I read an amazing book the other day.
I’ve been meaning to read Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver for months but various twists of fate kept preventing me from buying it and having at it.
Luckily I got a Kindle recently and discovered Scribd, so the other day on a long train journey to work, I devoured Outrageous Openess like a greedy seagull.
Tosha’s concept is simple: ask God to help out with everything and leave the How up to Her. Let God to take the lead and bypass lots of stress and horror and complications.
It’s a super devotional way of looking at life that runs completely opposite to our culture of “I must do everything myself or be a failure ruaaaaggggh”. It’s an outrageously spiritual practice that is basically the core of everything we want: connection with God, less stress, more fortunate circumstances
To be able to lean on divine will (I was going to say “submit to” but that’s a horrible phrase, isn’t it? It implies that God will overpower you and be a dick and make you suffer, which is not what the point is at all) means that you have to be willing to let God take the reigns and make most of the descisions.
This means you have to be willing to bypass your Ego, absolutely hates not being in control and who absolutely loves to be the one to decide things and worry about stuff.
Tosha believes that God, the Universal force of Love, is ready and willing to help us out with EVERYTHING, so she does everything in partnership with God.
This reminds me so much of a lesson I thought a LOT about when I was doing Priestess Training a couple of years back. There was a concept from my teacher that spoke about how Priestesses don’t cast spells, they just ask the Goddess for help. Rather than egoicly deciding we want a particular outcome then using the divine forces of magic to help ensue its success, we let Goddess decide all things for us and trust that She knows what we need to do and what will make us happiest. (I have lots of thoughts on this I will talk about in a later post.)
Tosha’s book kind of works the same way. You don’t need to tell the universe exactly what you want and desperately hanker over it, cos God has your best option covered. By asking for divine input on everything, by letting go to Divine Help in every way, magical help shows up constantly in your life IN THE WAY GOD CHOOSES, not in the way you dictate. It’s up to God. It is a BIG surrender of the Ego, who is used to getting it’s own way and gets very bristly at the idea of letting anything have more descision-making power than the Ego does.
Tosha writes the book as a series of very short chapters or essays that tell stories about the Divine helping out. The story about the lady at the supermarket. The story about the dude who loved his crazy wife. The story about how she was almost accidentally shot by a gang dispute.
Tosha tells lots of beautiful stories of times when she and her friends have given things up to the divine order and followed nudges from God and how great it turns out. Crazy synchronicities and miracle co-incidences that bring a beautiful outcome, that remind you that the world is an adorable place full of adorable people.
Honestly this book is so lovely.
I heartily recommend reading this book: In fact, I think it’s required aspirational Priestess Reading, that is how freaking great I think it is.
And here is one quote from the book that REALLY spoke to me in my spiritually suspicious, nervous state:
(And what’s even better, it’s on Scribd. I got a Kindle for Christmas, and I tried Kindle Unlimited and found that it SUCKED. However, I went back to my old friend Scribd, and holy moly it’s a pagan book lover’s paradise. I’m slowly making my way through The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo, and I have bookmarked loads of Dion Fortune, Vicki Noble, stuff about Shakti, yoga books I have been lusting after, and pop wicca books. Its the best. It’s about $9 a month and I totally love it.)