Wonderlane

When I have trouble “hearing” God’s direction, a prayer of Thomas Merton (one of my pilgrims) always helps:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Although I’ve read several books about praying techniques, I rarely have found a book as good as How to Pray for Healing. Some of the chapters include helping people stuck in difficult situations, how to get more power in prayer, how to get practice, and what to do when you’re healed. The book is available here from the author, Mark Dahle.

Some of the Dahle’s suggestions are: (1) pray at every opportunity, (2) ask for permission to touch people’s heads or shoulders ( I prefer to rub the upper middle back as this is a place where tension may be), (3) focus on God before you begin, (4) be open to intuitions from God, (5) watch for visual cues, (6) speak directly to the condition and tell it what to do, (7) have confidence even if nothing seems to happen, and (8) practice the steps that feel uncomfortable—you’ll improve.

A study guide for Christian prayer that was written to supplement Prayer for Dummies is here. This study guide is a 29 page Free PDF. It includes definition of prayer, the relationship, 24/7 prayer, dissecting your prayers, prayer techniques, roadblocks, praying with others, bookends to prayer, lost prayers, hearing God, healing prayer, and praying in tongues.

Amazon has a book description here for Prayer Power: A Program to Unlock Your Spiritual Strength.

Paths to Prayer: Finding Your Way to the Presence of God.

Prayer-10^th Anniversary Edition: Finding the Heart’s True Home.

When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayer: Insights to Keep You Praying with Greater Faith and Deeper Hope.

iandeth

No one else can make anyone feel anything, everything we feel is our choice. If we are choosing to continue in relationships, jobs, or situations that contribute to our feelings of negativity, we need to ask ourselves why we aren’t choosing to be happy. Happiness is a choice. With the choosing of happiness comes the responsibility to give up self-destructive patterns. Learn to distinguish what you like and what you don’t like.

The healing principle is that as we believe we will get better, we will get better. But choices have to be made. You can’t hold on to misery with one hand and reach for happiness with the other. As the trapeze artist lets go of one bar before she grasps the next one, so also must we give up misery for happiness.

Other methods to increase our self-esteem are (1) set goals from the dreams we have of what we would like to have in our lives, (2) learn to take risks in all areas of your life, and (3) develop a clear-cut precise schedule adding physical, mental, and spiritual healthy activities to our weekly life.

In developing positive self-talk, affirmations and guided imagery may be used. Remember our subconscious mind doesn’t know if something has happened already or is to happen in the future. Only the conscious mind knows time.

Therefore, don’t implant wishes or doubts with words like maybe or is or I hope. Use action positive words such as I am, I enjoy, I believe, I want, etc. Trust your subconscious to lead you to your “higher self”.

Develop an attitude of being gentle with yourself. Learn to recognize that the source of uncomfortable feelings is that we have added some degree of judgment to the future. The pain we feel is fear which is the withholding of love. The withholding hurts us as well as the person we’re “punishing”.

So all hatred is self-hatred first. It begins inside us and is projected outward. As we learn our loveability, we see the love in others. As we love ourselves, we project the love to others. As we love ourselves, we project to others. We confuse the giving of loving with the power of others. If I love someone who chooses not to love me, have I lost anything? If I choose to not love another and feel that hatred pass through me, have I gained anything? Who is the loser when I choose not to love?

We each have life issues that periodically disrupt our patterns. Knowing our issues helps us to accept the lessons quicker by spending less time in denial of them. Some of these issues may be: accepting our feelings, labeling our feelings, control, boundaries, intimacy, commitment, conflict, trust, authority figures, etc.

Likewise, we each are a collection of selves: (1) child, (2) adolescent, (3) teenager, (4) young adult, and possibly, (5) an older adult. Periodically, we need to “step back” emotionally and observe our own behavior in order to understand the behavior choices we are making.

In learning to check in with ourselves, we come to accept that just as we may be coming from several different vantage points from within ourselves, so also are all the other persons we encounter whether they are aware of their vantage points or not.

By Avatarr8

I call my spiritual journey recovery because it reminds me that mental health is fluid and not fixed. I don’t achieve a healthy mental state by being. I can only achieve a healthy mental state by doing.

I realized this morning that I wanted to slide back into the worry and woe is me state. But I also remembered that God is a God of love. A Course in Miracles taught me twenty years ago that I can not hold two thoughts at the same time in my brain. So I needed to change my thoughts.

This divorce that started in July, 2009, and is still ongoing, is difficult because I have no money, no job, and no living family. But I do have 33 years of continuous sobriety (Nov. 24, 1976) and I did dedicate my life to the God of my understanding 33 years ago (January, 1977). So I have tried to make my spiritual journey an opportunity each day to serve my Lord.

