God grant me the serenity to accept
the things I can not change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Serenity Prayer
The First Line
This is not only a beautiful prayer for recovering addicts, but a prayer for all of us to live by. ( I firmly believe, in a sense, as long as ego is running the show in our lives...as it tends to be for most of us...we are all addicts.)
Let's look at the words a little closer ...(while we remember that words are just pointers to the true experience.)
We will just cover one line per entry. And the first line is:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
Let's start with 'God'
In any twelve step program, as in this prayer, participants are encouraged to let go to a higher power. For most of them "God" will be that power but It doesn't have to be labelled as such . I was once told by an individual dealing with severe life threatening addiction, " I don't believe in God. That is why I can't do a twelve step program."
I responded with, "What is God?"
They didn't know how to answer but preceded to say, "I can't get into all that religion sh%$!''
I asked them to take a breath which they reluctantly did and I asked, "What does that breath do for you? What happens if it stops? And what allows it to happen?"
I just got an "I don't know. I would die, I guess."
Then I said , "Put your hand on your wrist or on you chest and feel your heart beating. What happens if that stops? It keeps your body alive right...it allows the part of you that you that says, "I don't believe in God", to be here? Are 'you' controlling it, making it happen or is it Something Greater betaing your heart...maybe it is a power higher and bigger than you or your mind or your addiction that controls that heartbeat?"
I just got a grumbled incoherent response before I ended the conversation with, "You don't have to call It God . You can call It whatever you like but It is still the same thing that allows all of us to breathe and that beats all our hearts no matter what we believe. It is a higher power."
Beyond the Naming
Many will say they do not believe in God but it is the naming they may actually have an issue with, not the higher power. Though I personally use the term God to explain that Something Greater that beats my heart...God is just a word. Even in the bible God does not call 'Himself' God. "I am that I am" So though we may pray using the word God...be mindful what we are praying to doesn't need a name. Names are just ways the mind conceptualizes and attempts to make concrete certain things. We really cannot reduce God/this Higher Power to a thing, can we?
So when we pray this prayer, we need to look beyond the name to what it is pointing to...that Great, Great Power that is breathed through us and that beats through us that goes far beyond the naming.
Grant me?
So here we are asking this higher power to gives us something we don't have...but who is 'me'? When we use the word 'me' we are encouraged to look at ourselves as seperate from God or this higher power. There is God up there in the heavenly distance and there is 'me' down here in the slums coping with addiction or whatever else we got going on.
To the yet -to -evolve- person this is perfectly okay. We haven't reached that level of awakening where we see the nonduality of everything. That's why we are praying right? We want to get there. As we awaken more and more, we will begin to see that this 'me' is no other than Self, an extension of God or this higher power. We realize that we do not have to seek the thing we believe we are lacking 'out there' but 'in here' where it always was. But for now while we are in the grips of our suffering and confusion, our ego identification, we can pray, "grant me"....
Serenity
I absolutely love this word. I actually named my little yoga studio "Serenity Yoga" before I discovered others have done the same. Now it is called "Mindful Serenity Yoga" . I just love the word serenity. I actually see in my mind's eye soft healing waves of lavender when I utter that word to myself.
What is serenity? Well according to Merriam -Webster, it is the quality of being serene. Hmmm. What is serene, according to the same source? I love this: utter calm and unruffled repose or quietude. Serene is to be calm, poised, queit and most of all unruffled by what is going on around us. Is this not the Ultimate Peace we all seek. Does it not point to Self realization and awakening beyond our reactivity to what is happening around us in the world of form?
Serenity is the Supreme Internal State of Being, is it not?
What we do not realize at this point of our prayer, is that serenity is already in us, has always been in us but we have allowed mind and choice to guide us outward for solutions rather than inward. For the addict, numbing activity or substance was, in a sense, the mind's way of trying to acheive serenity from the outside world. Of course, what is acheived is not serenity but more suffering. Layer after layer of veil is placed over our serenity with the unwise behaviours we choose.
Accept
This is probably the biggest and most important word in the whole prayer. Accept! All of us need to accept what is, to allow whatever is provided in each moment we are given to be as it is. When we deny the moment by numbing from it, resisting, struggling against, running away or using it to get to the next moment...we deny life. This moment is our life and whatever is in it...is in it.
"One day at a time" is the motto often used by recovering addicts. I am thinking it should be "One moment at a time" for all of us. Accept and allow this moment to be what it is, then the next and the next...but focus on this one.
The things I cannot change
We have so little control in Life over many things. Yet we go about trying to fix the outside world or others, protect ourselves from them , change them in some way so they fit some type of idea of how we think they should be. How much energy that takes!!!
Surrender comes in accepting that we do not have to change everything, in fact we can't change everything. Letting go and letting God or Life to call the shots is an extremely important step in healing whether we are addicts or not ( and remember, in some way, we are all addicted to some thing until we have released ego fom our lives).
So while we are just beginning to evolve and have yet to realize our true nature, we can pray to a higher power which may seem to be outside ourselves to give us the peace we need to accept the ever changing nature of life, most of which we cannot control.
All is well in my world.
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