This Mystic Life PODCAST

True Prayer, Trust & Reciprocity

EPISODE: True Prayer, Trust & Reciprocity
~ This Mystic Life PODCAST ~
Recorded: May 15th, 2026 Released: May 17th, 2026

About this Episode

In this episode of This Mystic Life PODCAST Sarah explores the relationship between true prayer in #ACIM , not knowing and being shown, and how this openness can shine a light on our most intimate vulnerabilities. In this freewheeling episode Sarah weaves together various parables from her life that offer insights into the ways in which prayer can be used to connect, and transcend reciprocity. This is a deep dive into the kind of Trust that is needed to face the depths of self hatred in the mind.

“You cannot conceive of the real relationship
that exists between God and His creations
because of your hatred for the self you made.”
—A Course in Miracles (T-4.III.4:4)

CLICK-On CC (Closed Captions) for subtitles in your language.

PODCAST INTRO

Welcome to This Mystic Life podcast, a podcast that aims to look at the world differently, with total responsibility for sight.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: True Prayer, trust & Reciprocity

This is a long one, so make sure it is a spacious time for you to have a listen. It is slightly rambling, and yet I feel it addresses some key points related to prayer, problematic thinking, reciprocity, and trust.

And it really does clarify where the mistaken thinking is, and how we as characters upon the screen are getting over-involved and overestimating our ability to make any contribution in form. The only contribution you can make is in mind, and it is in total responsibility for sight. Yet, in this episode, we go through a kind of a practical, meandering swim together to discover what truly serves.

And if it is loving and caring and vibrant relationship you are looking for, then this is the episode for you. On this week’s episode, we are going to sit and enjoy the blessed silence that is occurring all around us. And it’s not the absence of sound.

It is the blessing of the space between the words when we allow them to speak louder. And so too with our focus, when we take it off the form, and we allow it to be translated into manna from heaven, then we are twice blessed and twice fed. For we have at once denied what is not true, and amplified what is.

And so we can become more easily absorbed and settled into the truth of our being, focused only on the world we want. And not dashing about conniving and tricking ourselves into fixing the world we don’t. And so too with prayer.

I remember when I was younger, about 11 or 12, my aunt who’s a nun asked me, do you pray? And it didn’t feel like an invitation. And I said, actually, I don’t remember what I said. But whether I said yes or no, like the example I’ve just given, actually doesn’t matter.

What I shared with her was a defiance and a shutting door on the conversation. And because I had a presumption of what she would understand by prayer, I was not so open to talking with her. And in school, where there is no separation of church and state in Ireland, when asked to recite certain prayers for before dinner or after a meal, I sat there and made up my own.

And without consulting with my mother, began the conversation with the teacher by saying, “We don’t say prayers like that in our house. We say whatever is on our heart. We say whatever we feel in the moment.”

And this would be my prayer if I thought to say one. And yet that is not the focus for us. It’s the just being together at the table. And even though that was a fairly testy teacher, she took it. And I always remember feeling unlike with my aunt, the nun. Not that I had gotten one over on her, but that something had equalized.

That I had come to that age of consent over my own mind and my own thoughts. And I guess you would say opinions at that time. But I would say priorities. And I had so succinctly and without any defiance and without any objection to regularized prayer, shared what I felt. Very authentically and noncombatively. And so she was able to receive it. And even though it didn’t match with her worldview and teaching and people being taught and demonstrating that they’d learned something from her, there was somehow a grace present that allowed all things to be exactly as they were.

And so now when I say to people or invite prayer and say, “Would you like to pray together?” I felt like perhaps it was helpful to clarify what I mean by that when I say it. For me, praying, especially together, comes to coming together to not know, to accept we don’t understand, and to offer an open heart and a listening ear to be shown.

And in that showing, there’s an understanding that disagreement may arise in our hearts to what we’re hearing. Preferences may be uncovered and discovered. And then they may also gently be discarded because what was once thought to be fearful when approached in this open-hearted, prayerful way can actually become acceptable because our perspective is changed in the listening, in the prayerful, open-hearted, open-minded stance.