My home group in AA has 41 members to date with over 300 years of sobriety. A few of the members have been in this group for over 20 years. Sometimes small groups will be overtaken by one strong group member who will impose his/her will on the group. But this group has no such leaders. Instead we each share and lead and laugh and console.

I have written recovery tips for all aspects of ourselves. This week/month I am focusing on the body–our physical health.

My eight basic recovery tips for my physical health are:

1. Have a plan for healing your body and work your plan.

2. Decide your heaviest eating time period. Be sure to have healthy foods on hand for those craving periods.

3. Don’t ever go on a diet. Diets are deprivation. Life is to be lived and enjoyed. Instead develop your own food program. Your food program should include the things you love to eat. Choose to eat from a small plate. Eat half as much as you used to eat. I use a 1/2 cup measure.

4. Remove food temptations from your home. If you are eating right, you will never be uncomfortable after eating.

5. Plan daily times for exercise. You may need to schedule several shorter periods rather than one long one. The new recommendation is for 60 minutes per day. I belong to a gym because it gives me motivation when I see all the other people there. I was not a natural lover of exercise. I have learned to like exercise now because I have an exercise plan and I follow it. But mainly I exercise because it makes me feel better.

6. Divide your exercise among aerobics(cardiovascular), strength, balance and flexibility. Rotate among these types of exercises throughout your exercise week. The main
reason that people don’t complete exercise programs is because they are bored–plan your exercise to be fun. Also learn to monitor your heart rate. Since I am 64, I checked with my doctor first before I joined the gym. I believe anyone at any age should see what their doctor recommends for them. Learn to measure your target heart-rate zone. This zone is the number of beats your heart
beats per minute. Learn to measure your heart rate recommended for your age.

7. Develop a list of 20-30 healthy things that you like to eat that are 100-200 calories each. Be sure to include several of these daily and always have them on hand.

8. Break away from people who aren’t supportive of your choice to be healthy. Criticism is not support. You need to be around people that love and support you. From time to time, you may have someone around you who is draining your energy. They “yes, but” you about everything. I say about these people that I can’t emotionally afford them. How can
I help anyone if I allow one person to drain me? Our energy is like a battery–drain the battery, no energy.

Paradise by Wonderlane

When I began my spiritual journey, the first quality in others that I was attracted to was serenity. I didn’t know that I was attracted to the quality of serenity. Instead I was attracted to serene people. I was going to AA and one of the strengths that you are taught in 12 step meetings was to learn how to help others.

The jobs that a beginner can volunteer for include setting up the meetings and helping clean the rooms after the meeting. For the beginner it can be a humbling experience to begin learning the true lesson of anonymity which is to do something without taking credit or bragging about what was done.

The meetings that I volunteered for were overseen by this man that was so calm and peaceful that I knew I wanted whatever he had. Finally one night I asked how he had gotten whatever he had. It was hard for him to define “it”. But he recommended a little pamphlet about serenity. The booklet taught me two major lessons.

The first lesson was the story of the man in the desert with the whirling dervishes. Someone came up to the man and asked him what he did about the whirling dervishes and he said that he just let them whirl. What a concept! I was beginning to be introduced to detachment and letting it go and change what you can and let the rest go.

The second lesson I learned from the booklet was an illustration that contained an explanation of serenity as picturing a swan beautifully gliding on the surface of the water. But under the water, the swan was paddling furiously in order to go forward. With my thinking at the time, I thought that this seemed dishonest. Such was the power of my brain to distort everything I experienced.

Daisy...up close by FlyNutAA

Emotional health is directly connected to our physical health. Choosing healthy ways (exercise, meditation, centering, and deep breathing) to deal with stress go far toward our overall health. The mind-body connection is the way your body responds to how you think, feel and act.

Some of the physical signs that your body and mind may be out of connection are chest pain, headaches, back pain, extreme tiredness, high blood pressure, upset stomach, weight loss or gain, insomnia, etc. Many of these ailments may be helped by learning how to improve your emotions. Learn how to sort out the following emotions: anxiety, stress and sadness.

Too many of us have learned as children to stuff our feelings. Emotional growth only comes after we accept our feelings. Feelings aren’t good or bad or wrong or right. They are simply how we feel. Some people are helped by writing in a journal a short description of how they feel. After you accept your feelings, you can study healthy ways to deal with them.

Unfortunately, many people now believe that they have to continually “vent” all their feelings. In my opinion, vending feelings about the same situation does little good after the first ventings. If, once your feelings are known about a situation to all involved in the situation and everything stays the same, then learn new coping skills such as reframing to change the way you feel.

