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38/40





The 77% Weekly



The Religion-Outside-The-Box Newsletter






December 2006 – Issue 38/40



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Greetings!

The 77% Weekly:
The Religion-Outside-The-Box Newsletter
helps
people find and be with (the) God (of their
understanding) 40
out of 52 weeks a year.


Religion-Outside-The-Box
is a non-denominational,
internet-based, 501c3 tax
exempt religious congregation.







Be Good, Have Wants.
 

In the last 77% Weekly entitled, God
calling: “What do you want?”
you were encouraged
to list what you want for 10 minutes.

This
deceptively simple question — What do you
want?
— perplexes many.

Today I want
to examine why it can be so difficult to know what
we want. The answer is simple: we’ve been
conditioned to repress our wants. We learned
not to ask for what we want.

As children we
were told that big kids don’t ask for what they
want. We were told that good boys and good girls
don’t ask for whatever it was they desire — some
candy, a toy, attention, or even affection. We
wanted to be big and we wanted to be good, so we
learned not to ask when we wanted.

As a
result of this training, many of us think that we
are better off when we have fewer needs or
demands of others. (I find this is especially true
of nice people.) We think that it is a mark
of maturity to not have wants and needs — and so,
we don’t.

After time, like an atrophied
muscle, we no longer remember that we in fact do
want things, and we have usually also forgotten how
to ask for what we do realize that we
need.

Ask a child what they want for their
birthday, and they can tell you. Tell an adult that
you’ve got God on the phone and that they can ask
for anything they desire and, well, they look at you
funny.

How about you?

Is it possible
for you to allow yourself to look into your heart
and figure out what it is that you really want?

Relating this to your personalized religious
experience.

  • How could God — if
    there were a God who wanted to lavish you with gifts
    the way Santa makes children’s wishes come true —
    how could that God give you what you want if you
    don’t ask? (And no, God’s job is not to be both a mind
    reader and the one who gives things.)

Does your
list
include:

  • joy
  • health.
  • serenity.
  • resplendence.
  • a
    sense of humor.
  • seeing God.
  • loving
    God.
  • following God.
  • material stuff.

Final thought:

  • What can you do about getting the
    things you want?

And, if you care
to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets
site where this article went up last week.
















With much love,








Rabbi Brian

Religion-Outside-The-Box