“You can’t be surprised, you can’t be tickled if you try to control it.” Dr. Joseph Dispenza
It seems to me that there is a debate in the New Thought community about whose will we should be focused on. Does God have a plan for my life (the traditional Christian view) or is it up to me to make the plan and God will say “yes” (Edwene Gaines and Terry McBride teach this)? Unity appears to take a middle of the road approach saying that we co-create our lives with God and should be specific in our prayer requests but add “this or something better” at the end. I must admit, after reflecting on this question for years, I’m still on the fence.
Most of the time, though, I see it as a bit of both – that God’s will and my will really are the same, although I may not know it. For the most part, all any of us really want is to be happy. (It’s what will make us happy that we’re often unclear about.) I believe God wants us to be happy, too, so we really do both want the same thing. When it comes to receiving, I suspect we’ll do best when we dwell on the feelings we want to have, such as happiness, rather than on the specifics of how to accomplish those feelings. I’ll leave you with this little poem I came upon years ago and still have memorized:
As a child brings her broken toy with tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dream to God, because he was my friend.
But soon I snatched it back and cried, “how can you be so slow?”
“My child,” He said, “what could I do? You never did let go.”