Remember, you can only change yourself—not others. If you still feel unable or unwilling to change—find out what your unhappiness is giving you. Holding on to old hurts only hurts us.

I have spend 30 years researching, enjoying, and implementing self-help, exercise, diet, food program, spiritual, emotional, mental, psychology and addiction books.  These books are contained in our High Energy Life  Library.

However, we are more focused on holistic healing—helping others to develop mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So the High Energy Life Library includes the books I have found that have proved to be significant to become my “textbooks”.

Some other posts about healing are:

God Uses Unlikely People in Unlikely Places

Prayer Walk the Scriptures and Heal

Healing Depression with Mindfulness: Boulder Center for Mindfulness Psychotherapy

Cool Art Therapy Intervention #9: Family Sculpture

About my Codependency, Inner Child and Intimacy

8 Techniques for Recovering Your Happiness When Life Knocks You Sideways

Our lives may be divided into five major categories: mental. physical, social, emotional, and spiritual. We are responsible for the quality of our lives and no one else can provide this quality for us. Others can add to the quality just as they can add to our happiness, but they can’t do it for us. We are each given the wonderful opportunity to be whomever we choose to be.

Let’s assign some activities to the five categories:

1. Mental—reading/studying/hobbies/activities that expand mental abilities.
2. Social—intimate and casual relationships/having a support system that includes 3-5 people/sexuality
3. Physical—rest/nutrition/daily exercise/play/recreation
4. Emotional—experiences wide range of feelings/has frequent feelings of peace, calm, joy/creativity is a daily experience.
5. Spiritual—sense of well-being and being centered/sense of purpose and direction

For each of the above categories, assign a percentage of your life that you spend on each category. You may prefer to divide into the eight stages of life from The Life Coach Trainer. These sections include physical environment, career, money, health, family/friends, significant other, personal growth/contribution and fun/recreation. Assign the percentages of each to see where you need to rebalance your life.

Waikiki Sunset by v stamey

Of all the techniques that I’ve used since 1976, the following eight techniques have been my basic mainstay for my mental health:

1. Upon awakening, recite or write a gratitude list. Always begin with the gift of breath. Without breath, we’d have no life. My spirit is so
rebellious at times that many days my gratitude list included only my breath. But having gratitude for even one thing was a growth from having no gratitude. Do 5 minutes of deep breathing-relish the feeling good lungs gives you.

2. Living with a positive mind is a continual discipline. Remember your thoughts are your choice. You need to learn to tune in to your thoughts. If you are thinking negative, you’re feeling negative. Is anything getting better with the choice of negativity?  Be careful not to condemn or judge yourself as these choices are negative also.

Learn how to get a check on the committee of voices that live in your head. Become your “observer self “when you are feeling negative. Change your thoughts and change your feelings.

3. Exercising your body daily for 30-60 minutes. The exercise can be divided into segments but it generally takes 20 minutes of exercise to change your level of metabolism.

4. The type or kind of food you eat isn’t as important as the portion. Count the calories or guess at the total calories involved. Use a small plate at every meal as a way to keep a check on the quantity of food eaten.

5. Help others every day. When I started this practice, I made it a rule to call 3 people that I ordinarily wouldn’t call in order to monitor my motives in helping others. My condition for myself on these calls was that the help had to be only for them and couldn’t include anything I might want from them for myself.

6. Spend some quality time with yourself enjoying or discovering your personality. This practice can be added to your meditation daily as you ask the God of your understanding to guide you.

7. As you let go of judgment, you learn to love yourself. Anyone else that you tear down, tears you down, too. Use the mental picture of throwing mud and notice that you get dirty. As Maya Angelou reminds us, “We did the best we could, and when we knew better, we did better.”

8. Begin acquiring books that are easy to pick up and review. Each day choose one section of a book to reflect on for the rest of the day. Even if you just have time to copy down a sentence, it will give you a path of self-improvement to follow.

End of the Paved Road by shellorz

After 32 years of recovery, I hit my emotional bottom June 11, 2009. After 15 years of marriage, without a warning, my husband left me for another woman. AND they live down the street from me. But God and AA have healed me once again. I understand why I was in a marriage with an active alcoholic and I have taken a great 5th step about my side of the street.

I’ve included some great material from other recovery friends’ sites. Please visit them.

“A Bridge Back to Life” from Letting Go : Recovery in the Sunlight (one of my favorite blogs and a daily must read) includes this poem:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

In one of my favorite blogs, Lessons From a Recovering Doormat, Michelle Germain offers these three steps to changing your inner critics:

(1)  The first step is to just notice that you are engaging in self-critical or fear based self-talk. Most people spend 80% of their time in their minds, either thinking, thinking thinking, or talking talking talking, but not listening. The first step requires that you pause during your day and be silent, stop and listen to what you are telling yourself. Write down five negative thoughts that you are hearing yourself say.

