Emotions Come From Thoughts » About the Author

Using Spirituality for Change

newyou — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:18:00 +0000

By Wolfgang Staudt

As we shift our feelings and thoughts to positive from negative, we become aware of the power that we feel inside. We are becoming aware of our soul. The soul is bigger that just our mind. It includes our dreams, our feelings as well as our thoughts.

I don’t think that we can try to attain the awakening of our soul in any other way than by choosing to put ourselves in the presence of the God of our understanding. Many centuries ago, a wonderful monk lived and wrote Practice in the Presence of God.

He taught me, centuries later, that all I had to do was practice presenting myself to my God. I didn’t have to do anything else but put myself in a place where the God of my understanding could communicate with me.

Prayer is when I communicate with my God and meditation is the practice of listening to God. Although I have tried many times to maintain the principles of meditation to my life, I have never been able to do meditation in the recommended ways.

Instead I set aside time several times a day to “check in” with Him. When I present myself to God for His answers, I come in a spirit of peace and quiet. I rarely “hear” anything. Instead I sense directions or guidances from Him. If my direction is God’s will for my life, the going will be easy. If I am trying to force something to happen, I will become stressed about it.

The difficulty is in getting out of God’s way. If I think that I know exactly the direction of God’s guidance, I have learned that it is probably my ego answering me. Another way that I use to understand God’s direction is to not do anything to force the outcome. I do the footwork and leave the outcome to Him. This is especially hard when all that maybe needed is a phone call.

If I don’t receive some kind of guidance, I realize that the answer may not be no, but rather may be later. This letting go releases great energy and feelings of belonging. “Let go and let God.”

How do you know that someone–regardless of age–is spiritual? Certainly not because they say they are. The best evaluation is to see the fruits of the Spirit manifested by them. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, kindness, self-control, patience, faithfulness, goodness, longsuffering and gentleness as listed in Galatians 5:22-23.

Wikipedia identifies mindfulness as “the practice whereby a person is intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally”. Although my faith is based in Jesus Christ, I am thankful that He has given me the gift of openness to explore and implement practices from other faiths.

In 1976, when I began implementing breathing exercise with meditation practices, I immediately knew that finding my center and focusing on my breath in and breath out enabled calm and peace to flow through my body. Being human, I learned in a moment what has taken a lifetime to implement. Transcendental meditation has been found to decrease heart rate and blood pressure because the mind-body connection prospers when one experiences peace and calm.

My Life Books

newyou — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:28:41 +0000

Some of the activities I do when I am waiting for God’s direction are: (1) to clean something in my desk and/or home that I was not planning to do (I also find this extremely handy for the times I surrender to anger—the crucial factor is to make it something that isn’t on your to-do list), (2) practice living in the solution and not the problem, and (3) make lists of all the things I’d like to do and the things that need to be done.

Writing out my thoughts and goals in lists has helped me for most of my life. Putting everything down in black and white really puts a more realistic slant on anything. 43 folders has a lot of neat lists and offers ideas galore for organizing.

I have used small notebooks like the journals available today for years. I call them my Life Books as I use them to keep daily to do lists. When moving, I have always had everything I need at the two separate locations in one book. It also is a great reference for using to recall events.

Every place I’ve ever worked I use steno pads for my daily work life. It generally doesn’t take too long for my co-workers to appoint me the go-to person because I keep the work notebook. Many times, my notes have settled conflicts about how something was done or what happened in the work process.

Even though I love all kinds of technical stuff, I use the little lowly steno pad at work because it is non-threatening and isn’t viewed as competition. If along the way I am viewed a secretary, I use that to my advantage. There is nothing like appearing to be less than you are to see the real lay of the land.

Tags: God, direction, goals, plans, lifebook

Powered by Qumana

About Me

newyou — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:38:00 +0000

Having been born in 1940, and having loved several of my lives before, I am living my perfect life now. Through the generosity of my husband, I am able to write, edit and research the topics I have been studying or living for most of my life.

The main topic of my Changemaker blog is the study of personality which I began studying in high school (1954-1958). In college, although I loved psychology, I majored in English and Social Sciences because there was no major in psychology at that time. So I became an English teacher because that is what my mother wanted to do. She did go to college in mid-life and become an English teacher.

But teaching was too rigid for me–all those bells ringing. I have listed in another post the eight careers I’ve had. I have loved learning and loved going into a new field and researching how I could boil it down to a level I could control. Then after 4-5 years, I would move on to a new field or career.

My enneagram label is 5 which is called the investigator who are the perceptive, cerebral types. We become preoccupied with our thoughts and become detached. I would have loved researching if I had known myself better when I was younger. Blogs and the Internet give me the voice to write about all of my thoughts and ideas.

My husband and I live in South Florida on a freshwater canal near Fort Lauderdale. He is an avid bass fishermen so with his four sons, he spends many happy hours exploring the Everglades from our canal. He remains my biggest cheerleader and the love of my life.