prayer for help
Editor's Note: Judy's prayer, reminiscent of the following
excerpt from
A
Course in Miracles,
speaks to me with such poignancy and is
so familiar to me, that I asked her if we could
include it here.
Sue Bell
"This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your
mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if
there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize
the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an
alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could
say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling,
sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered,
actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.
No one but knows
whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play
to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny
that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others
will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more
than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and
self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?
We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He
goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot
find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet
none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain.
The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven.
All he ever made was hell."
A
Course in Miracles,
Lesson 182
trial by exile
Reflections of an
awakening mind
This was my prayer for
help, written in 1981 in a culminating moment of overwhelming devastation.
From that time, starting immediately, my life opened up miraculously with
wonderful teachers and experiences aiding me in the opening of my mind. In
1986, I discovered Jesus' Course in Miracles, and in 1991, the Master
Teacher came into my life. God answers prayer! Now, miraculously, I
remember who I am! I am the holy Son of God Himself. I am not a body.
I am free. For I am still as God created me.
“Ask and it shall be
given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you: For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to
him that knocketh it shall be opened. Matt: 7:7-8
Thank you, Father!
Judy Dunn
‘I can’t remember who I am’
Amnesia. That must be it. Amnesia. I can’t remember who I am. Who am I?
Where did I come from? What am I doing here? Where am I going? What is my
purpose? Look around me. Strange world – so strange. So alien. The world
is alien. I am alien to this world. Why me? Who me?
As from a dream. I have been participating in this world. I have been
going through the motions – the same motions that I see in movement about
me by those who belong here. What are they doing? How do they know what
they are doing? What is the source of their belongingness and why do I
alone exist here without a connection – a connection to a source of
belongingness.
I have been in the intermittent dream – the dream that I am real. But I
keep waking up. Trying to hold on to the shreds of the dream of being
real, I wake again into the cold realization that reality is only a dream
and that in the wakefulness of truth I am indeed alone and lost in a great
dim and infinite nothingness.
The garments of my dream lie flat and unformed on the floor of space. The
garment of name – Judy Dunn – or is it Judy Chase. The garment of specie.
Human. Female. Of status – wife, mother. Of nationality – American
citizen. The heavy and awkward garment of mortality – the body with its
heartbreaking paradox of strength and pathetic weakness, of courage and
terrible fear, of freedom and terrible servitude. The body – the paradox.
What a fearful garment. With it to sing and praise, to dance and worship
or to weep and wonder, to be prostrate with pain. What an instrument with
which to write upon the universe. Pathos poignancy wit wisdom woe.
In wisps and tendrils I waft and wander among the threads of the garments
of mortality. What have I to do with them. Yet – which is the dream. Are
they yet mine? I know they are. I know they aren’t. I know not.
God. The Name is there. The name of God. Imprinted upon the mists of the
spirit that probes the question of existence. Is this existence? I probe I
pain therefore I am. Pain the proof of existence. Yet the name of God
imprinted in the mist of my being says that all of everything that I
perceive, even the I with which I perceive can only exist at all within
God. And God I know is Good. Good warm safe ultimate Creator preserver
lover of me of all. God the outermost framework and the complete
background foreground and ground of being. Within Whose context I
experience the all of my experience. So? Is it all of God? The pain, the
exile the vastness of echoing emptiness? If I turn quickly enough, will I
see you God? Out of the corner of my eye if I turn quickly enough to
outpace my doubt and your coyness.
Oh God, what secret do the others know. What is it that you share with
them that lets them sense your presence so that knowing you are there,
they also have the reassurance of vision. The blindfold on my eyes, Lord,
whose hand placed it there? Mine or yours? I can’t seem to take it off,
Lord. Are you testing me? Lord, am I failing your test. Am I alone failing
your test, Lord? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. I can’t give up
hoping in you God, but oh my God how long must I suffer the loss of your
being there. I am here, God. You created me. You gave me this place to be
and by god my god I AM HERE. Do not withhold yourself from me. Consider
the days of my trial. Dear God, without me you are not complete. Be in me,
God; be of me as I am in You and of You. So be it. Amen.
In addition, I'd like
to insert the "answer" to the prayer, also found in lesson 182:
"When you are still an
instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have
value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He
calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant He will
take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness,
silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt,
sublimely certain that you are at home."
_____________________________________________________________________________
The name of Judy Dunn’s prayer for help comes from the
title of a poem, Trial by Existence, by Robert Frost. “Those words
represented what I was feeling [at the time],” she said. In an “extremity of
pain” she sought to describe the experience of her thoughts and feelings.
“I needed to look at my thoughts and the typewriter was my assistant. As
emotion flooded my body and the thoughts poured out through my fingertips,
tears filled my eyes and fell into my lap. The part of my mind observing the
process, (in gratitude for the typewriter) thought, ‘Well, at least, the
paper isn’t getting soggy.’”
|