A Look at Our Human Predicament

God, 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.

REINHOLD NIEBUHR, "THE SERENITY PRAYER"

There are moments in life when we feel there is nowhere to turn. It seems God has forsaken us, that all hope for happiness and peace of mind is lost. We have offered impassioned prayers. We have begged, pleaded, cajoled.

We have bargained with God. We have promised that if only this one deeply longed-for desire is fulfilled, we will change our ways, become more spiritual, give up our self-centeredness and unkindness, renounce our addictive and unhealthy behaviors. We have prayed to have some desperate wish fulfilled, to have what we feel we need to be happy. Sometimes we are asking for something mundane and simple. Other times we are asking for a "miracle" to occur.

We ask for some healing. The disease gets worse.

We ask for a loved one to be healed and protected. They die.

We ask for our financial life to improve. We go bankrupt.

We ask for a beloved partner to help us heal a damaged relationship. They file for divorce.

We ask for the hurricane on the horizon to be diverted out to sea. Our community gets hit head-on.

We ask for a war to end. It becomes even more violent.

Sometimes we ask to feel the presence of God, of the Divine, in our lives. We want to know that God is here with us. Yet all we feel is a blank, empty, meaningless void.

At other times we use prayer as a means of discovering the power of the Divine. We ask God to prove His existence to us, to affirm His love for us, to demonstrate His power and dominion over everything.

In circumstances where we already feel connected to that power and presence, we sometimes ask the Divine to affirm that our prayers are heard, that our devotion is rewarded, that what we long for is in harmony with what God has planned for us.

Surely an all-good God wouldn't allow evil, disease, and suffering to exist. Surely an all-loving God would want us to be happy. Surely an all-powerful God can protect us from illness, misfortune, and danger. Yet there are times when our most impassioned, fervent, deeply felt prayers seem to be ignored.

We ask, and get rebuffed. Without explanation or comfort. We have identified the door we wish our Creator to open for us, and it is slammed in our face with a seemingly heartless indifference.

How do we go on? How do we find our faith?

How do we find our faith ... again?

* * *

There are many perspectives we can take at these moments. We can conclude that God is not all-good, all-loving, all-powerful. We can conclude that God does not love us. We can conclude that we are being punished for something.

We can even conclude that there is no God.

But what if our "unanswered" prayer is not a demonstration that God is imperfect, or that God is not all-powerful, or that our relationship to God is imperfect?

What if our unanswered prayer is not meant to punish us or torture us? What if our unanswered prayer is not a demonstration that there is no God? What if our unanswered prayer is, rather, an invitation for us to discover God by looking deeper?

What if our unanswered prayer is showing us that it is our understanding of God that is imperfect?

* * *

Surveys, polls, and research studies consistently show that most human beings believe in God. And most people who believe in God offer prayers to God.

To determine whether the act of praying causes any scientifically measurable effect in peoples' lives, a number of recent research studies have focused specifically on the effects of prayer. These studies have questioned whether prayer makes any verifiable positive change in the life and health of those who pray, and those who are recipients of prayer.

One of the foremost spokespersons for this research is Dr. Larry Dossey. His books Prayer Is Good Medicine and Healing Words have explored clinical evidence that seems to demonstrate that prayer can have both measurable and verifiable positive effects. Many studies appear to show a correlation between positive change in people's lives and health when they pray, and when prayers are offered on their behalf.

What is most striking about this research is that it has also shown that, in certain circumstances, an individual need not be a believer and need not even know that prayers have been offered for him or her. It is still possible, at times, for such individuals to receive the benefit.

In many spiritual communities, there is a basic underlying belief that answered prayers offer positive proof of the existence of God, the power of God, and the all-merciful nature of God. Answered prayers are interpreted as demonstrations of the existence of that which is beyond human understanding ... an all-powerful Supreme Being who can — at will — supersede the fundamental laws of science and can orchestrate "miraculous" events.

Furthermore, answered prayers are often interpreted as implicit confirmation that the person who prays and the recipient of the prayer have won God's favor, have somehow pleased the Creator, causing Him to bless them with healing, happiness, success, and relief from suffering.

