The Truth About Myself

"Dear God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. Amen." - Macrina Wiederkehr

In his book, Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good FAST, psychologist Robert Holden quotes the prayer by Macrina Wiederkehr: "Dear God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is." Dr. Holden writes, "[This prayer] offers a perfect example of how to remember and reconnect to our true, unconditioned Self."

Many of us were taught that we were innately flawed and that without divine intervention we were doomed to lives of despair and depravity. And so we would go to confession, or pray for revival, or beg God to have mercy on us, or ask Jesus to save us from the consequences of our sinfulness. Such theology may have been in some ways cathartic, but mostly it provided a low image of human nature.

I have come to believe that our true nature is beautiful and wonderful and divine. Ignorance of our potential may keep us from being all that we are meant to be, but at our core we remain loving, joyous, beautiful expressions of the perfect, infinite Source of all life.

I'm not interested in saving people from their wickedness; on the contrary, I want to help save people from the lie that they are innately wicked! Salvation, in my view, is liberation from self-loathing, fear, and degradation. Salvation, then, isn't about being rescued from who we really are; salvation is about waking up to who we really are. Our real, unconditioned Selves are perfect, wonderful, and divine. Mine is a higher view of human nature than I was taught as a child, but I have come to believe that it is a healthier one.

Today, I invite you to pray with me, "Dear God [Abiding Peace/Inward Light/Infinite Wisdom/Perfect Love/Spirit of Life], help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is." My suspicion is that if we will really believe in our beauty, we will manifest it more often in the world. As we live in the power of our glorious truth, the world around us is bound to benefit. "Help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is." Amen.