interiors kind of the senses of our soul have very much awakened and we're gravitating we're craving experiences of awe we're craving a mystical experiences we don't want them through a church [Music] but we sure want them through prayer we want them somehow because we know we don't thrive unless we have some kind of contact with something greater than ourself right but prayer also brings us beyond prayer because it reminds me that i'm a tender sometimes scared person i'm a mom i'm a grandmother i have an aged dog i'm a liberal i'm all these biographical things that i need i can take care of my soul through the skin i i could i can touch my own face like mary would mary would go home baby bear you know you're okay be not afraid of my hair right mary ella says i'm right here mom's here and so the mystic i think that the prayer brings us to the mystical truth that the divine is marbled in all areas of our life it's not at a certain church it's not with a certain teacher the teacher isn't the moon that a good teacher might point to the moon and that that is i want so i have a lot of prayer questions too um that people will have when they read the book but do you need do people need to believe already in order for prayer to work no no and i and i think i don't i don't i think if people saw how often heaven intervened in their life how often um an act of kindness works as a prayer that every because every word is an act of creation it's essentially a prayer that in fact you don't have to consciously pray to be in prayer that when you have a kind word or a kind thought that quote that's in fact a prayer in action so and you don't have to have a belief in a and even in any kind of god but i think it's when somebody says they're an atheist or an agnostic i never believe them i think what their thing is i don't believe in any formal religion or whatever and and i wouldn't believe in half the religions anyway i mean i'd agree with them i'd be agnostic too if i had what their nonsense in the head in in my head that they have in theirs but i don't think we are wired to disbelief there's something in us that cannot imagine the end of ourselves somehow that the moment that there's a moment when it's lights out that's all there is we can't we can't comprehend that that there is we just slip out of form and we go on and there is this this dimension of holiness that we conscious holiness that we slip into yeah and and every choice we do make matters this is a theater of this is a an experiential theater of what kind of choices do you make and you will be held accountable for them and some every part of us knows that in some way but it takes i think the choice that in order to make clearer choices you need the companionship of the non-physical world it's like help me here because it's very difficult to stay on path when there's so much out there [Music] absolutely um so why do you think we ignore that still small voice and the mystical the kind of i asked my kids in sunday school um what they thought the soul was and when this little girl said she thought it was like a little pikachu in her chest you know who pikachu is he's a little pokemon yeah yeah yeah bunny person and then a boy a 12 year old boy said he thought it was a little tiny golden snow globe and i've never forgotten that because when you're having that awakening yeah yeah you know there was this priest who helped a get off the ground although he was not in fact an alcoholic this is with bill wilson in 1935 and he said sometimes i think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses you know and so when these kit my kids understand that if you have the good glasses on it's kind of like either a little pikachu a sweetness just a sweetness a great sweetness or a golden snow globe of where everything is reflecting light or bringing in light or or play or being playful with light when light is so silly and playful with you sometimes but we feel that we put this on the glasses on we hear that still small voice that says it's going to be okay or be not afraid or god's got it why do you think we ignore that so often when it's been proven to be right so often well i think that's a lot of reasons but one is that when we finally realize that there is a god that this is an intimate universe that it's impersonal and intimate and both are true and that's the nature of god very impersonal and very intimate that everything is really seen and heard and and observed and heaven stands back and watches but it doesn't miss a trick [Music] that it it it does cause a person to realize every choice i make actually does matter which means i have to upgrade how my conscience works my relationship with what is right and what is wrong what is truth and what is not truth how i speak to others how i treat others i can't i cannot be unconscious about my fellow human beings anymore or any form of life that by denying the existence of god having doubts about it it gives me license to still act in the dark yeah when i first got sober my mentor bonnie who i was called horrible bonnie because she's science of mine and she only sees the beautiful and the good and no matter how what horrible mental shape i was in she'd always say oh dearest i'm so glad you called and i said once like in a rage i said you know we've had these same conversations for 20 years because i don't see the good today i don't and she'd say i have loved every conversation we've ever had so that's why i call her horrible bonnie um she always said annie watch the self-talk because that is the basis of the separation from self which is a separation from god and from life it's all the same thing the self and god in life she'd say watch the self-talk and i'm always telling that to new people to new prayer people or newly sober people or whatever say you know all i want you to do for the next year watch the self-talk because you have a shame voice going on and it's creating this resistance my friend terry richie was a diocesan priest in um la said this spiritual path is not about trying harder it's about resisting less right yes oh i like that yeah yeah begins by watching the self talk and to talk to myself like i would talk to anybody listening to us tonight i would talk gently i would say how are you can i get your cup of tea and sit down for a minute you seem sort of overwhelmed are you warm enough right and that's how if i'm that way with me i'm instantly closer to god i'm instantly with god and you're instantly closer to others you will be kind to others if you are not um denying yourself a kindness you won't deny someone else that's right right it's very counter-intuitive it's very counterintuitive that if you want to be filled with loving feelings go do a bunch of loving things right bring the loving feelings into the atmosphere and then you will be filled with loving feelings but i want to tell you something we're going to start running out of time i know the guys will come for us with their hooks in about 10 minutes right but um you would laugh i wish i had it with me because it would make you laugh out loud but i have this piece of cardboard garbage paper on which i heard you say something 12 years ago no the only piece of paper i could find was this bit of slightly stained thin cardboard and i was driving and i was driving along and i had i don't know what book was out but some book 12 years ago and terry gross on fresh air had turned me down and somebody else that i needed in order to feel good about myself and for the book to do well i had decided i required for terry gross to have me on fresh air and what you said having never met me you were saying it too at a at some sort of symposium you said all the angels in heaven are praying for terry grossman to have you on the air i mean i'm