If we acknowledge all of the evidence that miracles can and do occur, and we accept the scientific data that indicates a demonstrable correlation between prayer and positive change in the world of form, how do we begin to understand what it means when our prayers appear to go unanswered?

* * *

At the outset, let's set aside the belief that having our prayers answered the way we want them to be is a measure of our worthiness in the eyes of God. Let us assume that we are worthy in the eyes of God. Let us assume that God does hear our prayers. And let us assume that there is no such thing as an unanswered prayer. Let us assume that our Creator is benevolent. Let us assume that our Creator — God — is Love itself. And let us assume that God does not want us to suffer.

Let us assume, also, when we are suffering, that God has already offered us some means of alleviating our suffering, which we have been ignoring or which we have yet to discover.

God's love does not always come in the form of giving us what we want. It does, however, always come in a form that is enduring, ever present, and eternally available ... no matter what is going on in our lives.

Consider for a moment the possibility that what we are being given, when our prayers aren't answered the way we want them to be, is the opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with God, a deeper sense of inner peace. Perhaps our insistence that God give us everything we want when we want it and run the universe the way we think it should be run is actually standing in the way of our ability to know God. Our desire for things to be different than they are is what keeps us out of sync with the world we are living in and keeps us disconnected from the experience of love and contentment that is available to us in this moment.

This book is a journey of discovery of that which is always available to us to lighten our load ... to bring us back into our natural state of joy and connection with our Creator, even when our lives are difficult and even when our lives have been filled with loss, sadness, and disappointment.

* * *

There are two primary methods available to us for establishing an inner dialogue with God. They are prayer and meditation.

Prayer can be defined as "talking to God."

Meditation can be defined as "listening to God."

It is a simple but profound distinction.

For more than thirty-five years I have focused on meditation as the primary path to God. But recently I began to reflect on how the two routes to connection with the Divine can work in harmony. I realized that I do pray, I often pray, and sometimes my prayers aren't answered the way I want them to be.

Since the mid-1970s, one of the primary outward forms of spiritual practice in my life has been working with people who have experienced some profound life change that has left them heartbroken and devastated. I have worked with people going through divorce, people who have lost their fortunes, people recovering from addiction, people who have had spinal cord injuries, people who have been diagnosed with some difficult and frightening disease, people who are dying, and people who are grieving the loss of a beloved partner, child, parent, or friend. Through all of these experiences I have come to recognize that the prayers of many good, kind, decent, loving people aren't necessarily answered the way they want them to be.

A couple of years ago, at the Pacific Church of Religious Science in San Diego, I gave the first public presentation I have ever given on the subject of prayer. When the minister called to invite me to speak, I asked, "What would you like me to speak about?" She said, "How about some aspect of prayer? The month that you will be here is our month to focus on the power of prayer."

Given the nature of the work I do, somewhat jokingly I said, "How would you feel about a presentation called 'What to do when prayers aren't answered ... the way we want them to be'?"

She loved it!

And when I spoke that Sunday morning, the congregation gave me an extraordinarily warm welcome before I had even said a word! It was an embracing wave of enthusiastic applause mixed with a deep spirit of gratitude.

I sensed that their enthusiasm arose because unanswered prayer is seldom discussed. To even address the issue is sometimes felt to be an expression of negativity that might actually undercut the power of prayer. In many circles, the thinking is, "Don't consider that your prayer might not work. Don't discuss the times it doesn't. Just keep praying and affirming."

But that doesn't offer solace to the millions and millions of us who have prayed for something that we didn't get or that didn't happen. And as a result of that unanswered prayer, many of us have had life-changing experiences that, for some, have undermined belief in God, in the benevolent nature of the universe, and in the power of prayer.

In many cases, when that happens, we don't return to church or to our spiritual community. We may become disappointed, cynical, and angry. We may spend years — perhaps the rest of our life — angry at God and alienated from our spiritual community. Those of us whose faith was already a little shaky may have asked that a prayer be answered to establish a stronger faith. Even those whose faith was strong may lose it entirely in the wake of an unanswered prayer. In these cases, many of us are left without support from our spiritual community and with no context for understanding the experiences that have left us so devastated.

