Emotions Come From Thoughts » love

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.

The Gift of Change

newyou — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:58:25 +0000

By tiarescott

One of the best writers about A Course in Miracles, Marianne Williamson’s newest books is titled The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life. It is for sale here.

According to the author, A Course in Miracles, is a “self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy”. In this new book, she advocates her readers to begin a thorough plan of change from the inside out.

The main learning from Course is that there are only two emotions: love or fear. She advocates that love can transform anyone.

The ten bridges of transformation that we can experience are:

1) From forgetting who we are to remembering who we are,

2) From negative thinking to positive love,

3) From anxiety to atonement,

4) From asking God to change the world to praying that He changes us,

5) From living in the past and future to living in the present,

6) From focus on guilt to focus on innocence,

7) From separation to relationship,

From spiritual death to rebirth,

9) From your plan to God’s plan,

(10) From who we were to who we are becoming.

One of her more powerful suggestions is that wherever we find ourselves—that is where we should be. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Other books by Marianne Williamson:

Letting Go and Becoming

A Return to Love

Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness, and Making Miracles

Taming the Tiger Within

admin — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:52:33 +0000

Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions

Thich Nhat Hanh

ISBN 1-59448-134-2

Amazon link

Taming the Tiger Within is a book of statements or thoughts mainly based on dealing with the big two of difficult emotions: fear and anger.

It is divided into these two sections:

Part 1 From Anger to Compassion

Recognition
Care of Anger
Mindfulness of Others

Part 2 No Birth, No Death: From Fear to Love

Fear and Time
Finding Refuge, Knowing Freedom
The Love That Springs From Insight

This book is a collection of single page thoughts designed to help someone in choosing to use the energy of anger in a more positive way.

1) Recognition “If you get angry easily, it may be because the seed of anger in you has been watered frequently over many years, and unfortunately you have allowed it or even encouraged it to be watered.”

2) Care of Anger “When the mother embraces her baby, her energy penetrates him and soothes him. This is exactly what you have to learn to do when anger begins to surface. You have to abandon everything that you are doing, because your most important task is to go back to yourself and take care of your baby, your anger. Nothing is more urgent than taking good care of your baby.” “Every time you feel lost, alienated, or cut off from life, or from the world, every time you feel despair, anger, or instability, practice going home. Mindful breathing is the vehicle that you use to go back to your true home.”

3) Mindfulness of Others “If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is not the action of a wise person. You must go back and put out the fire. When you are angry, if you continue to interact with or argue with the other person, if you try to punish him or her, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while their home goes up in flames.” “Compassion is a beautiful flower born of understanding. When you get angry with someone, practice breathing in and out mindfully. Look deeply into the situation to see the true nature of your own and the other person’s suffering, and you will be liberated.”

4) Fear and Time “We cannot enjoy life if we spend a lot of time worrying about what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow. We worry about tomorrow because we are afraid. If we are afraid all the time, we cannot appreciate that we are alive and can be happy now.”

5) Finding Refuge, Knowing Freedom “To meditate means to be invited on a journey of looking deeply in order to touch our true nature and to recognize that nothing is lost.”

6) The Love That Springs from Insight “Allow yourself to be a torch, and allow the flame of your touch to be transmitted to other torches. Practicing like that, you can help peace and joy grow in the entire world.”

Some excerpts from the book:

“If you get angry easily, it may be because the seed of anger in you has been watered frequently over many years, and unfortunately you have allowed it or even encouraged it to be watered.”

“If you see elements of garbage in you, such as fear, despair, and hatred, don’t panic. As a good organic gardener, a good practitioner, you can face this: I recognize that there is garbage in me. I am going to transform this garbage into nourishing compost that can make love reappear.” ”

“When we embrace anger and take good care of our anger, we obtain relief. We can look deeply into it and gain new insights. One of the first insights may be that the seed of anger in us has grown too big, and is the main cause of our misery. As we begin to see the reality, we realize that the other person, whom our anger is directed at, is only a secondary cause. The other person is not the real cause of our anger.”

“If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is no the action of a wise person. You must go back and put out the fire. When you are angry, if you continue to interact with or argue with the other person, if you try to punish him or her, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while their home goes up in flames.”