Welcoming Prayer

The Welcoming Prayer is a radical invitation to surrender to the love of God.  I invite you to pray this prayer.  Let yourself become still and read these words prayerfully. Notice any feeling and body sensations as you pray it.  

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

 I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it's for my healing.

 I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. 

I let go of my desire for power and control. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure. 

I let go of my desire for survival and security. 

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

What did you notice?

For much of my life I avoided prayers like this.  I did not want painful things to come up.  I wanted to ignore them and try to keep them hidden, even from myself.  The problem is the things I wanted to keep buried were running my life.   

It was only when I knew I could trust God and that God would always do what was best for me that I was able to let go of trying to fix things myself. It was clear that my ways of trying to fix things did not work.  

Thomas Keeting says, we are all born with certain instinctual needs. They are: 1. the need for security & survival  2. the need for affection & esteem  3. the need for power & control. He states that, “because of perceived or real deprivations, they are never fully satisfied. These needs, and the ways we try to get them met, begin forming at the prerational level before the age of five.”  

What happens is all of this gets pushed into our unconscious and when one of these needs are triggered we act out of the programs we established during the early years of our lives.  

When we pray the Welcoming Prayer, we are essentially saying, “not my will but Thy will be done.” 

The way this prayer is written above is the way people pray it in the morning.  During the day when you are triggered by something, you can use the following three movements:

Movement One: Feel and sink into what you are experiencing this moment in your body.

Movement Two: “Welcome” what you are experiencing this moment in your body as an opportunity to consent to the Divine Indwelling.

Movement Three: Let go by saying the following sentence:
I let go of my desire for security, affection, control and embrace this moment as it is. 

Mary Mrozowski, the creator of the Welcoming Prayer, says, “The way to understand this practice, this prayer, is to do it. We will only understand it when we do it, because it is absolutely illogical and irrational.”

You can learn more about the Welcoming Prayer here:

https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/welcoming-prayer-method/

I recommend this brochure:  https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/welcoming_prayer_trifold_2016.pdf

And this book: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/product/the-welcoming-prayer-consent-on-the-go-a-40-day-praxis

My mentor, Mary Lapham, and I will be offering a Centering Prayer and Welcoming Prayer retreat on March 14-16 at the monastery.  This retreat is for people who have Centering Prayer practice.