In 1970, Hugh Prather published Notes to Myself (Bantam), a diary of observations about his “struggle to become a person.” His short, incisive reflections struck a chord; the book went on to sell more than 5 million copies.
Prather’s latest book, Spiritual Notes to Myself (Conari Press) is patterned after its predecessor, with entries grouped around unannounced themes. But its emphasis is radically different. When he wrote the original Notes, Prather says, he believed that he could improve himself by better understanding his thoughts and feelings. This assumption, he now realizes, was “not so much wrong as incomplete.” It’s important to look in our hearts and see what we believe, he writes. But if we remain focused on our private differences, “we journey down a dead-end road toward loneliness and loss.”
Despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary, Prather maintains, there is a way to experience an “unreasonable happiness” free of circumstances and events. It lies in recognizing “our oneness with all living things.”
When Prather speaks of “oneness,” he’ s not just being metaphoric. “We simply are not separate,” he writes. “We do not have private little thoughts that affect no one but ourselves. All of that is an illusion, albeit a powerful one.”
Prather says he used to give lip service to the concept of oneness, “but it was still mere philosophy. . . . In another, earlier book I posed the question of whether there is another way to go through life ‘besides being pulled through it kicking and screaming.’ When I wrote that, I was still in love with the question. Now I am in love with the answer.”
As the title of his book suggests, Prather is speaking to himself when he writes. “I frequently use the second person to get my own attention,” he says in the book’s introduction. “Although occasionally I do address you, the reader, most often I am not being blunt with you, but with myself.”
As a minister and counselor in Tucson, Arizona, Prather gets a chance to put his words into practice. He and his wife, Gayle, who is also a minister, have married and counseled hundreds of couples. The Prathers themselves have been married thirty-two years, and have weathered infidelities, personality differences, sexual problems, and financial difficulties; they’ve written candidly about all of this in Notes to Each Other and A Book for Couples.
Not everyone is drawn to Prather’s brand of inspirational writing, yet I find his words both challenging and moving. The following excerpts from Spiritual Notes to Myself appear here by permission of Conari Press, (800) 685-9595.
— Ed.
Jesus’ life didn’t go well. He didn’t reach his earning potential. He didn’t have the respect of his colleagues. His friends weren’t loyal. His life wasn’t long. He didn’t meet his soul mate. And he wasn’t understood by his mother. Yet I think I deserve all those things because I’m so spiritual.
We are walking in a ticker-tape parade. That’s all that’s going on. Some pieces of confetti read “great calves,” some “chronic sinus,” some “no noticeable hair loss,” some “multiple sclerosis,” and some “third-finger amputation.” Don’t judge your neighbor by what pieces of paper fall on his or her shoulders. Don’t think you are cursed or blessed by what pieces fall on yours.
There is no worldly reward for our spiritual efforts. There isn’t even a connection. The payoff for turning to God is more God, not more world.
Finding something nice to say about someone is not necessarily practicing love. If I tell a friend that the person who cheated him didn’t mean it, I just make him feel more isolated and alone.
The world is a documentary of separation, and nothing within it can prove oneness. But we’re not obliged to battle negative interpretations of the world with positive interpretations. Only when I turn to God can I see God.
Spirituality isn’t an affectation. It isn’t wearing white cotton and talking like a god. We can be spiritual without anyone knowing it. We can heal without anyone knowing it. We can awaken to oneness without anyone knowing it. But if we start talking about our holiness — painting a picture of how holy we are — we block our holiness.
We are not always attracted to the wrong person. Unless something very unusual is going on, we are always attracted to an ideal healing partner. Do you think it’s just bad luck that one of you likes to plan and one of you likes to be spontaneous? That one of you likes to talk it out and one of you likes to let it be? That one of you likes to spend and one of you likes to save? That one of you likes to party and one of you is more a homebody?
Isn’t it funny how during the honeymoon period, understanding each other is seldom a problem? “Communication skills” are highly overrated. We don’t want to understand; that’s the problem. We can’t say to our dog or baby, “I want to give you a little feedback on something you’ve been doing lately,” and yet we get along with them just fine. I know two couples who, because of an accident in one case and a stroke in the other, can’t talk to each other but still are able to move past their problems and grow in love. Work on communicating better, but work also on dwelling in love, the place of true understanding.