And so in coming together, which this podcast is definitely a prayer of the heart, in coming together to not know and be aware that we don’t understand because we have a perceptual problem, and that clarity is merely a moment away because the answer is always present, and yet not struggling or striving to hear it with the conditions of fear that we have put in place, by focusing on the problem or the question. And when you look at a question mark and you invert it, it’s like a hook. And you can get hooked on the question and your demand for answers to the specific question.

And in such case, you cannot be then in receipt of the answer that is given for you. And the answer that is given for you is not a form answer. It is a pathway through and beyond complexity, into simplicity, and a way in which you can accept the truth of who you are.

It is a pure correction of the perceptual problem in that instant, utilizing a certain set of seeming circumstances, perhaps even addressing the original question you had in your mind when you sat down to pray, or that you believed was what was concerning you. But in releasing your attachment to that problem and the outcome, and that’s the key, you can then be simply available to receive the actual answer that’s waiting for you, that will give you relief, that will literally, immediately, relieve the intensity of the false self-responsibility. And if you ever get uncertain about what you’re responsible for, remember, if it feels like a personal responsibility, that’s what will be heavy.

It’s up to you. It’s all down to you. If you don’t do it, it won’t happen.

When it comes with that specified personality trait, that’s what you need to watch for. And so here, as we detach from the personal identification with the problem, and instead restore ourselves to identification with the answer and the Holy Spirit, we can be relieved of suffering, which is the persona or character identity. That’s where the suffering is coming from.

And so there was something I used to do with people years ago, which I thought was very helpful, which was, “Okay, you’re in a tight knot right now. I can see you feel tightly bound by the constraints of this perceptual conundrum you believe you’re facing.” And I would say, “If we take away time, how would it feel? So if it’s five years from now, how do you imagine you’d feel? You know, what sensations around this issue do you think you’d be feeling or thinking?”

And then I would introduce the element of space. And I would say, “What if all of those things, the fact that you can’t pay the mortgage, the fact that you don’t know where food for your children will come tomorrow, the fact, and you know, just go through these seeming facts that are appearing in front of you, they’re only reflections truly.” So that was not the right word to use.

And I said, “Well, actually, you’re on a spaceship heading to Mars right now. And second by second, you’re getting further and further away from the source of your problem, which is your identification that it’s your responsibility to resolve and form. There’s just no way you can do it. Do you feel bad now?” And for the majority of those I would join with, this kind of relief will come over them and they would go, “Well, no, because it’s not my fault. I obviously can’t do anything about it.”

And there we would get to the heart of it. I said, “So it’s that it’s your fault that’s causing you distress. There’s a blame in there. You think you’re noble and want to take responsibility and take care of something, but actually you’re trying to offset a fault and a blame that you’re agreeing to.” That you’re saying, “Yes, it is my fault and I am to blame” even for something innocuous. So when you start to see that it isn’t noble, you’re not trying to right the wrongs of the world because you’re a saint.

You are actually simply trying to offset the pain you’re in by stopping the reflection that’s pointing a finger at you saying it’s your fault. And that it’s by your own decision, whether you accept the pointing finger or whether you reject it and say, “Well, they’re saying they hate people who have pink hair and my hair’s blonde, so it doesn’t apply to me.”

So the accuser will appear in many forms, but the accuser will always be you. Always. It will always be you. And therefore you have a distinct opportunity to decide whether you now, and this is the key point, agree with that accusation. It doesn’t matter that for eons of time and space and millennia you have agreed with that pointing finger. The buck stops with you. Do you agree now? It is your responsibility for sight to decide whether you agree with the reflection if it’s pointing a finger of guilt at you.

The reflection and the mesmerism and the flickering lights and colors and images and everything that appear still await your interpretation of what they mean to you. And if they mean, in judgment terms, guilty, to blame, shame, attack, then you have judged it thus. There isn’t another whose pointing finger can accuse you if you didn’t first interpret something in the reflection as being your fault.

