I first heard the serenity prayer in Atlanta at some meeting for those of us trying to quit addictions. I was 20 and about to be 21 in four days when I would finally be of legal age to drink but my timing was off because I was about to spend the next few years totally sober. Something about the serenity prayer appealed to me even though God had never been my priority in any religious way. I was more open ended spiritually, I did ask for help on a beach in Panama City while tripping pretty hard on mushrooms or acid, watching the waves make faces on the shore. I realized I had spent the better part of my days and nights wasted and new that there had to be something more than that that life had to offer. I could sense an exceptional gift underneath this gerbil wheel from physic and spiritual pain I was in and I remembered that prayer when I made it to that meeting and wondered if the help I was seeking was given to me for the price of asking. I suppose it was.
But beyond the spiritual what I like about the serenity prayer is the pragmatism of it, it does ask for God to grant us the serenity but then it states a request that also just makes psychological sense even for the non believer
“To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference”
You don’t have to believe in God for that to make all the sense in the world.
In the following piece
I say you
But when I say “you”
I mean me
I mean we
I mean us all.
Prayer and The Serenity Prayer
Prayer is a power
Prayer is a division bell
Prayer is a unifier
Prayer is a challenge
And prayer is a relief
Like passing a note in the schoolhouse of life to the supernatural
Prayer can clarify the stumbling blocks
And is like the general in the army you’ve assembled to help realize your dreams
Of course bringing prayer into the equation
Invites the controversy of God
And religion
And the endlessly complicated ways people feel around those subjects
Outside of politics they are the touchiest subjects
Because they dance around questions about the states of our souls
And make us grapple with the idea of eternity
When perhaps we’d rather think about what we are having for breakfast
Or which football teams are playing each other this Sunday
But the experience of being a human
Is multifaceted
We are flesh and blood and spirit
And so the spiritual side of the equation
Must be dealt with
In a story of what are potential is to reinvent
What it is possible for us to achieve
And overcoming old limitations and obstacles
I suppose it’s a stretch to say you can utilize prayer even if you’re not a believer
But I do think there is a prayer that works and is very helpful even if you can’t readily access consciously a relationship with God
Per say
I will address believers in a bit
But for now let’s talk to the nonbelievers
And how prayer can still be a giant tool in the toolbox of your dreams
In 12 step land
They are quick to say that God can simply be god of your own understanding
God as you define him
They will say a lightbulb can be God
Or the group consciousness can act as a proxy
I believe that that philosophy is more of an attempt to onboard people who are not used to accessing an active relationship
With spirit
With the higher self
With the witness that has been with them since their lives began
Somebody who operates their world strictly from the egoic mind
That there is another power that they have access too
And however you define it
Isn’t as important as beginning to relate to it
So if it’s easier to imagine it being a lightbulb
Than a loving and personal Heavenly Father than so be it
The point is that it’s not only you and your thoughts that need to solve every issue in your world
There is another realm we dance with that contains great mystery and power
I think the serenity prayer is perfect for people of this nature
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference”
I think in its purest form it starts out addressing God
God grant me the serenity
But if that’s a stretch for you
You can I believe leave the nature of who or what you are appealing for help from vague
And just say grant me the serenity
The only stipulation is you do have to believe there are higher forces operating than just you.
(Or you don’t have to I suppose, at least in the case of the bullet proof serenity prayer, because it also just acts as a sturdy and logical psychological reminder of sanity)
What or who those higher forces are don’t need to be strictly defined as such.
As the 12 step state it can be group consciousness
Or a lightbulb
Just so long as you acknowledge that there is a power outside of yourself.
You don’t have to call it God if that’s an issue for you.
Regret.
Is the target
And world full of past failures
That may be creeping up behind you
As you reevaluate your life
And try to make it better than it’s been
Regret is like a gang of street hoodlums
Ready to mug you on your way back home
Regrets will gang up
And when energy and motivation to overcome past limitations
Wanes
That’s when the regrets come out of the woodwork
You don’t have to believe in the Bible to see that you are dealing with principalities in the realm of the spirit world
Those principalities show up as memories and regrets
And they threaten deeply your movements towards progress
Progress enrages them
So the serenity prayer acts as a kind of magical sword against them
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Accept what has happened
And accept where you are
Accept who you are
And accept where you want to go
The first part of this prayer acts like punch in the face to regret
And acts as a building block to a new beginning
Accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
It takes courage to stay in this battle
It take an acknowledgment that you are trying now
Trying again
And so therefore making you vulnerable to failure
Though without trying failure is certain
But for many that’s easier to accept and be weathered by the ego
To simply lean on nihilism
But to believe and move forward with new energy and will
Means that you could fail
And have to sit in room acknowledging your short comings
So it takes courage to do that
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
The wisdom to not take up mental real estate
With the things you cannot do anything about
To not allow worry to fragment your internal hard drive
But instead focus the power of your mind towards the things you have the power to change
Habits
And discipline
And perseverance
Things that will take the full capacity of your will
To confront and alter
And the very things the principalities of darkness will move to destroy
Through the fragmentation
Of worry and regret
This prayer
Whether you acknowledge God or not
Can be a powerful reminder
To keep your headspace clear and in the right direction.
Prayer for people who do believe
Is an even greater weapon against failure
For the believers
They set up a partnership with God
And check in daily and through out the day
When the demons hit
You revert back to that space of communion
And ask for guidance and help
And guidance and help will indeed come
You are not alone here in this journey
And the more you are aware of this
And more you practice awareness of this
The more the impossible becomes possible
Because along side your hard work
And discipline
The magical element of grace will arrive to carry you to places you couldn’t otherwise make it too
The winds of God’s favor
The winds of grace
These are things you can readily ask for
And even expect
Though they don’t come on your timeline or how you expect them but they do indeed come.
Likewise when you recognize frustration building up
And depression
And the toxicity of regret
You get in the habit of directly addressing those things in your prayer world
And asking for help all along the way
You have a collaborator
A protector
A support system that will never fail you
Even in the whirlwind of unanswered prayers
You have faith
Faith that there is a plan beyond your own
And so you easily see how the humiliation of failure
Becomes a bastion of purity
The flames you walk through
Stripping away your false ideas and ideals
And shaping internal vision
To one that aligns with a higher authority
Framed this way ultimate failure becomes impossible
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference
Help me maintain faith
And see as you see
What I need to do here
Help me to persevere
And guide me so that actions are not wasted
And so that they may align with yours
Towards the greater good for all.
And help me have faith that everything is as it should be.
You are not alone in this pursuit
And to the degree that you pray and ask for help correlates directly with how much help you get.
You shouldn’t simply hold onto a vision of what you want your life to be
And wait for the gifts of that dream to magically fall from the sky
But you should hold that vision
And ask for help to put yourself into a state of massive action towards that dream becoming real
You are partners with the most high
Even if for now
The most high is just a lightbulb.
I still think of that room in Atlanta where I found sobriety for the first time
Amongst a crowd of characters which I finally felt like I fit in with.
The freaks
The geeks
The outlaws
The ones who in previous incarnations
Might have assumed they were born to lose
In those days we could smoke inside
And drink scandalous amounts of coffee
And what we had was a fellowship of people sharing their experience strength and hope
Under what I see now as God’s watchful eye.
It’s where I learned perhaps the biggest lesson of what it means to be “spiritual”
Sharing the fact that this life is a struggle for us all
And often a struggle we can’t seem to overcome using our own strength
The good news is
You don’t have too.