(2)  The second step is to be compassionate with yourself, knowing that what you are hearing is the voice of your wounded inner child. Much of the time we spend putting ourselves under a microscope judging and being critical with decision, behavior, etc. Compassion is a critical step to develop and it will be easy now that you know this self-talk started with the innocent mind of the child.

(3)  The third step is where you begin to update your inner child by reprogramming and putting in positive thoughts. This is like putting your inner child on your lap and saying that what she/he thinks is not really the truth of who you are, it is bringing self-love and understanding and the positive viewpoint which is updating the old into the new thinking.

Distance by Shivashankari

Emotional health is directly connected to our physical health. Choosing healthy ways (exercise, meditation, centering, and deep breathing) to deal with stress go far toward our overall health. The mind-body connection is the way your body responds to how you think, feel and act.
Some of the physical signs that your body and mind may be out of connection are chest pain, headaches, back pain, extreme tiredness, high blood pressure, upset stomach, weight loss or gain, insomnia, etc. Many of these ailments may be as well treated by learning how to improve your emotions. Learn how to sort out the following emotions: anxiety, stress and  sadness.

Too many of us have learned as children to stuff our feelings. The only emotional growth comes after we accept our feelings. Feelings aren’t good or bad or wrong or right. They are simply how we feel. Some people are helped by writing in a journal a short description of how they feel. After you accept your feelings, you can study healthy ways to deal with them.

Unfortunately, many people now believe that they have to continually “vent” all their feelings. In my opinion, vending feelings about the same situation does little good. If, once your feelings are known about a situation to all involved in the situation and everything stays the same, then learn new coping skills such as reframing to change the way you feel.

Remember, you can only change yourself—not others. If you still feel unable or unwilling to change—find out what your unhappiness is giving you. Holding on to old hurts only hurts us.

Gold Mining by muha

I often write about what I most need to know. Emotionally, I am finally moving through letting go to the next step-acceptance of what is to be. I have gathered some quick links and quotations to ponder over. I hope that they will help you, too.

(1)  From WaterPrayer:

“Acceptance is a state of non-reactivity and understanding. Acceptance does not mean ‘approval’ or that you condone what you are accepting. It means that you see something and know it for what it is, without having to need to change it. There are many ways prayer can prepare you for acceptance.”

“God of My Heart, help me to see and to know things for what they are, both inside me and outside of me. Help me to allow things to be as they are, even when I wish them to be different.
Help me to experience the importance of Acceptance: that things as they are hold many gifts, and that if my eyes and heart are open I can learn from what things and people teach me.
Help me to remember that to be in the state of Acceptance means that I can truly move through the world knowing what I can and cannot change.”

(2)  From Jannacrumbs:

“I believe that we see a very clear picture of what causes relationships to break down in 2 Corinthians 7:1-4. Here’s a quick summary:

1. Pride…too much (v1)

2. Priorities…too many (v2)

3. Patience…too little (v3)

4. Perspective…too limited (v4)

The bottom line here is that we all get in the way of our own happiness and what God has intended for us. When we do, we often start blaming other people for the lack of satisfaction or reciprocity in our relationships, when in fact, we may be the ones causing the problem.”

(3)  From journeywithspirit:

“Dear God, in this moment I hold your acceptance.
You love me completely, just as I am.
You see my great potential within,
and you nurture my tender heart of compassion.
In this moment, I let your acceptance be my own.
I accept others as the children of God.
I hold high their inner greatness,
always seeking to serve the highest and best within all people.
And so it is.”

(4)  From selfcreation:

“Self acceptance is being loving and happy with who you are NOW. Some call it self-esteem, others self-love, but whatever you call it, you’ll know when your accepting yourself cause it feels great. Its an agreement with yourself to appreciate, validate, accept and support who you are at this very moment, even those parts you’d like to eventually change. This is important…even those parts you’d eventually like to change. Yes, you can accept (be okay with) those parts of yourself you want to change some day.”

(5)  From Rex H—“What is Your Greatest Fear?”

“My prayer for the day….it has come to my attention yet again that I am trying to control things that are beyond my control. I need to accept that I have certain things in my life that have the appearance of being things I can change when in reality they are things I cannot change. By continually trying to change that which I cannot I am being selfish and not of maximum service to God and those around me. So for today I will pray this prayer and pick up the tools that have been given me to deal with those things…..thanks to those who love me enough to help me see this blind spot and have so compassionately guided me on this journey.”