And much as we hate to hang around with people who we perceive make us feel guilty or wrong or bad, they’re truly doing us a favor. Yes, it’s very helpful if you can minimize the amount of time you spend around them and wait till you’re in your right mind before you walk in that door or approach that conversation, because then you have a chance to witness all the more clearly to what is being reflected and your own thoughts and feelings and judgments about that.

But even if you don’t and you feel like you’re in an abrasive situation and you’re getting sandpapered raw from the seeming pointing out of mistakes and errors and them being made more real by a friend or parent or child or companion even that you have, then that pain, that rawness is an acute sign that something that has been around for a long time is desiring to come to healing.

It’s at a pain level where it can no longer be ignored and can no longer be tolerated. And even though the continuity in form seems to be like salt rubbing in the wounds, we must for ourselves find that safe and sacred space of presence in between the words. And you can be willing to take the reflection and to look at it with the Holy Spirit, but you must be unwilling to accept the guilt and shame that comes with it.

Even if you believe it about yourself, you must go later to the Spirit when a spaciousness and a time of calm has come upon you or you have carved it out for yourself somehow and take that moment by asking what the reflection is trying to show you versus accepting that it’s true that the reflection is saying you’re guilty. And it’s very different. It’s a distinction that’s vital to understand because otherwise healing is like torture.

It’s like being some kind of sacrificial lamb that is being slaughtered again and again and again because we’re making the error real. That’s why our focus is on accepting of the answer. That’s what accepting the Atonement for ourselves means, accepting that we’re mistaken. Not that a list of A, B, C, D happened. We were a contributing factor to it and therefore the fault is ours.

We’re here to pray, and this is bringing us back to prayer again, with the Holy Spirit to see it differently, to understand just how mistaken our thinking is, how twisted our orientation is, that we have not up to this point been able to fully separate the reflection, giving a communication of what’s helpful or a belief that we believe or a point of view that we hold that is no longer sustainable because it’s so incredibly painful, and responsibility for this litany and list of terrible things that are perceived to be our fault or perceived to be another’s.

It really doesn’t matter. The pain is being kept if there is a fault in the world. So to come into peace and find that spaciousness and that stillness that’s ever-present and available to us, where the answer is all there is, where we are devoid of suffering, and yet we avoid this emptiness and this quietness.

And if you understood that there is the balm of being, there is the debrement, almost like the Holy Spirit’s a triage nurse, removing all the false beliefs and desires that were in conflict, and identifying that simply being and allowing the air that surrounds you to be truth, healing has already happened. By not trying to hide the wound where it festers or force it into a fake healing by plastering it over and covering it up and, you know, filling yourself full of different kinds of medications. It is neither to force nor hide the healing, but simply allow it to be exactly as it is.

And that this healing, quiet, present time is actually a step in coming into allowing ourselves to be done through. I mean, consciously, you are aware you are not the one doing the healing. When the cut on your finger heals, you did not heal it. Even in the story of the world, the body healed it. You may consider yourself a facilitator of healing. You may consider that the reiki you gave the cut, or the ointment you gave the cut, or the salty water bath and the clean cotton wool you gave the cut, supported healing.

But you could never claim to be the healer. And that is a very good example of being done through, allowing what is to happen. And what is, is simply a restoration of the mind to awareness of wholeness and allowing everything of time and space to, and you know, it’s like watching a kettle boil.

Once you take your eye off everything of time and space and allow it room to breathe, it can arrange itself so much better and rearrange itself so much better into a new and purposeful reflection which brings to you an understanding of what’s really been happening, where your mind has been, what the maya and illusion has been disguising from awareness. And so it can restore clarity to you. When you hear all these words and you see how passive the you is in all of this, you, quiet, open to receiving clarity.

You, quiet, open to receiving an answer. It’s that capital A answer every time. But if you make it too specific to an answer to your question, then you almost curtail the way you could receive clarity. And so you’re just open to receiving an answer and detaching it from that hooked question you had before.

