Category Archives: 2 Change

Using Spirituality for Change

Spirituality and Practice is a great online resource for focusing on spiritual practices. I believe we live in a “sound bite” world and benefit best from short daily reminders.

For today I am reposting one of my posts about “Using Spirituality for Change”:

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-judgmental”. 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.

Photo credit.

Posted in 2 Change, Spiritual Practices

Change is Just a Decision

Jul 3

Posted by kberman

Changing your life only takes a single, simple decision. When our lives appear to be out of control, taking small positive new beginnings takes courage. Learn to focus on choosing new small beginnings.

The following quote is reprinted from a website that I can no longer access. If anyone knows the author’s name or new website, please email me. I believe wholeheartedly in what he is saying.

“You see, I believe we can get past this thing called alcoholism and addiction. We can get past it by taking advantage of every opportunity for abstaining that we encounter. For most people that includes a period of time in a 12 Step Program. If it’s not AA right off the bat, almost ALL Treatment Centers refer clients to the 12 step programs anyway. So if you haven’t done it already, go ahead, bite the bullet and put a little time into AA.

One thing you’ll learn there is what Not to do if you really want to stop drinking. You will have many, many opportunities to study people as they stumble through the obstacles they place before themselves on the way to sober living. There are tricks to not falling prey to self-destruction while learning to not drink, and it’s less painful to learn those lessons second hand. I learned a lot of them there.

The bottom line for everyone is that if you really want to get sober, you will get sober. It doesn’t matter what your gig is, it could be the fishing cure, church, a hot new babe, 12 steps, or plain hard assed self-preservation. When the nickel drops and you know what you need to do to get the job done,,,, go ahead and do it. And do it like you never did anything before, because getting sober takes all the passion you’ll ever have. Staying sober, it gets a lot easier after the first 10 or 15 years.”

I love reading and writers who know how to use words to make me feel something. I don’t live in my head any longer. Nor do I allow my feelings to dictate the direction for my life. I was reading through my favorite blogs today and came upon this: Ragamuffin Ramblings: Seeing what God can do..
What really got my attention was part of one of his sentences:”the blasting cap that started the implosion of my old life, and the beginning of new life out of the rubble of the old.” I never tire of reading about new beginnings that lead people to change their lives in radical ways. William James reported over 100 years ago that college students are particularly prone to spiritual conversion. He recounts 2 types of conversion experiences. One is the sudden, immediate conversion which is what I experienced. The other is a slow growth into the spiritual direction of God leading a conversion experiences.

Lewis Rambo has attributed seven characteristics to conversion experiences. “Conversions 1) take place within a given personal and social context, including the symbolic; 2) are catalyzed by a crisis, which can assume many guises; 3) involve an active search or quest for an answer, provided the potential convert is intellectually, emotionally and religiously ready; and 4) are mediated by an encounter with an advocate for a particular resolution, whose strategy and methods must match the needs of the potential convert. Conversions also require 5) interaction with the community of faith and result in both 6) a commitment to the new faith in the form of experienced surrender to it and 7) significant personal consequences through the exercise of it.”

Posted in 2 Change