“Jesus, and I are one.”

By remaining present, breathing gently, and entrusting the accident to Christ as an indwelling presence rather than a distant companion, your mind and body found a believable experience of safety, communion, and hope.

That can be spiritually authentic and psychologically therapeutic at the same time. The two explanations do not compete.

Why waking brought such strong suffering

Brigitte’s July 23 collision was recent, serious, and personally threatening. Since then, reminders have brought shaking, disturbed sleep, and involuntary tightening. Upon waking, your protective system may therefore be asking, before deliberate thought fully returns:

• Is Brigitte safe?
• Is the danger truly over?
• What must I do?
• Could it happen again?

After a traumatic event, upsetting memories, avoidance, feeling on edge, and difficulty sleeping are common. They do not by themselves establish PTSD; most people gradually improve. The National Center for PTSD specifically recognizes accidents as potential traumatic events and notes that reminders can reactivate the alarm response. National Center for PTSD: common reactions and PTSD basics.

Waking is also a biological transition. Cortisol and other activating processes normally change during the first 30–45 minutes after awakening. But it would be too simplistic to say, “Your cortisol was high.” Trauma studies report differing awakening patterns, so your experience cannot be explained from cortisol alone. Research on the cortisol awakening response.

More likely, several things converged:

1. Sleep had temporarily reduced your ordinary sense of control and orientation.
2. The accident remained emotionally unfinished and highly important.
3. Awakening allowed the threat memory to become prominent before your reflective capacities were fully online.
4. Not wanting to open your eyes or get up may have been protective withdrawal—your system attempting to avoid renewed contact with painful reality.

That is not weakness, failed faith, or evidence that you prayed incorrectly. It is an understandable reaction to what happened to someone you love.

Why staying with the experience mattered

Your first movement was important: you did not immediately force the restlessness away. You acknowledged what was actually present.

In psychological language, this reduced experiential avoidance. You permitted limited, tolerable contact with the memory without being physically inside the original danger. That can help the nervous system begin distinguishing:

“This is a painful memory occurring now”
from
“The catastrophe is happening again now.”

Putting an experience into words can also reduce emotional reactivity—a process researchers call affect labeling. Studies associate such labeling with altered activity in systems involved in threat and emotional regulation. Research review on affect labeling.

Spiritually, you were doing something resembling the Psalms: bringing the unedited condition of the heart into relationship with God. You were not required to feel peaceful before praying.

Why “with,” “in,” and “abiding” may feel different

These words create different inner relationships.

“With” is compassionate, but your mind may still picture two separate realities: the frightening accident over here and Jesus beside it. The accident may consequently remain the largest object in the mental scene.

“In” changes the spatial and theological frame. The accident is no longer imagined as territory from which Christ is absent. It becomes held within a reality larger than itself. The phrase may therefore transform the memory from an isolated danger-image into a relational experience.

“Abiding” adds time, permanence, and non-abandonment. It does not mean Jesus briefly entered the memory to fix it. It suggests that Christ remains present before, during, and after what happened. For a nervous system searching for stable safety, “abiding” may carry a stronger message than “with.”

The smile and bodily softening may represent a shift from threat and helplessness toward safety, connection, and hope. Slow, comfortable breathing probably contributed as well: research finds that gentle slow breathing can influence autonomic regulation and reduce stress, although responses vary and breathing should never be strained. Systematic review of slow breathing.

There may also be learning involved. Because “Jesus Abiding” already carries deep meaning and previous experiences of relief for you, the phrase can function as a well-established cue of trust. That does not make the response imaginary or “merely placebo.” Meaning, expectation, memory, relationship, and physiology continuously affect one another.

Is this legitimate Christian prayer?

Yes—understood carefully, it is a legitimate form of brief contemplative invocation.

Invoking Jesus’ name has a long Christian history. The traditional Jesus Prayer repeatedly joins his name with faith, need, and mercy. The Catholic Catechism calls invocation of Jesus’ name one of the simplest ways of praying and says that attentive repetition need not be empty repetition. Catechism §§2667–2668.

“Abiding” is also thoroughly Johannine language: “Abide in me, and I in you” is central to John 15. Related New Testament expressions include “Christ in you,” life “in Christ,” and the conviction that suffering cannot separate us from God’s love.

Your prayer can therefore mean:

“Jesus, reveal and establish your abiding presence within my present experience of this accident.”

One theological qualification is important. “Jesus in the accident” need not mean that Jesus caused the collision, desired Brigitte’s injuries, or made the accident good. It can mean that no place of suffering is beyond Christ’s compassionate presence and redemptive love. Christian faith can affirm divine presence without calling the harmful event itself divine.

