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.

I have gone through the most horrific childhood and adulthoods one can imagine. I was abused by my stepfather, psychologically and physically for 24 years. I have been bullied all the way through school up until the third year of University, with a break of the bullying in High school. I have had virtually all anxiety disorders in the book, severe OCD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), GAD and Social Phobia. My life wasn’t worth living.

My OCD was mainly of the themes POCD, fear of being a pedophile, and Harm-O, fear of killing or harming others and myself. This went on for seven years. I was close to killing myself once just to end the misery and anguish I was going through. I have never harmed and never would harm an animal, child or adult. All I went through was in my mind, and I was battling my mind daily to become free of the OCD. It got to such a point that I was terrified of kids, anything associated to kids, the colour blue, pink, kids voices, prams, toys, even things not associated with kids, trucks, any sound, suitcases on the ground which my peripheral vision saw as kids sitting on the ground, anything that my mind would see as a threat. The POCD had turned into a conditioned fear, where my brain would associate anything to do with kids and even not, trees with two branches, adults at a distance etc, as something to fear, and either run away from or go into full fight or flight response, have a panic attack, blush, feel dizzy, sweat, have trouble breathing etc.

I hated my life and didn’t feel it was worth living. All days were days of complete fear. I was never afraid of hurting others, but I was afraid of being seen as a pedophile, due to my anxiousness and fear around kids. Who in society who doesn’t know that one can suffer from POCD would believe me if I said I was terrified of kids.

I went through all kinds of therapy to overcome my anxieties, hypnotherapy, CBT, Exposure Response Prevention, Psychotherapy. Nothing took away my fear. Some of the therapies had some effect but it was only to a moderate level. My fears also grew when I was forced to live in a neighborhood full of kids and teenagers.

I started believing that all people in Stockholm, Sweden where I lived saw me as a pedophile. I was so afraid of this that I thought they would kill me due to their ignorance and society’s prejudice against mental illness. I was convinced that people began to fear me so much, (I showed my fear and anxiety very visibly) that they contacted the police. I began to see people react to me in anger, hatred, disgust, fear, calling names like sick bastard, pedo, perv. I had done nothing at all apart from been extremely anxious and fearful, but people interpreted my fear of kids as pedophilia.

At one point in Stockholm on a day out with my parents and sister, I counted up to 23 civilian clothed police officers, who were trying to find evidence to arrest me. I could see it in the way they behaved, how they stared, the ear microphones they had in their ears. Everything about them stood out.

My computer was hacked professionally and I have found a lot of evidence pointing back to the Swedish Police.

To save my father from more anxiety regarding my life that had come to a complete stand still and had been for the last seven years I agreed to go to hospital.

Once I got admitted, I noticed something was very wrong from the start. The hospital staff were extremely nasty to me the second I got in. After five minutes of doctor consultation I was sectioned and locked up for 18 days. I could see very clearly how the staff were probing with talking about kids to see my reaction. They refused me food if I didn’t leave my room, they refused me food if I didn’t speak Swedish. I’m half Swedish half English. One nurse was extremely hostile to the point of me feeling that he would want to kill me.

I came out of my room once to charge my mobile phone, and overheard the same nurse who seemed to hate me to the point of wanting to kill me, ‘saying… throwing stones at windows’.

Later that night I heard someone throwing stones at the windows, starting at a window far down the corridor away from mine, and coming closer all the time. I was terrified that it was someone who wanted to shoot me due to thinking I was a dangerous pedophile.

I believed some of the hospital staff were undercover police officers. I have always been able to tell if people were lying and some of the staff members were lying their faces off.

The first night I had come into the hospital they forcefully injected me with a strong anti psychotic which gave me severe cramps for over four hours. I was cramping all over my body and my mouth was clamped shut so I had to breathe through my nose. I forced a pencil through my mouth so I could breathe somewhat through my mouth. This drug could have killed me had they not reluctantly given me a muscle relaxant.

The doctor and the nurses came in and checked on me occasionally, but when they came in they just stared viscously and once my father had come to visit me later that evening, my father asked if they could not show any compassion. One of the nurses said ‘Oh I don’t know anything about that!’. She looked at me extremely coldly while saying this.

They wanted to ban my mother from talking to me on the phone. Every way they could push me they did it.

They gave me high doses of antipsychotics, the same dose for schizophrenia and psychosis. If anything I suffered from severe OCD and PTSD. They also gave me high doses of antidepressants. These drugs without food will cause an extreme adrenergic response. Fear and anxiety. The only reason I could see the staff doing this to me was to push me over the edge. If they believed me to be a dangerous pedophile I believed they wanted to try and bring that behaviour out. There was a woman in her early twenties there, who was also supposedly a patient. She spoke in a very childish voice and was always looking towards me, speaking of secondary school and kids. In my mind she was an undercover police officer who was trying to bring out the pedophilic behaviour that wasn’t there because I am not a pedophile.

All of these experiences with the hospital staff were making me as fearful as I could ever be in life. I huddled up in one corner in my room and crouched every time I needed to exit my room or go to my bathroom. I was afraid of being shot through the window.

After 18 days I was released after my father came and visited me. They had refused me food again. My father drove me straight down to my mother in the south of Sweden. When I was released I was extremely fearful and in a complete state of fight or flight, and clung to my father while he walked me out to the car. Once I got in the car, I sat on the floor with my head on the seat and said ‘Drive, don’t look at me or speak to me, just drive’. I was afraid of being shot through the car door.

All these experiences in life led up to a breaking point where spiritually I died and was reborn.

At my mum’s I was still extremely fearful and fearing that people would come to kill me due to thinking I was a dangerous pedophile.

