Trusting with a higher power

[Ria]

Surrendering, and turning things over to God doesn't mean "switching" off anything. You don't have to turn your back or stop caring. What it does mean is that we continue to do the footwork, but we don't worry about the result. The result is up to God. We ask for guidance on a regular basis, and our higher power shows us the way. If you are unsure about your course of action just ask yourself, what would love do?

You and I have been friends irl for a long time, and I know you very well. I have seen a dramatic change in you since you mastered this very thing of which you speak of. I only hope I can be as strong as you in this, but again, it all comes down to trust. I admire your faith and kinda envy you too darlin'

Thanks for clarifying, I'll get there at some point I guess.


haha an afterthought:

You've watched enough movies with me to know that I am always trying to figure out the information I am presented with to determine what is going on. You know how I rarely just take what is infront of me as "is", without analyzing the crap out of everything lol... Now can you REALLY see me stop worrying about the results?

But you are right, this is faith, maybe I still need to find out what or "whom" I can trust enough to do just this.

 

[Grasshopper]

You and I have been friends irl for a long time, and I know you very well. I have seen a dramatic change in you since you mastered this very thing of which you speak of. I only hope I can be as strong as you in this, but again, it all comes down to trust. I admire your faith and kinda envy you too darlin'

Thanks for clarifying, I'll get there at some point I guess.

Your situation is different from mine in that you have children to surrender to your HP as well. I wont even try to guess what that would be like. However, I have seen other women do it, and I know you can too. It comes down to a choice, and once you make that choice, you may have re-surrender on a regular basis, I still have to!

 

[the]

I don't really know what to say but I hope this all works out for you.

 

[Ria]

I don't really know what to say but I hope this all works out for you.

Thank you Uberrogo

 

[Feelings]

 

[Questingpoet]

A lot of your beliefs seem completely baseless:

I think that your objectives or your idea of what your role on this Earth is are based on your own personal values. What reason do you have to believe that you were intentionally placed here to help others? What reason do you have to believe that the reason for your past suffering was so that you could empathize or learn insights?

What reason do you have to believe there are secret wars going on?

What reason do you have to believe that you will be taken care of?

What makes you think you have been "designed" to be capable of facing your challenges?

Honestly, I think a lot of people, yourself included, construct belief systems for emotional comfort, as opposed to on the basis of reasoning. I think that it is fine to do the former, as long as a person is able to admit to themselves what they are doing. It looks like you may be aware though, based on the text that I bolded. I'm challenging your beliefs because I think that you're better off facing the cold truth that there is a possibility that the worst will actually happen, and that you do have personal responsibilities. I think you're intelligent and emotionally strong enough to face it. Some people are best left with their delusions, but to be absolutely judgmental, I think you are better than that.

Also, it sounds like you're trying to alleviate personal responsibility to ease your own fears. Like I said, that's fine, as long as you understand that that is what you are actually doing.

Just to put what I'm saying into perspective, my personal beliefs are: Based on the intelligent design argument vs. evolution, I would say that on a balance of probabilities God does exist. Occasionally I do pray for my own personal comfort. I know that there isn't necessarily anyone listening or even caring when I pray. I also know that it is a huge leap to go from "there is a God" to "there is a loving God" or any other character traits or intentions somebody may attribute to such an entity.

Pierce, I try to hold my tongue but I just can't. Do you realize how you are coming off in this thread both with the above post and your previous ones? You are one unfeeling dude. You come off with absolutely no "F" ,and I really question the "N" in your displayed type as well. Sorry if this comes off as personal, but I don't think your posts here are helping one bit (and I think in your own way you are actually trying to help). Your methods are not going to help an F type person at all. The "here is the cold harsh reality, deal with it!" approach will not help Ria. I question whether your advice would help anyone in a similar situation. You are sitting here questioning her very beliefs and values and you have no right to say what she believes is right or wrong. It's fucking religion/spirituality man, you are not going to prove it one way or another!

By questioning everything she has written thus far, all you are doing is tearing her down. I don't think she is trying to alleviate personal responsibility. I think she is using her Ni to search for ways to find answers. That included considering the whole "higher power" thing. Can the "tough love", and find another approach if you really want to help. Don't sit there and ask her what reason she has to believe this or that. What reason does anyone have to believe anything that is faith based? Do you seriously think most belief systems are based on reason?! Read up my friend. That story about the carpenter who has magical powers, dies, and comes back to life...yeah that's pretty logical isn't it? Belief systems are based on emotion, faith, and intuition my friend. That's where Ria is at and it's where we INFJ's dwell. Tap into that if you want any chance of understanding us!

 

[Ria]

Thanks Keith, we've always got eachother's backs and I'm grateful of this.

I'm aiming to stay on topic and maintain harmony if possible. All I can say right now is that I'll be doing a fair bit of processing about this today. Again thanks everyone for your support! xx. Ria

 

[Questingpoet]

You are welcome and I will rein myself in. INFJ's and their core beliefs...sign. Continued luck with this Ria!