Likewise, bodily relief is meaningful, but it is not a theological test. A prayer is not false when no peaceful sensation comes, and a pleasant sensation does not prove every interpretation attached to it. The deeper fruits to watch for are growing love, patience, truthfulness, compassion, freedom, and the capacity to care for Brigitte and yourself.

Why it may have worked more strongly than the earlier prayers

The effect was probably cumulative rather than caused by one word alone:

1. You stopped struggling against the restlessness.
2. You remained in tolerable contact with the memory.
3. You invoked a deeply trusted relationship.
4. “In” altered the memory from separation to presence.
5. “Abiding” added stability, continuity, and non-abandonment.
6. Slow breathing supported physiological settling.
7. The first softening then gave your mind new evidence: “I can remember this and remain held.”

That last point is significant. The memory did not have to disappear before joy became possible. Your relationship to the memory changed.

Is it wise to share this?

Yes, I think it can be shared—especially as personal testimony and a gentle invitation, not as a universal treatment.

A responsible way to describe it would be:

“After Brigitte’s accident, I awoke in considerable distress. Staying gently present and praying ‘Jesus abiding in the accident’ brought an unexpected softening and joy. I do not take this to mean that Jesus caused the accident, or that everyone will have the same response. For me, it became a way of recognizing that even this suffering is not outside Christ’s presence.”

When teaching it:

• Invite people to try the words rather than promising a result.
• Permit them to stop if the practice intensifies distress.
• Do not imply that lack of relief indicates weak faith.
• Present prayer as compatible with pastoral, medical, and psychological care.
• Emphasize Christ’s presence within suffering, not divine approval of what happened.
• Avoid encouraging people to repeatedly immerse themselves in overwhelming memories without appropriate support.

Because your sleep, morning functioning, and bodily responses have been affected, it would also be wise to tell your family doctor and consider a trauma-informed counselor. This is not a rejection of the prayer. Prayer may be one important source of healing while professional support helps your nervous system process the shock safely.

A balanced version for continued personal use might be:

“Jesus, abiding in this memory,
abiding with Brigitte,
abiding in me—
let me receive your presence without forcing anything.”

Then rest briefly in silence. Let peace come or not come. The prayer remains prayer either way.

What you are discovering may indeed be important. I would express its heart this way:

The “oneness” you experienced twenty years ago was a temporary state in which separation and resistance became quiet. “Abiding” may be the maturing of that insight into a way of meeting ordinary life—not by recreating the old state, but by discovering communion with Jesus in the midst of whatever is present.

The retreat experience and your present prayer appear related, but they are not necessarily identical. “Oneness” describes how consciousness felt. “Abiding” describes a continuing relationship, orientation, and way of living.

Twenty years later, you may be recovering the experience’s essential wisdom in a more durable form:

Oneness and abiding: their common ground

The common experiential movement is genuine:

Psychologically, both may reduce the exhausting second layer of suffering:

1. Anger, grief, or fear appears.
2. The mind says it must not be here.
3. A struggle develops against the experience.
4. The struggle intensifies contraction and separation.

Acceptance interrupts that cycle. Research distinguishes merely monitoring an experience from meeting it with acceptance. Monitoring combined with receptivity and noninterference appears more beneficial for emotion regulation than attention alone, although findings should not be treated as universal guarantees. Review of mindfulness, acceptance, and emotion regulation and randomized research on acceptance and stress reactivity.

This helps explain your earlier experience with Brigitte’s accident. You first acknowledged what was present. Then “Jesus in the accident” and especially “Jesus abiding in the accident” brought the frightening memory into a larger field of steady, trustworthy presence. The accident remained real, but it was no longer experienced as spiritually isolated.

The essential difference

Christian abiding is not simply the disappearance of all distinctions. In John 15, there is profound mutual indwelling—Christ in the disciple and the disciple in Christ—but also relationship: vine and branch, giver and receiver, lover and beloved. Its test is not an unusual feeling but fruit, especially love. The Christian understanding is communion without erasing personhood. John 15 in the Vatican’s biblical reflection.

So the two perspectives can meet fruitfully without being collapsed:

• A Buddhist interpretation may emphasize impermanence, non-clinging, and the absence of a fixed, independent self.
• A Christian interpretation emphasizes participation in God’s life through Christ, while preserving the distinction between Creator and creature.
• The shared experiential territory includes silence, reduced grasping, compassion, surrender, and freedom from defensive self-contraction.
• Their ultimate explanations of reality are not interchangeable.