After about one week at my mum’s I started meditating. I meditated for eight hours a day. I started having visual hallucinations, seeing the four armed God Shiva on the kitchen wall, a chest, a throne with a white skull on the right hand side of it. The same throne with a man on top of it, and two men standing below and looking up at the man on the throne.

When I took showers I was often unable to take a normal shower. I started spinning round in the shower clockwise and then anti-clockwise. I started drawing symbols on the shower walls. I walked out the front door 4.30 in the morning once, dressed and wearing my flip flops. I didn’t care about locking the door. I walked to my old school which I had very fond memories of and ran around the school’s football field in my flip flops. I didn’t get tired. I then walked up the steps of the playground ship, climbed up the climbing wall and jumped down. Walked on top of monkey bars and jumped down, then I walked down the village, blessed an ant on the sidewalk and continued my walk through the village. I greeted all people sleeping in their houses and walked back towards my house. I took a green apple from a tree, took a bite and threw it on the ground. I then got back into bed and slept another two hours.

I started sleeping only four or five hours of sleep, feeling energized after that. I didn’t need much food nor the need to go the loo more than two or three times a day.

At this time my mum was very fearful for me due to my experience in hospital and wanted to take me to the UK.

We got to the UK where we stayed with a cousin of mine and her two kids. I started doing Kung Fu outside and drew the infinity symbol in concrete with my two fingers until they started bleeding. This to me was not of any harm.

I became unable to feel any pain. I tried to take out an oven tray once at 225′C and did not feel anything other than a slight stinging sensation and tickle. I got no blisters from doing it.

I began to not feel heat or cold the same way. I could stand in a really hot or cold shower and not flinch.

I began drawing lots of pictures at a high level of skill with japanese themes, and writing japanese characters to every drawing. I began talking in different languages, ancient japanese, Ming and Qin Dynasty chinese. Perhaps current arabic and german. I spoke arabic once to a guy who replied in arabic, and spoke German to my father who is fluent in German and recognized it as fluent German. I started writing about astrophysics, neurochemistry, medicine, mechanics, electronics, religion, history, anything that came out of my brain.

I stopped thinking, everything was silent in my mind, never an internal dialogue.

I started doing Kung Fu at an advanced level for a beginner. I started doing Tai Chi power moves on people, very similar to acupressure, healing by putting pressure on the different energy joints in the body. I healed two people from intense pain in their arms and legs. I nearly completely healed a person from severe Dyscalculia and the inability to tell time. I healed a person with a chest infection and drew out the infection from him.

I became completely fearless towards anything and was unable to feel any negative emotions, apart from anger which I would feel outside my head, I would never be overwhelmed with anger. A composed anger.

It has now gone two months since my spiritual rebirth. I have been in hospital again in the UK as I was not believed about my abilities and the psychiatrists said I had hypomania, mania or psychosis. I held that I did not suffer from any of those things and that such a label did not explain the multitude of things I was able to do.

I am now out of hospital and titrating down on the anti psychotic drug which they forced me to take, and am starting to feel again the complete harmony I felt before I was on the drugs. At the moment my sensitivity to pain, sugar, heat and cold are not the same as before the drugs.

I used to be highly sensitive towards most foods, and those sensitivities have now disappeared. I am a reborn man with a will to help as many as I can. It is difficult for me to be believed regarding my theories, some of which I have posted on my blog www.dharmaga.com, but I believe with time I will gain credibility in all that I am doing.

What I have gone through in terms of my spiritual experience is a complete rebirth. My soul died after all the trauma I had gone through in life and a new one was inserted into my body along with reincarnations of previous and future lives. Time is always the present if one sees time as bending. Past time and future time are in that sense always present.

Photo credit.

St.Sava Serbian Orthodox by newagecrap

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.

Fr Antunes

The spiritual practices I’ve chosen to include in Spiritual Practices 1 are forgiveness, deep breathing, becoming centered, mindfulness, and serenity. I learned most of these principles through daily meditation.

Early in my recovery which began in 1976, I was deeply influenced by a 13th century monk, Brother Lawrence. His book is titled “Practice in the Presence of God”. I loved the concept of practicing in the presence which told me that I never had to worry about being perfect. That,in fact, I would never graduate on this earth from the practice. What a wonderful gift this 13th century monk gave me. Thank you, Brother Lawrence.

If you, the reader, has other spiritual practices you would like to see included–write your own lenses. You will love the experience and feel a deep sense of joy to be sharing yourself with the world.

To introduce each of the spiritual practices I have chosen, I will be using definitions for each of the spiritual practices from one my favorite amazing resource, Wikipedia.

(1) Deep Breathing

The following definition is from Wikipedia–

“Diaphragmatic breathing, or deep breathing is the act of breathing deep into your lungs by flexing your diaphragm rather than breathing shallowly by flexing your rib cage.

This deep breathing is marked by expansion of the stomach (abdomen) rather than the chest when breathing. It is generally considered a healthier and fuller way to ingest oxygen, and is often used as a therapy for hyperventilation and anxiety disorders.

Performing diaphragmatic breathing can be therapeutic, and with enough practice, can become your standard way of breathing.

To breathe diaphragmatically, or with the diaphragm, one must draw air into the lungs in a way which will expand the stomach and not the chest. It is best to perform these breaths as long, slow intakes of air – allowing the body to absorb all of the inhaled oxygen while simultaneously relaxing the breather. To do this comfortably, it is often best to loosen tight-fitting pants/belts/skirts as these can interfere with the body’s ability to intake air.

While at first one may not feel comfortable not expanding the chest during breathing, diaphragmatic breathing actually fills up the majority of the lungs with oxygen, much more than chest-breathing or shallow breathing.

According to http://www.swamij.com/diaphragmatic-breathing.htm, in diaphragmatic breathing abdomen does NOT move.”