Oh that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory
That Your hand would be with me, and keep me from evil
That I would cause no pain
The Prayer of Jabez
That I would cause no pain. That You would make all of my decisions for me. See, decisions are very stress-filled things. We bob and weave between one decision and another, always anticipating, trying to avoid the next, second-guessing the last, consumed by judgments.
What is the right course of action?
How can I best protect myself?
What can I do to influence the future course of events?
We bob and weave
Examples of these questions course through your mind constantly, and keep you in a heightened state of stress-alert, like a soldier in a foxhole.
You wake in the morning and a shadow on the wall, a scrap of conversation from the night before, an old secret fear finding a new face, and you are gone, gone before the day has had a chance to start. You grab onto any old fear that presents, and spend the day in that feeling-state, which of course attracts more of the exact same level of distress and unease that you have already consented to live with.
Can you imagine how it would feel not to live like this? Can you have any conception that it is possible?
There is another way
There is a way to live in which that constant tension that afflicts you does not exist. Where your stomach is always relaxed, your shoulders loose, your brow at ease. You are unruffled and unruffleable.
Who is that person?
Who is the person who strains and obsesses, constantly ruminating, strategizing and trying to avoid disaster? That person is nothing but the small self, the ego, ever receptive to drama, fears and constant agitation.
Only by constant agitation, by keeping all the balls in the air at once, can the small self stop you from knowing the truth. When the balls all drop, you will see, this is not your true self. This is an illusion that relies on constant activity just to exist. Let it stop. Let all these ceaseless, seamless distractions, the wallpaper, just stop.
Here is the truth about decisions which have you dancing like a drop of water on a hot plate: give them all away at once. A decision is a judgment, and we have many times discussed the unwisdom of making judgments when you do not have all the facts. You can never know all the facts: you cannot see all that has been and all that is to be revealed. Your perception is linear and temporal.
So eschew all judgments, you will be happier. That includes all decisions that seem to be yours to make.
The way to quickly and easily achieve this is to give all judgments over to Him, meantime asking for grace to form you more nearly into the creation you always were.