Five Steps to Freedom
 

An excerpt from Five Steps to Freedom:

An Introduction to Spiritual Mind Treatment

by Dr. John B. Waterhouse

This essay explores the use and significance of prayer in our daily lives.  Prayer as the means by which one speaks to God is an ancient idea.  Getting down on one’s knees and praying to a deity for comfort or support has been a human discipline for thousands of years. This tradition has little to do with what you are about to discover.  The form of prayer I want to share with you may seem very different from what you were taught as a child and what you have used throughout your life. 

You are about to learn a new way of praying that will call you to look at all of life with new eyes and to experience the presence of God from an entirely new perspective.  This new form of prayer, known as Spiritual Mind Treatment, may require that you establish a fundamentally new relationship with the Divine, and equally important, it may call you to create an entirely new understanding of who you are within that relationship.

As human beings, we use many different methods of expressing in the world.  We speak, we sing, we write, we dance, we build, we work, we play and so on.  We use our bodies and our minds to express ourselves and to feel our connection to life.   Yet none of these forms of expression is more poignant or more mystical than the activity we call praying.

When do we pray?  Some people would say that they pray only when they go to church.  Others would say they pray only when they find themselves in trouble or without an answer in some dangerous or deeply important situation in their lives.   Some would say they set aside a special time to pray each day without regard to what is going on.  And if asked this question, many people would say they never pray at all.  These answers and most others that you could imagine all fall short of explaining the true essence of prayer.

Before we can effectively address the question of when we pray, we must first ask the question, “What is prayer?”  Probably the simplest and most common answer is that prayer is our way of talking to God.  If this is so, then we must ask, “What does it mean to talk to God?” This question then brings us to a litany of related questions, such as,  “Do we see God as someone who is off handling other things and then suddenly becomes available to give us attention when we call out?   Does God hold as important everything we choose to pray about?  Is there particular use of language or certain expressions that should be used when speaking to God? Are there only certain things that we would want God to know about us?   Is it important to be respectful when we pray to God?  Do these or any other conditions actually help make our prayers more effective?” 

Answers to these questions will be as varied as the people who provide them.  They all speak to our differing perceptions of God, but none of these answers or questions moves us toward understanding the true meaning of prayer.  So, we go back to the basic question, “What is prayer?”  For the purpose of this exploration, I will define prayer as “any expression we make toward God.”  This could also be stated as “any expression that is received by God.”

Virtually every religion and spiritual discipline teaches that the Divine is always present in our lives.  If this is so, and I believe it is, then God, or Spirit (as I prefer), is receiving and experiencing every word we speak or write, every idea we imagine, and every action we take.  Everything we express is experienced by Spirit, which means that every expression in our lives is a prayer.

In response you might say that this cannot be so because you are not always addressing God in your daily activities. 

When we begin to comprehend the constant and abiding presence of the Divine, we must entertain the notion that our every utterance, our every thought and absolutely every other expression we bring to life is a calling out to God.  Every time you curse, you are praying.  Every time you are angry, you are praying.  Every time you tell a joke, or laugh, or lie, or cry, you are praying.  Your judgments are prayers.  Your fears and phobias are prayers.  God hears and knows them all.  Everything you think, say and do is a prayer and every bit of it is having a direct and significant effect on your life.

But you don’t even remember what you say, much less what thoughts run through your mind.  How could these fleeting impressions be so important?  Please understand that what you think, no matter how fleeting or seemingly unimportant it may appear to you, is vitally important to how you experience life.  Your thoughts are the building blocks of your life.  Your entire reality is based upon what you believe.  Your beliefs control your life and God knows them all.

So forget trying to work an eleventh hour deal with God, thinking somehow that when the chips are down that you can ask for a break and suddenly play a different game with God.  We may not simply be on a path to a more meaningful afterlife.  The realness, fullness and deepest meaning of life exists right here and right now, and there will be no better time or place to recognize the higher reality of God’s presence. 

The good news is that there are methods for changing the conditions of your life no matter how difficult or hopeless they may seem.  You can learn how to pray in a powerfully effective way that will truly change your life by literally changing the world around you.  There is a way to know God and to know yourself in relation to God.  This way is through the use of Spiritual Mind Treatment and through understanding the spiritual principles on which this discipline is based.

Spiritual Mind Treatment is about getting a handle on your life.  It’s about claiming the life you desire and being the master of your own destiny.  Spiritual Mind Treatment is “Power Praying” that helps you focus your attention and create intention in your life with extraordinary energy and clarity.

Spiritual Mind Treatment is a five-step mental and spiritual process in which each step brings an ingredient essential to the whole.  In this book, the steps of treatment are given the following names: Recognition, Identification, /Realization, Gratitude and Release.  Each of the next five chapters is dedicated to one of these steps.  At the end of each chapter you are given space to practice and develop your own personal expression of that step. 

I encourage you to do these exercises as they present themselves.  If you do not want to write in your book, do your work on separate paper, but please do the work.  Without doing the exercises, this book can be no more to you than an “interesting read.”  Writing your own treatments will allow you to internalize the methods shared in a much more meaningful and personal way.

Spiritual Mind Treatment is about expressing yourself in such a way that opens you up to experiencing the fullest possible understanding of yourself and your world.  Enjoy this adventure.  It may hold for you a key to some of the deepest and most profound revelations that life has for you.

Dr. John B. Waterhouse is a teacher, guide, mentor, and leader.  His life has long been about revealing the power that dwells within each person he meets.  With his wife Barbara, John is co-minister of the Center for Creative Living, a Science of Mind spiritual community in Asheville , North Carolina .  His book, Five Steps to Freedom:

An Introduction to Spiritual Mind Treatment will be available this summer through the Center’s website cfcl.org.  You can contact John at jwaterhouse@charter.net or by phone at 828 253-2325.

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