I often find myself doing what some people would call praying, but I don't believe in "God" so who or what am I praying to? I ask, "Show me what to do in order to let go of fear" - or anger or an obsession that's taken over my being, or anything else that's creating turmoil in me. Who or what do I ask, "Show me what to do in order to get free?"
When I ask these questions, my head is metaphorically bowed, and I'm reaching for the kind of humility that helps me surrender all the machinations of my relentless ego. I'm encouraging myself to put aside my demands, my expectations, the scheming for control. I'm becoming willing to connect with another aspect of my consciousness, whatever that "place" is beyond my ego's narrow awareness. There are no words in that place, no views and opinions, no clinging and no demands. Religion, psychology and spiritual experience have many names for what is a universal sense that there is something beyond our human Small-Mind with its self-centeredness, fear and pride.
When I allow myself to expand fully into the spaciousness beyond my own Small-Mind, I'm in what the Buddhists call Don't Know Mind. (This is a description that is full of wonderful connotations for me, but I think each of us finds our own descriptions and resonances.) In that expansive, borderless "place," I lose all sense of my conscious will, become alert and receptive, allow for deeper and more intuitive knowledge to emerge. This knowledge may or may not provide answers to my specific questions; it may simply be a building block on the path I'm trying to find, the path to freedom.
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