trouble.” Ask, in Aramaic, means a combination of “claim” (as in, that deed to the land is yours) and “demand.” To ask for something in prayer is to simply lay hold of what’s yours. You have the right, and even the responsibility to command your life.
How can we be sure? you ask. Same way you’re sure that two plus two equals four. Because it’s a simple, unalterable principle of mathematics. If you add two plus two and get five, that’s not the fault of mathematics. Likewise, if you’re not getting the answers you want, that’s not the field of potentiality’s fault. It’s you that’s screwing up the principle.
Intentions that are focused through an integrated, whole personality are like a laser—a single, clear beam.
Anecdotal Evidence
“A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
—B ENAZIR B HUTTO, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF P AKISTAN
When he was 34, Augusten Burroughs decided to stop being an alcoholic and become a New York Times best-selling author. As he says in his memoir Magical Thinking, “The gap between active alcoholic copywriter living in squalor and literary sensation with a scrapbook of rave reviews seemed large. A virtual canyon. Yet one day, I decided that’s exactly what I would do.”
Fourteen days later, he finished his first manuscript, a novel called Sellevision .
“I did not expect it to be a bestseller. It was the cheese popcorn book. What I did expect was that it would be published,” he says.
And then he wrote a memoir about his childhood.
“And this, I decided, needed to be a New York Times bestseller, high on the list. It needed to be translated into a dozen languages and optioned for film,” he writes.
His agent suggested he tone down his ambitions.
“I understood his point of view,” Augusten explains. “I also understood that the book would be huge, not because it was exceptionally well written … [but] because it had to be a bestseller, so I could quit my loathsome advertising job and write full time.”
Augusten’s memoir Running with Scissors spent over 70 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. At last count, it has been published in over 15 countries, and was made into a film starring the incomparable Annette Bening.
“Luck? The greedy wishes of a desperate man randomly filled?” says Augusten. “No. There are no accidents.”
Pray? Who, Me?
“It’s bigger than the both of us, Ollie.”
—S TAN L AUREL , E NGLISH COMIC ACTOR
People often tell me, “I don’t pray. It’s a waste of time. It’s like believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.” My response? It’s impossible to stop praying. Can’t be done. Thomas Merton, the Christian mystic, said that “we pray by breathing.”
Take Al Unser, for example. He didn’t call it praying, but when he won his fourth Indianapolis 500 race, five days before his 48th birthday, he demonstrated the true power of prayer.
That year—1987, to be exact—he had been unceremoniously dumped from his race team even though he’d won the Indy 500 three times before. For the first time in 22 years, it looked as if he’d be forced to watch the famous race from the sidelines. His sponsors and pretty much everyone else wrote him off as “all washed up.”
But in his mind, in every thought he possessed, Unser knew he was not too old to race. He knew he could still win. That “prayer” was so strong that when Danny Ongais, one of the drivers who had replaced him on the team, banged himself up in practice, Unser was brought in to race a backup car, a used March-Cosworth.
Nobody except him expected anything. Not only was he driving an older-model car, but when the familiar “Gentlemen, start your engines!” rang through the PA system, Unser was stuck back in the 20th position.
But that didn’t faze the three-time winner. In every fiber of his being, he saw himself winning. He expected nothing but victory. Finally, on the 183rd lap, he worked his way
How can we be sure? you ask. Same way you’re sure that two plus two equals four. Because it’s a simple, unalterable principle of mathematics. If you add two plus two and get five, that’s not the fault of mathematics. Likewise, if you’re not getting the answers you want, that’s not the field of potentiality’s fault. It’s you that’s screwing up the principle.
Intentions that are focused through an integrated, whole personality are like a laser—a single, clear beam.
Anecdotal Evidence
“A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
—B ENAZIR B HUTTO, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF P AKISTAN
When he was 34, Augusten Burroughs decided to stop being an alcoholic and become a New York Times best-selling author. As he says in his memoir Magical Thinking, “The gap between active alcoholic copywriter living in squalor and literary sensation with a scrapbook of rave reviews seemed large. A virtual canyon. Yet one day, I decided that’s exactly what I would do.”
Fourteen days later, he finished his first manuscript, a novel called Sellevision .
“I did not expect it to be a bestseller. It was the cheese popcorn book. What I did expect was that it would be published,” he says.
And then he wrote a memoir about his childhood.
“And this, I decided, needed to be a New York Times bestseller, high on the list. It needed to be translated into a dozen languages and optioned for film,” he writes.
His agent suggested he tone down his ambitions.
“I understood his point of view,” Augusten explains. “I also understood that the book would be huge, not because it was exceptionally well written … [but] because it had to be a bestseller, so I could quit my loathsome advertising job and write full time.”
Augusten’s memoir Running with Scissors spent over 70 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. At last count, it has been published in over 15 countries, and was made into a film starring the incomparable Annette Bening.
“Luck? The greedy wishes of a desperate man randomly filled?” says Augusten. “No. There are no accidents.”
Pray? Who, Me?
“It’s bigger than the both of us, Ollie.”
—S TAN L AUREL , E NGLISH COMIC ACTOR
People often tell me, “I don’t pray. It’s a waste of time. It’s like believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.” My response? It’s impossible to stop praying. Can’t be done. Thomas Merton, the Christian mystic, said that “we pray by breathing.”
Take Al Unser, for example. He didn’t call it praying, but when he won his fourth Indianapolis 500 race, five days before his 48th birthday, he demonstrated the true power of prayer.
That year—1987, to be exact—he had been unceremoniously dumped from his race team even though he’d won the Indy 500 three times before. For the first time in 22 years, it looked as if he’d be forced to watch the famous race from the sidelines. His sponsors and pretty much everyone else wrote him off as “all washed up.”
But in his mind, in every thought he possessed, Unser knew he was not too old to race. He knew he could still win. That “prayer” was so strong that when Danny Ongais, one of the drivers who had replaced him on the team, banged himself up in practice, Unser was brought in to race a backup car, a used March-Cosworth.
Nobody except him expected anything. Not only was he driving an older-model car, but when the familiar “Gentlemen, start your engines!” rang through the PA system, Unser was stuck back in the 20th position.
But that didn’t faze the three-time winner. In every fiber of his being, he saw himself winning. He expected nothing but victory. Finally, on the 183rd lap, he worked his way
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