And then the certainty that it will be the answer in the moment that you need to hear in order to allow you to just very naturally get back in the flow. When you’re in the flow and things are unfolding effortlessly and easily, there isn’t a need to be moment by moment saying, “What’s the answer? What’s the answer?” Because you’ve let go of the question.

So when you are beset by questions, it’s helpful to remember that it’s the questions that are curtailing you, not a lack of an answer. And therefore, instead of striving and leaning forward and grabbing for that answer, you can sink back in and understand that it will come to you.

Now, it’s not your fault. This is layer two for A Course in Miracles students. It’s not your fault for feeling bad that you don’t have an answer. And yet, in your responsibility for sight and accepting that, you can simply accept that you would like the answer. I accept now that I would like the answer. I accept that there’s a tiny amount of me that’s still a little afraid of the answer. I notice I still have a belief in sacrifice. I notice I still feel that maybe I might not like it.

The Holy Spirit knows your preferences. The Holy Spirit is the highest version of you. The Holy Spirit desires happy learners. So the Holy Spirit will work with your preferences as much as possible, unless they will literally hurt you. In which case, recognizing that the pain of the death grip you have on a preference has turned what you called prayer into a demand, and that you are actually with your own fist closing the portal to receiving the answer that the Holy Spirit has for you.

And if you can and do find yourself in that position, if you can in that position, then recognize that the death grip you have on the preference is actually where the pain is coming from. It gets much easier to drop a hot coal when you recognize that that’s where the pain is coming from, that it’s not a preference to be warm. You’re actually frying yourself.

And I feel that so many now are at that tipping point with so many things they’ve just been gently touching with as they went along through their forgiveness and healing journeys. Now it’s scorching them if they touch it. And the need to recognize that the preference has become the problem is paramount.

As soon as you safely hand it over to be utilized on behalf of the Spirit for awakening, it can perhaps at a later date be safely given back to you, but you must forgo it completely in the short term in order to have the pain removed. Pain is one of our biggest seeming problems because of a lack of recognition of what it is, it’s a communication.

It’s saying something is out of accord in an alarming way that is blocking all the good that God has for you. And so, if you are in a moment where there seems to be a stuckness and a stagnation in your life, then look to your left hand and watch what you have a tight grip on with a list of preferences. Now, this is not about being a stoic and this is not about, you know, letting go of everything you love. It’s actually about recognizing that it’s too tight through which to now experience yourself.

And that, in fact, it’s a bit like wearing your favorite necklace from when you were 10, but now it would like strangle you if you tried to put it on. And so, momentarily, we must put those little treasures back in the jewelry box and hand them over to the Spirit for what’s truly helpful to happen with them.

We’re not giving up treasures. We’re just saying, I may have outgrown this one and something better comes this way. Because in grasping onto something, you begin to feel the death grip it has on you. And only when you begin to question that this is something you love and brings you joy by noticing the extreme pain you’re in, by trying to contain it, control it, have it in your life, can you begin to question that it’s really for you in this moment.

And that’s where we use the term given with a capital G. It’s given. That relationship is given right now. It’s almost like there’s just nothing you could do to either escape it, get rid of it, or run away from it, or make it happen.

It’s not given. There’s no chance that it’s coming towards you at all. And there’s no contrivance you could try or manipulation that you could ensure that would make it happen. So that’s what we mean by given. It is currently present and consistently showing up in your reality because it’s being used for healing. And when we can embrace the given quality of the things we like as well as the things we seem to not like, equally, then we’re on a real roll with forgiveness opportunities.

And the only reason we would ever be afraid to pray and come and sit in silence with the Spirit is because we’re not up to date on our forgiveness opportunities. And yet the Spirit, if you come, is still not going to shame you. The Spirit is simply going to make you aware of where you’ve missed forgiveness opportunities.

Not that they are in the past, but thematically where in the present the next off-ramp is, where the recalculating of the driver aid is going to say the next left turn is so that you can get back in alignment and back on the road you’re meant to be on. And when I say the road you’re meant to be on, it’s all used for healing. Nothing really ever goes wrong.

