|
Activities
Trust that God desires you to have peace of mind, joy, meaning and
fulfillment in your life. Trust this, and let your actions be an
extension of this desire.
Focus on these attributes and your physical environment will begin to
reshape itself to support this realization.
These attributes are expressions of your Godself, and consciously or not
you desire a greater expression of them in your life.
All forms of
meditation and prayer are helpful... Allow me to offer you ten suggestions to facilitate
your prayer and meditation practice.
1. Heart centered prayer and meditation.
Learned religious or spiritual prayer and meditation are fine, do them
if that’s what works for you. But in my own practice, I have found heart
centered prayer and meditations to be most effective in bringing about
memorable experiences. By heart centered prayer and meditation, I mean
using your heart and soul to lead you through the process. Once in the
meditative state, allow your heart and soul to set the intention, ask
for the guidance, listen, and offer gratitude.
2. Morning prayer and meditation. I
highly recommended spending, at the very least, 5 minutes immediately
once you awake in prayer and meditation. This assists in setting the
intention for the day.
3. Afternoon prayer and meditation.
If possible, meditate in the afternoon and take a nap right after. An
afternoon nap following a meditation allows you to go into a light REM
sleep, where although you are unconscious, the possibility of moving
into a conscious state during or towards the end of the nap increases.
4. Evening prayer and meditation.
Meditation and prayer before going to sleep is also key. Some people go
to sleep with the TV on, some reading a book, still some others with a
hundred thoughts crossing their minds, none of this type of behavior is
truly helpful in obtaining the types of experience and connectedness you
are looking for. So go into prayer and meditation before going to bed.
Make it heart centered. Offer from deep in your heart gratitude for all
you have, then stop and listen. As any friend would want you to listen
to them, so too would God, Life-force, the Creator, or any other self
actualized spiritual being you choose to pray to.
5. Imagine your day being the base for your
meditations. If your days are filled with judgments, a
horrendous outlook, anger and pain, then how do you think this will
translate into your meditation practice? For just one moment, one honest
moment during your day, forgive and pray for one person who in the past
you would have judged. My dear friend, do this with your full heart and
soul but once in your life and you would want no other way. Make your
day your workshop, your time for conscious meditation. Forgive an action
you would have once judged. Send a blessing to someone you might have
once criticized. Lend a hand to someone you would have once not paid
attention to. Give an honest complement to a person you might not have
noticed before. Let someone into your driving lane. Pray for someone who
appears to be having a bad day. My dear friend, if you understood the
countless possibilities for miracles during your every day you would
swear you lived in heaven. And my dear friend, you would then take these
experiences and energies into your meditation practice and you would
find no doors or barriers or any other ego mechanism that would separate
you from your Creator, from that Life-Force you know to be your true
home.
6. Start working on forgiving the past.
Imagine if those who raised you, your peers and others who taught you to
fear God and Jesus, those who taught you to have a horrendous outlook on
life, those who taught you that pain and anger were natural emotions,
imagine if they simply read to you from a fairy tale they themselves
were taught from. From a fairy tale, they themselves were taught was
true. Would you judge these people for what they taught you and made
you believe, or would you look now into your heart and see that they did
the best they could with the tools they had at that time. My dear
friend, would you laugh, criticize and blame your child for believing
there are monsters under his bed and in his closet or would you simply
and lovingly turn the light on and let him see for himself that there
are no such things?
7. Start letting go of the past and focus more
on experiencing the moment. Just as in meditation, thoughts
of the past come in, taking you away from where you desire to be. So,
too, does the past take you from living the life you now desire. If in
the moment you react with judgment, anger, pain, and stress, then know
you are bringing past learned behaviors to deal with the present
moment. You are bringing your past into the present and are thus
creating a future like your past. For all that truly exists in the
moment is love, and the possibility to be loving through forgiveness and
understanding. For one of the greatest gifts our Creator has given us is
free-will, the power to choose how we will act and react to anyone at
anytime. Let the past go, for where has it taken you? Learn and
understand the power of the present moment, of your free-will, for it is
not what someone does that affects you, but how you choose to react to
what someone does.
8. Letting go of judgment. When in
your daily experience, instead of judging someone, or blaming your past
for how you react and feel, you simply forgive and pray for them, you
will be unconsciously teaching yourself that you too are worthy of
forgiveness, that you too are worthy of love and being connected to the
Life-Force, the Creator. My friend, listen carefully, for I have
experienced this on many occasions: you will be lifted as high as you
believe you deserve to go. No one, and I mean this in the most literal
sense, no one will stop your connection to the Creator other than
yourself, other than your own self doubt, other than your belief that
you are not worthy of His forgiveness and Love. Know that you are
worthy. Know that you are worth forgiveness in regard to any of your
past errors. Know that you are completely loved by the One who created
all of us.
9. Understand everyone’s connectedness.
You are connected to your Source. Your brother and sister are
connected to their source. Your source and theirs are one; therefore you
are connected to your brother and sister. If during your day, you judge
a brother or sister, then you judge yourself, and unconsciously bring
that judgment, that energy into your meditation. If you judge a brother
or sister, regardless if you believe you have every right to do so, you
will end up carrying this judgment with you. You might not know that
you are carrying this judgment with you, but it does color everything
else you see and do throughout your day. You jail these energies within
you, these energies hold you down, imprison you in the physical. On the
other hand, if you forgive your brother and sister, unconsciously you
let them go; you no longer carry judgment with you and thus release
yourself from these energies, freeing you to move into a higher plane.
10. Release the ego of its power over you.
When you say “I want to get silent, go into the stillness, experience
the peace I crave; but my mind, due to the controlling ego, makes it
very difficult.” The only control the ego has over you is the control
you allow it to have. The ego is not some master puppeteer pulling your
strings. The ego is simply a limited belief system within the mind, and
the less power you charge it with, the less powerful it will be.
My dear friend, frustration results from a lack in trust in
God/Creator/Life-Force’s plan. Treat your fellow brother and sister as
your heart and soul tell you. Forgive and love everyone, even and
especially those who do not forgive and love you, and then allow the
chips to fall where they may. Understand who walks not only with you but
in you, and trust that you’re headed in the right direction at the right
time. My dear friend, if in any one thing or moment in your life you
would completely trust the Creator with it, then frustration would be
impossible. Yet the ego convinces you over and over again that
frustration is a saner solution than trust. My friend, the ego’s
solutions sound only sane to an insane world. Just once in your life,
once honestly with your whole heart and soul, when you are feeling
stressed or frustrated, choose not to accept the ego’s insane solution.
Simply stop, and tell yourself ’I have had enough of suffering, I have
had enough of stress, I have had enough of frustration, I now choose to
trust my Creator and His plan for my life. Dear Creator, I have done all
I could, I now leave it in your loving hands.’ My dear friend this one
statement would completely and utterly break all chains that the ego
uses to enslave you to its world.
Read more
Spiritual / Self Development Activities which cultivate the concepts in the book
'You Have Chosen to
Remember'
- including Forgiveness, Embodying Your Godself, Developing Peace of
Mind, and more.
-
All of the proceeds from the book 'You Have Chosen to Remember'
go to the charity StandUp for Kids, a
501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 1990 to help rescue homeless
and at-risk youth. Click here
to learn more about StandUp for Kids.
- If you would
like to
purchase the book 'You Have
Chosen to Remember'
click here.
-
If you would like the book but can not afford to buy it
click here.
- If you would
like to make a donation directly to StandUp For Kids, but not
purchase the book
click here.
|