If you’ve got somebody who seems opposite to you in almost every respect, you’ve got the right person. In a sense, your partner is the repository of your rejected strengths. Forgive your partner, and, together, you become whole.
The old marriage vows had it right: we become one body. Our own body has a left side and a right side that cooperate. But it also has a center. Forgiveness gives marriage its center. Yes, at this time the two sides are fighting. But just hold faithfully to each other’s innocence, and you will become a complete spiritual body.
You acknowledge your separate needs, and you meet them. But you help each other with this. Remember, you’re married; you’re one body now. If the nose itches, the hand scratches. The hand doesn’t say, “It’s your itch; it’s your problem.”
The question isn’t whether to have arguments or to take time off to be by ourselves. The question is: What is our intent in arguing or withdrawing? I know couples who can strengthen their friendship by screaming at each other and storming around. But that’s because they both are clear that the function of the ranting is to bring them closer together.
Today we say, ‘‘You can’t make another person happy.” But we sure can make our partners angry. We intuitively know exactly what to say or do. How is it we can make them upset, jealous, scared, and the like, but not happy? It is because we are in the habit of using our intuition negatively. Practice making your partner happy, and you will become proficient.
Surely it’s clear that relationships — whether with a child, friend, sibling, or spouse — crumble under pressure. If you want to make your partner happy, first you must stop being a source of pressure, demands, and ultimatums.
Many couples have noticed that when they have a day of closeness and peace, the next day is often a disaster. The ego merely is trying to recoup lost ground. We must learn to laugh gently at this. Our true relationship is a light that is replacing our separateness; and, for a time, separateness seems to fight back.
There is a spiritual relationship that has no connection to the ego relationship. Ego love will die. But if we can gently establish ourselves within the spiritual relationship, it will outlast the end of the three and a half years of hormones, the fading of our bodies’ blossoming periods, and the withering of age. And once we are in the spiritual relationship, even death can’t touch our love. So every day, let us fall more deeply in love with each other’s innocence. Within innocence, we are already one.
Our puppy likes me to flip her on her back and scratch her tummy. Gayle wouldn’t receive that as love. I must express love in a language that can be understood and appreciated by that person.
People with no real connection sometimes have great sex, and people with a deep spiritual bond sometimes have poor sex. Sex simply is not the weather vane of the health of a relationship.
Sex has become a set of competing rights, with the emphasis on “What am I not getting?” The right to have our “needs met” competes with our partner’s right not to be coerced. The right to foreplay competes with the right to reach orgasm. The right to experiment competes with the right not to feel vulnerable. The right to quality time afterward competes with the right to get cleaned up or to sleep. Approached this way, we have no need for hell; sex provides it every time the subject comes up.
Please, God, let me remember that human relationships can withstand very little pressure. Yet somehow everyone thinks marriage is different. Because of the impossible expectations we have now that our partner should heal the past and fulfill our needs, marital relationships have become more fragile than common friendships.
Make very few demands on your partner. If you can make none at all, that’s best. Set up no tests and ask few questions. Don’t try to cheer your partner up. Don’t demand even that your partner stop being demanding!
Rush to help your partner, but be intuitive about it. There is a difference between thinking you know what’s best for your partner and sensing that your partner would welcome your help. As your oneness grows, your partner’s pain will be your pain. You will experience it literally as yours. Then it will be your enormous pleasure to meet your partner’s needs. This is the definition of a healer.
But what if your partner is violently insane? What if your partner is abusing your children? Or what if your partner is engaged in criminal activities? Then, of course, you immediately step away from the relationship. But in your mind, never lose faith in the seed of innocence God has placed within your partner.
We give each activity the meaning it has for us. If couples were to consider eating great meals their sacred right, food would become a major problem area. But most couples take good, bad, and mediocre meals in stride — because their purpose in sharing a meal is larger than private gratification. Consequently, if your spouse is not a particularly good cook, you usually overlook this. If the two of you have an unexpectedly bad meal at a restaurant, the experience can even be amusing. So why make a mere conversation or the simple act of sex so devastatingly important?