But the alignment can be purified and that’s very practical. And so you’ve got your SatNav or you’ve got your Google Maps and it’s now telling you how to get back on the road to where you say you want to go. And if you’ve said you want to go to peace, then it becomes very simple and clear.

And if you have multiple desires for multiple things that are in competition with peace, it will seem more complicated. And so there’ll be more roundabouts in your future until you have resolved and decided that you have a singular goal for peace. And then all other desires that you have can be harnessed and can lead you straight ahead.

Tout droit, as they say in French, which I’ve always loved that phrase. And so now directly rooted once more, sitting quietly, not knowing, accepting that we’re not meant to understand because of our acceptance that we have a perceptual problem. And yet that we are sufficiently trusting and present that we can be shown.

And the convincing job of what it is we need to know and what it is we need to be shown then falls back onto the Holy Spirit. Because we have shown up. And you can sit there even saying, “Oh I notice I have a lot of fears Holy Spirit, I’m scared of sacrifice, I’m scared of manipulation, I’m scared you’ll take the very things I love away.”

Just sit there and lay all those on the altar. Much better to have a conversation with the Holy Spirit in the silence of your own mind or in your own heart. Or with a mighty companion if those blocks start to arrive when you come to pray together. Much better to spend your time talking about those blocks to the answer than talking about the initial perceptual problem. Far better. So I would say the emphasis comes very much off problem solving and on to and into being in solution. Together. And so that’s what I mean by praying. Together.

To sit and hold space and make yourself available. Just sitting there to not know. If you feel you’re doing it on your own and you need support, light a candle. Burn some incense. There’s a reason that people used incense because of the time stamp that it gave from start to finish. It’s a commitment that doesn’t have you looking at a clock for example.

There’s something you can be doing. You can be watching that flame and that smoke curl and watching it burn down. And having given over the problem as you perceive it to be and accepting that you wouldn’t even know what problem would be best to address first.

Even that humbleness would allow things to get reorientation in time and space in a way that you can kind of click in and get with it. And as you watch that incense burn down and literally just put your whole attention on watching that incense burn down for that length of time or the candle flicker or that one piece of music that’s orchestral that can just focus your mind and you can put your attention there. That is sufficient.

That is sufficient trust to open a portal to presence. To come and perform miracles through you. They have to be involuntary. They cannot be under conscious control. That’s what it says in A Course in Miracles. You cannot be your own guide to miracles. For it is you who have made them necessary.

And what I’ve discovered in all the years of praying in this way is that the very thing I thought was the problem, it turns out it was really a red herring. It literally wasn’t an issue at all. It was very often something I thought I had a handle on that needed correction in my perceptual awareness. And by correction there’s nobody wrapping knuckles here. There’s nobody being admonished.

It’s just simply clarified. It’s like actually your suitcase will close if you take out this one item. You don’t have to let go of your favorite dress. Just take out this one item that you thought was practical and you should have in your case, but that you didn’t really love. That’s more like what correction and finding out what’s given and not given feels like. And you’re like, oh my god, I get to bring everything I love. It’s still with me. The experience of having everything I love is with me. And then the experience that what you need is being provided.

And it’s almost like as you’re repacking your mind during these sessions, you seem to need less and less of certain things in form and have more and more of all the things you love. That’s my experience. And so I seem to have a very practical aspect of my life where I am quite literally packing suitcases all the time.

And when I do and I see the amount of things that are laid out on the bed and the size of the very small suitcase, and I smile to myself and I go, okay, here we go, Holy Spirit. This is not going to be a practical exercise in getting a bigger case, paying for more stow space on a bus or an airplane, or, you know, finding more lockup units to hoard things. This is going to be an exercise in discovering where I have a dependency on something in form or dependency on a belief or desire or thought in my mind, which I’ve been using actually to fend off intimacy with you.

And it’s an opportunity to open to that trust and that being done through. And on my last packing experience, I came face to face with quite a deep and profound experience of that shame, blame, and absolute terror that we all experience but minimize down into, oh, we’ll figure it out. It’ll be all fine. Whatever.”

