“Please God, just bring him home safe. I’ll be a good girl. Please, please.” I whispered in my heart as I watched my father leave our home.
“God, angels, guides, please help. Please help us to help this man!” I prayed as I stood looking at the man trapped under an overturned 18 wheeler. He was barely breathing. It was 2 am in the middle of a blizzard.
I screamed silently, “Oh God, please, help me!” as well as, “Please stop this pain” and, “Please, please help me.” as I writhed in physical agony from the jet fuel that was burning my body and that of my 2-year-old son.
In each of these instances, I did not wonder whether God was real, or if God was male or female. It never occurred to me to direct my prayers to any particular god: Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. Instead, it was a simple plea from the core of my being. I was asking for some higher power to help me in a life/death situation.
I am sorry to report, that in each of these situations, I did not feel a comforting presence or angels lifting me out of the terrible reality I was in.
“What good does it do for me to believe in a higher power when it doesn’t even show up for me, at times when I need it the most?” I wondered. I had an assumption of what support from a higher power would be like. I had thought that in such situations it would ease the discomfort or confusion, and show me a way or miraculously give me the will to make it through. That somehow, I could experience life, protected and without pain.
What made these experiences even more distressing, was the knowledge that others who had gone through similar situations and had called on God or angels for help, had received it. Did that mean we were unworthy of such help? Did the situations I was in not warrant support? This lack of response from God/angels/higher self was soul-crushing for me at the time.
Of course, once the challenging situation was over, and I was able to talk about the experience with family and friends, God entered the conversations:
“Wahe Guru. Wahe Guru, my son is back without harm!” My grandmother said to no one in particular as my father returned.
“I don’t remember anything at all. You two were my angels. You saved my life.” The truck driver told us (my friend Audrey and me) after waking up from a 10-day coma.
“We are so lucky to have survived that plane crash. It could have been so much worse.” My husband shared with family members after the accident.
So, did God intervene? Were prayers answered? And if the answer is yes, why did I not feel it at the time?
In all those instances, the reason why I did not feel the presence of a higher power or guidance is because I was in survival mode. Survival mode by its very nature makes us contract, conserving energy by drawing blood to the vital organs, in order to save the physical body. Nothing extraneous is allowed: including spirit.
I have come to the realize that in any given situation, it is my breathing that determines how safe or unsafe I feel. It is my breathing that anchors my spirit to my body and opens my higher consciousness. When my higher consciousness conduits are firing I feel the presence of possibilities, the divine and I am strong enough to face the challenges ahead of me.
God/higher power is all about spirit/spaciousness: breath. Breathing, long, slow, deep breaths makes us feel safe and connected. Once we feel the connection we have access to higher consciousness solutions, opportunities, and paths to safety.
And that is what I want to leave you with today: use your breathing to transform an adversity into an opportunity. No matter how dire or unfathomable your reality, take some breaths. And then some more breaths until you feel your body relax and feel safe.
We all have our own versions of God or what intervention from a higher power is supposed to look like. It is my feeling that God resides in all of us. If we want to activate that higher consciousness, we must be willing to breathe life into it.