Food critics enjoy very few restaurants; movie critics enjoy very few movies; art critics enjoy very few paintings. Don’t become a connoisseur of marriages. Seek instead to be easily pleased.
Pet monkeys tear up the drapes. They swing from light fixtures. They borrow your comb without asking. They eat with their mouths open. They hoot all night. They won’t put the toilet seat down. They won’t attend the meeting. And they won’t turn their socks right side out. Now, if there are people who can love a pet monkey, you can love your spouse.
The world has a picture of what every spiritual concept should look like. But spirituality can’t be pictured in the world. You can’t act out oneness on a superficial level. You can’t talk oneness on a superficial level. You may love all animals, but that doesn’t mean you fill your house with every stray cat in the city. You may love your husband, but that doesn’t mean you follow him around the house saying, “I love you.” You may love your wife, but that doesn’t mean you apologize a hundred times for each mistake you make. Oneness is a deep act of the heart. It’s a silent benediction you fail to give no living thing. If you don’t withhold this blessing, when there is something to do, you will know with peace what it is.
We can awaken while dying, but we can also awaken while cleaning the cat sand. Perhaps the most deeply held justification we have for delaying our complete commitment to God is our belief that death is somehow transformational, or that God’s law will reward our efforts at that time. Thus, we can say, “Even though I’m not awake now, the little I do each day will lead to it later.” But what sense would it make for Love to wait for your organs to fail before stepping in to bless you? It doesn’t matter whether you view reported “near-death experiences” scientifically or mystically; now continues to be the only time you can know God. And awareness of God is infinitely rewarding. The ego doesn’t fade away merely because the body dies, and the eternal doesn’t become more present after death. Why would it? Don’t put off heaven. It surrounds you this very instant.
We didn’t decide on our height or foot size, and we didn’t make our ego — we merely received it. We are responsible for our personality traits and patterns only in the sense that they are now ours to deal with. But we are not responsible for them in the sense that we made them and are now to blame for them.
Our ego is basically set. No matter how much spiritual progress we make, whenever we fall back into our ego, it’s still all there. We never succeeded in perfecting it and never will. Simply take God’s hand and soar above the pettiness of your past. Within Love, you were perfect before your “formative years” — and you remain as perfect as Love itself.
Look at how many rigid stands I’ve taken in the past that I now see were mistaken. So how is this new stand different? When I take a stand against another child of God, I split my mind. That doesn’t mean, never write a letter to the newspaper, or keep taking the car to an incompetent mechanic. But it does mean, take no stand against that mechanic in my heart.
We think our life is going to end in a grand finale. No one else’s has, but we think ours will. We believe these daily tasks and strivings are leading to something. They’re like strings that someday will come together to form a rope we’ll climb to an important and splendid platform. “What did I accomplish today?” we ask ourselves. “What steps did I take toward my goal?” But the true question is: What did we forgo doing? Did we withhold judgment? Did we decline to attack?
If you lose your peace, break with the situation. If you need to pray now, pray now. “Oh, but that might be too awkward or too much trouble,” we say to ourselves. But if we had diarrhea, we would break with the situation. We would get up from the meeting. We would pull the car off the road. We would put down the phone. We would get out of line. We would excuse ourselves from the dinner table.
It’s very simple: all we have to do is make the peace of God as important as we make diarrhea.
In your life, you have believed many things, and most of them have proved wrong. Perhaps you have relied on new movements, old religions, or exotic thought systems; on group meetings, therapies, or cutting-edge psychologies — but, inevitably, they disappointed you. You try to meditate and turn to God, but it seems to have no effect, or only one so slight and temporary that the effort appears pointless. Now here I am telling you to awake. But here you are having to deal with a world that seems very real and a God that seems very remote, if true at all.
All I can tell you is that the time comes when you must make a leap of faith. You won’t get there taking one small, safe, reasonable step after another. That got you to this point, but now you have a decision to make, and this time it has to be permanent. Are you going to believe that you are in God or in a place of no God? In Love or in a place where all creatures die alone? In eternity or in a place where change destroys everything? You can choose what you believe. What you believe will not change the truth, but it will determine whether, this time, you awake.
