Hi Greg

It sounds like your really struggling and I’m sorry to hear that.
You may be surprised but I’ve meet many people who have had similar thoughts and feelings. Praying, wishing, longing to ‘just disappear’. I wonder if we all at some point in our lives haven’t had that thought as well as that longing to find the right person who will fix everything for us and make us ‘happy’. Its not a great place to find oneself but perhaps there is some comfort in that your not alone.

Am I correct is implying you are a person of faith? Early on in my own experience of belief I feel into the trap of magical thinking. I trusted that If I followed all the rules, did everything ‘right’  God would magically fix my life as I desired it. When things didn’t work out, well I must have broken a rule and was being punished. Life was not going as I hoped and I began to feel very bad about who I was. I couldn’t like myself so how could I expect others to like me… even God.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t working towards my goals and dreams so much as I expected God to do most of the heavy lifting.  I wanted to “win the lotto without buying a ticket”. I wasn’t saying No to life but I wasn’t saying Yes either. I was trying to fix life… well praying that God would fix it for me. The theology of reward and punishment was not working and I needed take a closer look at what I believed.

I have since come to develop a better relationship with Life, God and myself. My prayers tend to be more about listening then pleading as I attempt to enter into the flow of life. We are I think co-creators in our experience. We are influenced by life, often in ways that we wish were otherwise, but we also get to influence life. The intention is to spend more time focused on what I can influence.

So here is the question. What would life look like if you were able to stop pleading that it be different then it is and instead engage with it as it is in the moment? Eyes open for the path G_d is providing you? Could you take a breathe, accept were you are and take a step towards your dreams without forcing life to conform to our ego desire that it look and be a certain way? Open to possibilities to arrive at a place totally unexpected? Like will attract like and others are attracted to people who are able to flow with life while at the same time engaging it. That may sound like a contradiction but it isn’t.

The art of doing by not doing. The engagement between Contemplation, mindfulness, stillness and Action.  The holy grail. Imagine being able to fully engaged in the whirlwind that is Life and in the same moment be still, quite, content… God and life will provide plenty of opportunities the practice, more then we may want.  What we practice… is ours.