To gain inner peace for greatest stability, do the following visualization to strengthen your intuition. Begin with deep breathing. In a comfortable sitting or standing position, expel the air from deep in your lungs. Repeat the deep breathing several times. When you feel energized, you are ready to begin the exercise.

• Lie down on the floor or on the ground and turn over to lie on your stomach. Brooke Medicine Eagle suggests lying there for 15 minutes while picturing a golden cord running from your belly into the heart of the Earth. Afterward, turn over on your back for the same period of time and experience the wind and sunshine passing through your belly.

• While on your stomach, you may reconnect with the feeling of being supported by the Earth. While on your back, you may recall your relationship to the Eternal. If you practice these on a weekly basis, you will feel a need to recommit to preserving your ecosystem.

• Basic warm-up for getting in touch with your intuition: Sit in a chair with your feet on the floor and with your eyes closed. As you breathe, let all thoughts drop away. Concentrate on your breathing to shut down the mind chatter. Notice how your chest expands as the air flows in and out of your diaphragm. Count the inhaling and the exhaling as one cycle. Notice how the different parts of your body react as you relax and shut down. To keep your mind in the now, practice counting the breaths. If you aren’t relaxed at the end of a goal of 50-100 breaths, make the goal longer each time until you reach your optimum length of breaths.

• The inner pilot: Choose a problem that has been bothering you lately. Choose one that is of a minor nature. Write a simple statement that describes the problem. Choose a room that is quiet and has little direct light or sun. If necessary, lie on a blanket on the floor. Don’t wear anything that might be restrictive such as a watch, eyeglasses, shoes, or socks. Lie face up and shut your eyes. Focus on the problem that you’ve selected.

Run through all the arguments pro and con. Examine them in all their possible dimensions. Consider all the nuances of the problem and mentally follow through the possible consequences of every solution. Go into the basic warm up and allow all directed thought to slip away. Concentrate on your breathing and pay close attention to how you feel as images come into your mind.

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So, You Want to Be Like Christ? Eight Essentials to Get You There.

Charles R. Swindoll

ISBN 0-8499-1731-X

Amazon link

I have been reading Charles Swindoll for 30 years now and he never disappoints me. As he writes in his introduction: “So, you want to be like Christ? Me, too. But that kind of godliness won’t happen by hanging around a church or thinking lofty thoughts three or four times a day or learning a few verses of Scripture. It will take more–much more. Disciplining ourselves will require the same kind of focused thinking and living that our Master modeled during His brief life on earth.”

Rev. Swindoll defines the eight essentials we need to practice as:

1. Intimacy: Deepening Ours Lives
2. Simplicity: Uncluttering Our Minds
3. Silence and Solitude: Slowing Our Pace
4. Surrender: Releasing Our Grip
5. Prayer: Calling Out
6. Humility: Bowing Low
7. Self-Control: Holding Back
8. Sacrifice: Giving Over

As he states: “Notice that the first four disciplines have to do with getting rid of something, creating room in your life. The next four contribute vitality and authenticity to your spiritual life….Of course there are many other disciplines we could consider. And we could credibly argue for a shorter or longer list. I don’t claim to have the definitive path to intimacy with the Almighty. But I can say that after forty years of ministry, having prescribed these to others and having applied them to my own life, these eight disciplines fall into the category of essentials. Cultivate these disciplines, and your relationship with the Lord will flourish. More significantly, these will become paths that will lead you to becoming more like Christ.”

He has included several poems and/or quotations that are old and familiar to me.

For Simplicity: Uncluttering Our Minds:

“One ship drives east and another drives west

With the selfsame winds that blow.

Tis the set of the sails

And not the gales

Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,

As we voyage along through life:

“Tis the set of a soul

That decides its goal.

And not the calm or the strife.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox

For Silence and Solitude: Slowing Our Pace

“May not the inadequacy of much of our spiritual experience be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridors of the Kingdom like children in the market place, chattering about everything, but pausing to learn the value of nothing.” A.W. Tozer

For Surrender: Releasing Our Grip

“When grace changes the heart, submission out of fear changes to submission out of love, and true humility is born” William Hendriksen

From Sacrifice Giving Over:

In this chapter, Rev. Swindoll writes a very personal account of his coming to the Lord while he was miserable in the Marine Corps in 1958. He read a book his brother had given him that night of 5 missionaries who had died while spreading the Word to the Aucas tribe. One of the missionaries’s wife, Jim Elliott, wrote the book, Through Gates of Splendor, after Jim’s death. The quotation for this chapter on sacrifice is from Jim Elliott: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

The sacrifices suggested are: to become a living, breathing sacrifice–personal sacrifice, relational sacrifice, and financial sacrifice.

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