 

[Feelings]

 

[Jack]

Quite frankly pierce, I don't think your particular position on this issue is as intellectually unassailable as you seem to think. If you want to go down the "personal improvement" route, then some humility in dealing with other people and their beliefs and ideas might do you some good.

 

[Ria]

Well said Jack. Pierce, I know your well meaning, but I think it might be best if you sit this one out sorry to say. Maybe just follow the thread if your interested but please don't post. Thanks!

 

[Feelings]

Well said Jack. Pierce, I know your well meaning, but I think it might be best if you sit this one out sorry to say. Maybe just follow the thread if your interested but please don't post. Thanks!

You're right. I apologize. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking, imagining that you would actually want to respond to something I wrote. Go ahead and carry on with everyone else.

 

[894tt3h9]

I find this to be very interesting.

My parents never went to church either. When I was younger, I was made to attend church in order to appease some other family members that were avid church goers. Despite going for the first 14 years of my life, I had little to no understanding of what God was, or what the message of Jesus was. I knew he died on the cross, and I knew we had Christmas to celebrate his birth (even though this holiday was created to overshadow the Pagan's holiday). I went to a Catholic High School which destroyed all faith I had in God and found myself denying His existence and believing also that religion was a crutch. And for some people it is. So I think I understand where you're coming from in terms of religious background.

I think in life we do have to take responsibility for ourselves. I believe that the path we are on is one we've chosen for ourselves. We cannot choose certain variables in our lives- mainly those involving other people- but we can make a choice how to react to those situations. We can also choose to accept them and to not resist them. We need to make peace with the things that have happened in our lives and that are currently happening in our lives. This isn't about trusting God, or trusting other people or even trusting ourselves. It's about coming to terms with what IS and realizing that resisting it and "coping" with it is only making it worse.

There are a lot of people out there who will pull verses and passages from the Bible and make up their beliefs on a few lines in a massive text. What people often fail to do is read the Bible cover to cover and as a result end up missing the entire message that the Bible is preaching. People take passages and are somehow able to conjure them into messages of hate for fellow human beings. When it comes to trusting or believing in a higher power, I don't think you can get that from what someone else is saying. My thought is that spirituality is a very personal journey, and sometimes you can gain insight from other individuals, but you're never going to get the whole picture. It's getting a taste without being satiated. Being spiritual is an experience and a feeling and you're not going to get answers from anyone else.

I don't believe you need a Higher Power to get through anything. There are a lot of people in this life who are perfectly content with being an Atheist or even an Agnostic and they're able to cope just dandy fine. It's not a necessary step to healing. Even if you do believe in a God or Energy, or Nature or anything else, those things/beings are not going to help you to feel better about anything. The Onus is on you to come to terms with your life. If it makes you feel better to place the responsibility on your Being of choice, then it might get you through but it's not going to help you let go of your past and it's not going to help you not feel like a victim of other people's actions. You're never going to feel happiness unless you learn to figure it out for yourself.

Looking into your past continuously also isn't going to bring you any answers. The fact that you went to church and sang in a choir means nothing. The fact that you put your "trust" in God and prayed to Him and felt ignored means nothing. Those circumstances are not now. All you have is the present moment. The past exists only as a memory. The future doesn't exist either. Having your trust broken in the past sucks, and I empathise with that more than my response would indicate. At some point though, you have to put on the breaks and realize that not trusting is going to break you down. Not living in the present is going to break you down. When you're constantly looking back to your past to figure out what the hell went wrong and when you focus on all the ways you've been victimized you make it next to impossible to appreciate the life that you have right now and you'll never be able to repair your spirituality and you'll never regain that healthy relationship with your Power/Being/Energy or what have you.

The thing about energy is that it cannot be created or destroyed. If you're familiar with Energy as a source of spiritual comfort then I assume you are also familiar with the Laws of Attraction. And with the Law of Attraction there is a lot you can attract into your life, good or bad. So you may want to also keep that in mind on your journey.

I think Pierce has a valid point in the posts he's made. You DO need to question things. Faith is all about questioning. You cannot believe blindly because that's not going to get you anywhere. You really have to think to yourself about what this faith does for you, why you believe, and whether or not it makes sense and resonates with your heart. You can't just have faith for the sake of having faith and hope to God that that's just going to keep your ship sailing, because it's not. And maybe once you answer thoes questions for yourself, you'll be able to put all your trust into your Higher Power of choice.

I have had issues with people close to me being addicts. I've had friends die due to drugs, known people who have committed suicide, and I've seen the way that drugs and addictions of all sorts can poison relationships and sicken the people who surround the addict. At some point it has to stop. You're not responsible for this person. You don't have to put yourself in a position where it tears you down. It's all fine and good to be supportive and not abandon your loved ones, but they have to be willing to take on your support, and with that make the right choices to reclaim their lives. If they can't do that, you're better off without them. Honestly, how long can you except to stick around to your own detriment, and as a result, be a detriment to your own children? I'm sorry if that's coming off a little bluntly, but I've been there and I gave up a lot of years thinking that if I abandoned such a person they'd fall apart and it would be my fault. But that way of thinking is just part of the poison that addiction spreads around.