I was walking through a situation and into another situation where there was absolutely no way it could happen. And yet I was being asked to continue to keep doing the next indicated thing. All the while, I was very, very aware of the extremity of this terror that was arising in the mind. And it was arising to show me what, in a much duller fashion, I’m still living with on a daily basis. And it was startling to me. It really was. It was startling to me. The false self-responsibility that still persisted. It was very humbling. And all I kept thinking was it’s like driving a car at speed towards a wall. There’s absolutely no obvious way through. Yet this is the direction and I’m firmly driving towards what looks like a wall.

And so it took incredible trust to keep moving in the direction that was given as seeming time and space counted down towards a departure date where nothing had materialized yet for how it would happen. And this was an experience where there wasn’t an incredible amount of trust present.

There was, in fact, the plain terror. And I feel that it was actually very important to have that experience because we can have cross your finger trust, which is like, “Oh, I’m sure it’ll all work out great,” but there’s still fear present, you know. Or we can face it.

And what was happening now was the 99.9 recurring percentage of trust that was there couldn’t override the 0.000001% of fear that was present. And it was time to really take a look at that fear and see what it was coming from and what the conditions were that were holding it in place. And as I was packing, I remembered an experience I had with friends in Hawaii where we had gone snorkeling and it was my very first time being in the waters there.

And I am being so bulbous. I’m very buoyant and it’s kind of challenging to swim in water when you’re that buoyant because you have a lot of physical resistance to the water. It’s hard to stay underwater when you’re snorkeling.

And they were much faster and more adept and also knew the area. And there were all lots of reef barriers in and out of which we were swimming. And then they said, “Yeah, we’re feeling we’ll go back.” And I was like, okay. So I was cleaning my mask and I turned around and they were gone. And I started to swim after the last fin I saw flop in front of me.

And though it was crystal clear waters, all I had was the little wake that was left in the water of where they had been. And I was literally looking at, like I’d said previously, this blank wall of coral. And I was like, I have no idea where to go or where they went. And all I could do was follow the last swish of an inclination of the direction. And the tide was also coming in. So it was getting a little precarious and starting to become tiny bit choppy.

And so I just kept swimming in that direction, swimming as hard as I can. And then there’s this like sense of desperation that’s also present in like, I might not be able to do it. What if I can’t find them? What will happen? And this of course is what was happening when I was packing the bag as well.

This self-responsibility for form, this desperation that what if I can’t make it? What if I can’t make it happen? What if I can’t make it land? What if I can’t find them? And truly all your desperation will come from that thought, what if I can’t? And it’s the forgetting that He can. And it’s the persistence of that 0.0001% death threat. And so all I could do was keep swimming directly.

No, I wasn’t thinking the Spirit will guide me. No, I wasn’t thinking I’d find my way out. I was in the desperation of the thought that it’s up to me, it’s up to me, it’s up to me, it’s up to me. And I just kept swimming towards what looked like a solid rock face. And when I got there, imagine one hand in front of the other from a distance, the fingers are melding, and it looks like one solid wall with one hand slightly in front of another. But up close, you can see that you can take a very sharp turn around and there’s a crack between the two.And when I turned that crack, it immediately led out into the spacious area, which was also beyond the buffering of the waves that were now turning as the tide turned.

And I’ll never forget the sense of release. I felt like I was nearly going to have a heart attack. I was swimming so hard and so fast and with so much desperation, like terrible desperation. It was a very traumatic experience. And I got through the crack because I thought they’d forgotten about me. But they were trusting in Him too. They didn’t feel they needed to mind me. And I was the only one who lost trust in that.

And then they were up and they had their goggles and their masks and their flippers off and they were all chatting and they were literally walking away and nobody was glancing back towards me. And I remember that the sense of, you know, relief that had come from turning that corner hadn’t actually addressed where the fear was coming from. The fear was that I wasn’t in awareness. I wasn’t safe. I wasn’t being taken care of. And nobody cared.

