Welcoming Prayer

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions,
persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,
approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation,
condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and
God’s action within. Amen.

An alternative and more aggressive way that we can address this unconscious dynamic is to make use of the welcoming prayer in real time – when an emotion or powerful event has taken hold of us – to begin to break the cycle of that particular emotional trigger. This technique has three basic parts.

1.       Focus on sensation being experienced in your body. Simply feel into what is taking place in your body, what it feels like within. The goal here is not to change anything but simply to stay with the sensation until is subsides. And it will subside, usually within a few minutes. When the bodily sensation has subsided, go to next step.

2.       Welcoming the emotion. For example, say to yourself ‘Welcome Anger’. You are not welcoming the cause of the anger but merely the effect of that anger in your body.

3.       Letting go by reciting the four lines below. The purpose is to begin to shortcut the automatic, unconscious False Self reflexive response. Instead of reinforcing it with yet another ‘episode’, we begin to dismantle it because it is almost certainly emanating from one of the first three of the following desires:

I let go of my desire for security and survival.
I let go of my desire for esteem and affection.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire to change the situation.