Even if our reaction isn't that extreme, we are often left a little disoriented, a little distrusting. Our confusion can be amplified if we have previously experienced a profound answer to prayer or if someone we know has had some miraculous intervention in his or her life.

But now there is no answer, and all we feel is a damp, dark, heartless, empty void. We begin to wonder if our previous experience was an aberration — perhaps not really an answered prayer but just a coincidence. We doubt our faith. We wonder if God is really in control or if God really cares. We may even doubt the existence of God.

There is a pervasive sense in many of our religious and spiritual traditions that if our lives are touched by difficulty and sadness, we are not praying "correctly" or God is punishing us for something.

One minister spoke with me recently about how happy he is to see his tradition "maturing."

He said, "When I first joined my church it seemed like most of the members and most of the clergy were primarily concerned with 'princes, palaces, and parking spaces'! They only seemed to be interested in using their faith to procure the people and things they wanted in their lives. It was considered inappropriate to even talk about the difficult moments in life. And if a person wasn't able to use prayer and visualization to immediately manifest the partner of their dreams, the home of their dreams, the income of their dreams, and a parking space every time they needed one, they began to feel shame. They felt unworthy. They felt less spiritual than the people whose lives were going well. And since the church offered them no guidance for dealing with those difficult times in life, they would eventually stop coming to church."

He went on to say, "I am happy to see that changing now. Now we are better able to see the hand of Divinity ... of the Creator ... in every moment of life."

Every lecture and workshop I give in some way reflects on the inevitability of change in our life and in our world. Every one of us will have to deal with changes we don't like. The way we react to unwanted, unexpected loss in our lives, and to anything in our universe that we don't like, is the foundation of our grief. In essence, it is the resistance to change — so firmly entrenched in our minds — that creates our grief.

We can rail against the seeming injustice of this sometimes random, chaotic, unfair world. We can complain, feel victimized, and believe that God, or the universe, has somehow screwed up, has somehow conspired to single us out for punishment and misery.

Or we can look for the deeper truth in our life and in the universe. We can look for that which is eternal and unchanging. We can ask how this unwanted change in our lives might somehow make it easier to find God, to find the Divine, to connect with our Creator. Even if it doesn't seem to make that process easier at the moment, what it can do is give us the fuel and motivation for our spiritual journey.

When I speak in churches, I often ask the congregation to reflect for a moment on what prompted their search for God.

"You might think that suffering is evidence of some mistake that God has made," I say. "So let me just ask how many of you are here because your lives were always just filled with happiness? How many of you joined this church because you had so much love, so much joy, so much health, and so much financial abundance in your life that you just had to come to church to thank God?"

I ask for a show of hands. Usually, none rise.

The congregation gets what I am saying. The vast majority of us embark on our spiritual quest, our search for God, our pursuit of Truth, our search for meaning because we are confused, frightened, and often in either physical or emotional pain.

This is not to say that we should seek pain and suffering but merely to suggest that when suffering comes into our lives we should allow for the possibility that it might have something to teach us.

Moments of unanswered prayer and profound disappointment offer us a unique, if somewhat unwanted, opportunity to embark on a more focused search for God. Often what loss and disappointment do is strip away things in our lives that have been diverting our attention away from God. At this moment, that may be a difficult concept to grasp, but stay tuned. In the pages of this book we will begin to explore the many ways in which God, Truth, happiness, and inner peace are always available to us, no matter what happens in our lives.

Many of us have been raised in spiritual traditions that seem to suffer from a certain incompleteness, a limited understanding of what God and spirituality encompass, and an inability to comprehend and respond effectively to matters of human experience that fall outside the boundaries of the officially sanctioned dogma or story line.

One extraordinary example I will never forget came shortly after the publication of my first book, Awakening from Grief. I was on tour around the country doing lectures, workshops, and book-signing events. I was going to be in California, so I contacted a church in one of the towns I was visiting and offered to do a presentation.

The minister responded with disdain. She said, "Your material would have no place in our church. We never present programs that don't deal with the positive side of life."

I was a little stunned. But I couldn't help myself, I had to ask, "Does that mean that no one in your church dies? Does that mean that no one in your church has loved ones who die? And does that mean that no one in your church grieves when someone they love dies, or when they experience loss, sadness, fear, and disappointment?"