paraphrasing so that you can find your way home because home would not be having kerry gross have you on the air home would be you having this incredibly passionate love and esteem for yourself and for your book and to know that whatever happens was the right thing and that whoever you do share this book with and this understanding and this teaching with are the exact right people you know it's like those four remember god this is 65 carolyn but remember um those four immutable rules of human life were um who's ever there are the right people whenever it begins is the right time whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened and when it's over it's over yeah and when i read that so i wrote down i pulled off the road and i had this stained bit of cardboard and i'll take a picture and send it to you later and it's in my purse 12 years later and it says the angel and have all the angels in heaven are praying for you because she'd already turned us down it wasn't like it was going to happen she are praying for this to have happened exactly the way it happened that's exactly how angels work yeah and i've also i'll tell you how else and that's perfect because that's how angels work and also when things get so bad yeah i stand back and say no human could make this much of a mess right that's one of the things i love yeah it's in the first page it's on the for i mean if people read two paragraphs of this book they're gonna wanna um they're gonna have to have the rest so let me read you the first three sentences from the preface by the time i felt like i can breathe again as this book prepares to go to press and for the first time in the history of humanity all of us everywhere are whirling together in a cyclone of transformation only the divine could orchestrate such chaos and those scientists are looking for and they will eventually track down the physical genesis of the virus we're battling as i write this the handiwork of the divine is clearly behind it we are meant to be in this together because we are meant to undergo a vast profound shift of consciousness together as one um so i had one more question and then i really want you to just read one page of the book so people can understand i've chosen actually a prayer i thought would be fun yes okay good so one more question oh what okay um where would someone new to prayer start you know with something very simple and don't expect rewards because you started praying just start with hover over me help me not to harm others start small hover over me hover over me just hover over me and and since you brought up merton one of the greatest what from his journal um from his diary his year-long diary um june 8th i think i think juneath his entry on june 8th he ends it with this day will never come again after writing about appreciating the day hands with this day will never come again and it hit me so strong that is a prayer uh-huh live yet yeah if my life will never i will never see this person the same way this sunrise the sunset just live in the power of that and if this day of my life will never come again up the bar on how well you want to live it [Music] i love that because it's to say that it's like spritzing yourself awake to the divine to the mystical to the magic to the the better pair the new pair of glasses it's like a plant mister on your horse and you you get you you gas you go you go like this you go oh right totally it's right here it's like it's right here are you you don't come be with it tell me i really wanted people to have an understanding there's a a long beautiful essay and um the preface which is really if you just read the preface over and over for the rest of your life i think you'll be fine um i think you'll be a lot less tense than you are all you're hearing this anymore right now you read the preface there's a beautiful long luxurious rich essay it's like carolyn mace consummate it's like the consummate of carolyn mace and then there are i think a hundred prayers yes a hundred yes and so they're structured so there whatever whatever it is your heart and your soul long for you'll find it in the table of contents so i asked carolyn to to um pray us out to give us a prayer and to tell us show us how how the book manifested for her well i there's two prayers and i'm not sure which one 61 i came upon a shaman or pray like you're crazy you have time for both you look this close with these two prayers all right i'm gonna pray uh this prayer is called i came upon a shaman i heard a man singing lord and i followed the sound of his stunning voice to a park i was nowhere near home and as i entered this little park i thought who is this man with such a voice and what is that hauntingly lovely song this young man was on his knees arms raised to heaven he was singing to you lord this man was a shaman one of your earthly ministers of grace i thought for a moment that i should leave him alone in his prayer time with you i was conscious that i was invading his holy ritual but he noticed me just as i entertained that thought he gave me a smile that told me i could stay and pray with him his voice was glorious and his prayers so beautiful he was asking for a mystery to be revealed to him something only you could tell him in between singing his beautiful song he beat a drum i felt as if the surrounding trees and plants had joined him in his prayers to you i joined as well i was swept into his field of grace into his vortex of faith i fell into prayer and felt lifted up on the sound of his voice the grace he generated around him felt so rare to me lord i wondered what is this extraordinary sensation then i realized you were speaking to him it was a holy currant filling the air he called and you came the grace of you was electrifying all i could say to you was thank you i know you answer all prayers but i felt as though i was witnessing your divine response flowing into the soul of a human being even as he was praying to you utter holy bliss then i watched him lord as he relaxed into the earth eyes closed the silent embrace of nature remained for a second then he opened his eyes kissed the ground and stood up i didn't want to move or even breathe for fear of disturbing the sublime atmosphere but the shaman turned around and nodded his head to me i smiled and turned returned the nod and we both walked away i noticed a few people coming into the park as we were leaving i was so tempted to say this place was just visited by heaven take your shoes off this really is sacred ground but then what is in sacred ground all creation is yours and sometimes i am breathless with wonder that is all i have to say lord mommy oh amen and so it is i think it's time we have to go i think it's time we have to go and i love you i love you too and annie thank you and i'm doing up but i i do want to say i'm doing a because i think this conversation of prayer is so important i'm doing a class i would just want to say to all of you i'm going to be doing my next reflections class like fireside chats about prayer and about what's in prayer and about the issues that relate to you spiritually and i started tuesday night so the information will be on my website and and if you're interested in joining me for that and if you're interested in joining me but but if all of you because i believe in in discussing the matters of the soul now more than ever and calming that so come join on my reflections class it's called through the firewall i thank you annie i am sending you so much love it is if you could feel me hugging you universal sign of the bear hug thank you for my head and thank you good night everybody

Channel: Caroline Myss

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Length: 60min 33sec (3633 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020