That was really where the fear was coming from. Because when you feel all those things, even if you, you know, put it on a person, you think, they care about me, they know where I am, they’re looking out for me. You can offset your lack of faith in God.

And here I was stripped of both reflections. So much so that I realized I had a huge reliance on the formal components still, and not sufficient reliance on the God dependency, because it wasn’t my first thought. There was some idea of impressing my companions, being able to keep up with them, being good, being easy breezy, not being a burden, being light.

And when you start to hear those thoughts about yourself, as you say them to yourself, you start to recognize that, yeah, you can don’t feel very secure in yourself with these companions. You are on your best behavior. You feel you have to perform in a certain way in order to be loved, appreciated, or even tolerated, perhaps.

And when you start to get down to the core of your being, those are things that are in place in nearly every relationship. That’s the reciprocity that we talk about in relationships, that you can understand why that stems actually from not feeling secure with God, not feeling beloved. So it’s very important that we take account of those beliefs that we have about ourselves and notice those perceptions we have that we keep glossing over, those doubt thoughts about others that maybe were not that beloved.

Because when you do that, then you can become aware of your lack of trust in God and your lack of awareness of your own truth and identity in Christ. Because once you’re certain and settled in that, it absolves all the rest. But for a while, it seems to be a mismatch.

As if you work things out between you and people, as if you start to allow yourself to notice that you’re performing or that there’s so much built-in reciprocity, you feel you have to people please, or if you let them down, they’ll just abandon you. Any of that type of thinking. Or you could be in the other shoe.

You could be saying, well, if they don’t live up to this, I’m done with them. It doesn’t really matter which character you’re playing in the play of awakening. The play is to see the reciprocity and the play is to see why coming together and simply being quiet and in prayer to listen for the answer is so much harder initially than talking about the perceived problem on which people can happily agree.

In which people can feel like they’re participating or making a contribution to problem solving. In which people can aggrandize their own sense of saving people, Messiah complex, being helpful, but not in the truly helpful way, and maintain their self-concept as being a good friend. And then you have the other side, which is the one who needs the help and needs the support and needs the care.

And that’s what they have to actually offer the reciprocity of the situation. They offer this perfect kismet moment where the two friends or the three friends or the four friends could be a coffee morning, come together to chew the fat and problem solve. What really happens during those situations, if we’ve not turned to prayer as I’m now describing it, is we’re reinforcing the false perception.

We’re reinforcing the false of concepts, and we’re reinforcing our identity as the problem solver and denying Christ. Because we’re not aware that the problems are of the ego. It’s a perceptual problem called the ego. It’s singular. Everyone doesn’t have a separate personal one. The problem is the ego.

The answer is the Holy Spirit. So where is the you in all this that’s doing anything? Who are you? What is it you think you’re doing? What is it up to you to do? You’re either a host to God or a hostage to the ego. There is no separate self choosing between things.

Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?
You will accept only whom you invite.
—ACIM (T-11.II.7:1-2)

You’re either hostage or host. You’re either completely contained within the ego’s thought system or you’re completely contained within the Spirit’s thought system. There’s no either or. In truth, you’re only in the system of love. So you’re in love or a call for love. You know, it’s one is the deceptor as if there’s a problem.

It’s a hypothetical as if. So for your next coffee morning, invite those mighty companions of yours to join you in true prayer. And perhaps you will need to find somewhere quieter to do the joining. And yes, at times there can be great convivial cups of tea had when you go out and there can be cake and there can be frivolity and there can be sharing of all the experiences, miraculous and maddening that have been happening during the week.

And yet what will start to happen is if you build in this priority for true prayer together, those conversations will often lull into a quietness. And you may find even in a busy cafe, your eyes closing and a quietude coming over you. And the answer may have no words that come, but it will have a quality of presence, that cessation of involvement that calms and quiets the mind.

And so it’s time for all of us to upgrade to the appointed Friend and to allow the laws of friendship to be gently laid by as we open up our hearts to true mighty companionship and communion and to see that love is content and not form of any kind.

VI. The Appointed Friend
—A Course in Miracles (T-26.VI)

 

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