Sorry if I went off on 1000 tangents. There's a lot of discussion going on in this thread and I wanted to interject my own point of view.

 

[894tt3h9]

I should clarify that much of my reply is in response to Ria's original post and the rest of it is from bits and pieces I've read in the rest of the thread.

 

[54192&#cmy]

Ria you just gotta let it go. Everything. The worrying the fear the guilt the everything that is confusing your mind. You can't do anything about it. That is the letting go. The resentment the anger the hate the frustration. All those things are keeping you chasing your tail. It just goes round and round. The peace you want lies in not letting the emotions of the world effect your self. It's hard to do all the time. But it can be done with enough practice. God is found in that place. A piece of God is in you. It takes time to unravel the damage that has been done. And it is hard to look at yourself and to see what you have become and how you got there. Redemption I find is harder than committing the sin...

 

[Norwich]

I

 

[Ria]

Norwich you pegged me perfectly

I'm grateful for being so intrinsically understood. Thank you!

 

[894tt3h9]

A quick response to one thing you wrote:

I'm not sticking around because I'm worried that if I were to go, it would rip my bf apart and he'd fall apart without me. He has a great relationship with my kids and they have said before that the don't want us to break up. They lost their boilogical father and they were devistated when my bf and I broke up before. As parents, we make sacrifices for our kids. This is why I'm here exploring this HP issue. Also I don't meant to be stuck in my past, I posted what I did about it to give anyone here a better understanding of my situation.

It sounds like it's not working out for you. Your emotional and spiritual health should be paramount. I know people do all kinds of things for the benefit of their children, but I don't know if it's worth it. What if there's someone else out there better suited for you and your family that could give you all you needed on an emotional and spiritual level? When your soul is in dis-ease it spreads. That's just how it is.

And your past honestly doesn't matter anymore. The only thing you can hope to gain from the past is experience, and with that experience, hopefully the ability to not repeat mistakes or bring upon more pain and suffering to yourself. If you are able to stop analyzing and picking apart the pieces in hopes of getting a better understanding you'll actually doing a service to yourself. You need to be able to look at the whole of who you are as a person and love that person completely. And then you'll be able to see what you deserve out of this life. You'll then be able to form a more positive and loving relationship with people around you, and your trust in a higher power will be renewed. It's empowering to love yourself. And staying with this addict isn't loving yourself, despite the fact that he may keep your children happy... temporarily. I think when they're old enough to understand they'll probably feel sadness over the fact that you were sacrificing your own happiness and wellbeing to placate them.

I know you're exploring the idea of a higher power, but that's going to come from within you. The divine or what have you, is already within you. We have the same building blocks of life that everything else has on this planet (Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon) and we're all deeply connected. A common saying I hear is that we "made of stardust." You don't have to keep searching, you don't have to pick things apart to get it, you just have to be still and just BE. Allow yourself to be at peace. Nothing else on the face of this planet really matters! Your circumstances, your experiences, everything that happens TO you is not your life. You are your life. I don't know how else to explain it, but it took me a long time to figure out. And like I said in my post, you're not going to get it just because someone's telling you.

But I hope you find what you're looking for.

 

[Ria]

It sounds like it's not working out for you. Your emotional and spiritual health should be paramount. I know people do all kinds of things for the benefit of their children, but I don't know if it's worth it. What if there's someone else out there better suited for you and your family that could give you all you needed on an emotional and spiritual level? When your soul is in dis-ease it spreads. That's just how it is.

And your past honestly doesn't matter anymore. The only thing you can hope to gain from the past is experience, and with that experience, hopefully the ability to not repeat mistakes or bring upon more pain and suffering to yourself. If you are able to stop analyzing and picking apart the pieces in hopes of getting a better understanding you'll actually doing a service to yourself. You need to be able to look at the whole of who you are as a person and love that person completely. And then you'll be able to see what you deserve out of this life. You'll then be able to form a more positive and loving relationship with people around you, and your trust in a higher power will be renewed. It's empowering to love yourself. And staying with this addict isn't loving yourself, despite the fact that he may keep your children happy... temporarily. I think when they're old enough to understand they'll probably feel sadness over the fact that you were sacrificing your own happiness and wellbeing to placate them.

I know you're exploring the idea of a higher power, but that's going to come from within you. The divine or what have you, is already within you. We have the same building blocks of life that everything else has on this planet (Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon) and we're all deeply connected. A common saying I hear is that we "made of stardust." You don't have to keep searching, you don't have to pick things apart to get it, you just have to be still and just BE. Allow yourself to be at peace. Nothing else on the face of this planet really matters! Your circumstances, your experiences, everything that happens TO you is not your life. You are your life. I don't know how else to explain it, but it took me a long time to figure out. And like I said in my post, you're not going to get it just because someone's telling you.

But I hope you find what you're looking for.

Thank you

 

[894tt3h9]

Not a problem