You do not have to force a final intellectual merger. You can honor what Theravāda taught you about observation and non-clinging while allowing your present understanding to become explicitly relational and Christ-centered.

“Being at one with my anger”

This phrase contains something valuable, but it requires careful definition.

Being at one with anger can mean:

“I am no longer divided against the fact that anger is present.”

It should not mean:

“Anger is my identity, anger is always truthful, or its impulses should be enacted.”

Theravāda mindfulness similarly recognizes an angry mind as an angry mind. Recognition creates space for understanding; it does not confer moral approval. The anger is known as a conditioned state rather than possessed as “me” or “mine.” A wider awareness also reveals that anger is not the entirety of the mind.

Christian practice can add a relational dimension:

“This anger is present, and I do not have to conceal it from Jesus. I can allow it to be known within his presence, while letting love determine my response.”

Acceptance concerns the presence of the emotion. Discernment concerns what the emotion means. Moral freedom concerns what you do next.

Anger may contain information about hurt, fear, injustice, violated boundaries, frustrated love, or helplessness. Abiding allows that information to be heard without making anger the sovereign authority.

A refinement of your prayer

“Jesus abiding in my anger” is a legitimate and potentially powerful prayer if you mean that your anger is not outside Christ’s compassionate presence. But the grammar could occasionally sound as though Jesus and the anger are identical, or as though Christ endorses everything the anger proposes.

Several formulations preserve your discovery while clarifying the relationship:

“Jesus, abiding in me as anger is present.”
“Jesus, let me abide in you with this anger.”
“Jesus, abiding with me in the midst of anger.”
“This anger, too, is held within your presence.”

The most complete movement may be reciprocal:

“Jesus, abide in me.
Let me abide in you.
Receive this anger with me.
Let love reveal what is true and guide what I do.”

Here the anger is included but not enthroned.

Surrender without passivity

Your phrase “surrender any wanting of a certain outcome” needs one small qualification. Surrender does not necessarily require having no preferences. You may sincerely want Brigitte to be safe, want reconciliation, want justice, or want anger to soften. The difficulty begins when inner peace is made conditional upon obtaining the preferred result.

Healthy surrender sounds more like:

“This is what I deeply hope for. I will take whatever loving action is mine to take. But I relinquish the demand that reality obey me before I can remain in relationship with God.”

That is not resignation. It combines intention with non-attachment:

• Acceptance: this is what is present now.
• Discernment: what is it asking me to understand?
• Agency: what loving action is actually available?
• Surrender: the final outcome is not mine to control.

Abiding may be the integration of oneness

Your retreat experience was perhaps a glimpse of life without the usual felt separation. Abiding may now be teaching you how that insight becomes embodied when separation, anger, fear, and ordinary responsibilities return.

The mature realization may not be: “I must continuously feel one with everything.”

It may be: “Even when I feel divided, the deeper communion has not necessarily disappeared.”

This is why abiding may be more durable than oneness as a guiding word. Oneness can easily become the name of a beautiful state you want to regain. Abiding includes the nights when unity is not felt. It means remaining—or consenting to be held—through changing states.

In Christian terms, Christ’s presence is not created by your successful meditation. Peace may reveal that presence, but distress does not abolish it. The old experience said, “There is no separation.” Abiding may now say:

“Even when separation is felt, I need not organize my life around it.”

That is subtler, humbler, and potentially more transformative.

A simple way to explore it

When a strong emotion appears:

1. Recognize: “Anger is present.”
2. Allow: “For this moment, I will not fight its presence or obey its demands.”
3. Include the body: Notice where it is felt, gently and without forcing.
4. Invoke: “Jesus, abiding in me as this is present.”
5. Receive: Rest without requiring relief.
6. Discern: “What truth, wound, boundary, or loving action needs attention?”
7. Release: “The outcome is entrusted to you.”

If peace comes, receive it without grasping. If it does not, the prayer has not failed. The criterion is gradually increasing freedom: less compulsion, more truth, more patience, wiser boundaries, and greater capacity to love.

My deepest reading is that your experience twenty years ago was not wasted or simply lost. It may have given you an experiential intuition of undivided life. What is happening now could be its integration into a Christian path: not the possession of permanent bliss, but the repeated discovery that nothing honestly brought into consciousness—not even anger, fear, or the memory of the accident—must be excluded from the transforming presence of Christ.

And concerning “everything beyond” life: neither neuroscience nor a single contemplative state can settle that mystery. Your experience can reasonably function as testimony, invitation, and source of trust, but not as compulsory proof. Its most trustworthy interpretation will be shown by its fruits in the life you are living now.