Spirituality
For the last 6 months I have been taking classes concerning the New Thought Movement. I have to say it has enhanced my feelings about God. I always have had a strong faith in God. I guess it has been disturbed by the dogmatic principles of the Catholic Church. Through my years of worship, I’ve gained a conscience that exists outside of this theology. It’s not that I feel I will obtain my heart’s desires by using the principles of books such as The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
The classes I have taken have given me a more humanistic view of the Lord and his intentions for mankind. If you know about me, you realize I have been through a tremendous amount of stressful changes this year. I broke up with one of the soul mates in my life, and have been downsized from a job two times. Now, before you think I am writing this to “play a violin” and “shed a tear” for Christine, it’s really not that way.
Through my coping process I have discovered the research of Dr. David Hawkins. Dr. David Hawkins is a spiritual teacher that has done scientifically based research on spirituality. In his map of consciousness, he regards the truly enlightened people on a level of 1,000, Peace being 900 and Joy being 800. Dr. Hawkins took the idea that our moods and our current state of feelings affect our muscle movements. He used the science of Kinesiology, muscle testing to see what level people calibrate at. People such as Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Jesus Christ would calibrate at 1,000, a totally enlightened level.
I now am aware that the thoughts and feelings I process have a direct result of my own vibrational frequencies. Whenever a negative thought appears in my head, I have the habit of cancelling it out and replacing it with a positive one. In “Destructive Emotions” by Daniel Goleman, the author has a conversation with Dalai Lama about how our thoughts actually create our reality. In “You can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay, the author asserts that self-love is one of the most powerful philosophies we can adopt for ourselves. A persons’ thoughts and feelings create the life they want to live.
Now, mind you, there are bad days, where I might meet a disagreeable person and then have a bad thought about the person. It is impossible not to have some negative thoughts during your day. However, awareness of how these thoughts bring down your vibrational energy and your own muscle strength, will help keep your moods in check. This research in the New Thought Movement has had a positive impact in my life. I can express gratitude for things not normally appreciated. It has been a great survival technique for me.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Long Winter
Following up on the near-title of my last post and it's awful alliteration, it is snowing here again today. I was thinking of the snow previously because of a past memory. When I was seven or eight years-old, I wanted to go outside and play in the snow at night. Our backyard was safe and secure, so my mother let me get bundled up and out I went.
My memory of that night is clear. Our normally busy street was silenced by the day's snowfall. It was cold, but not uncomfortable. I walked around the yard by the light of the porch. Suddenly I noticed the light from a different angle against the snow, and I looked closer. I could see the individual shapes of the snowflakes. I was amazed. I had always thought that the paper cut-outs we made in school were a human representation of snow, like the trace of my hand could be a turkey and a bunch of triangles stacked were a Christmas tree. I was thrilled to see those flakes and yes, the rumor was also right: no two were the same!
I looked up at the light over our door, and all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. The silence, the cold, the beauty that was around me but small enough to bypass all came forward in a moment of clarity. I remember it making me feel uncomfortable, and I soon went back inside the house. The enormity of it was incomprehensible to me then, but powerful enough to remain in memory, clear as the sky.
Last week it was my birthday, and like many of the birthdays I celebrated in the past, it snowed. The weather was supposed to be ugly and tough to deal with. I have been told by several sources that the only reason I like snow is that I don't have to shovel it. There could be truth to that, but I like to believe it's because I appreciate the beauty of it and don't like to see it as a nuisance.
I left the house early on my birthday and stood for a moment on our front porch, which is eerily like the one wrapped around my parent's house all those years ago. The snow fell, and it sparkled. Just like the sparkle of those fallen flakes that retained their shapes. I stood in the silence of our street, again, another busy street silenced, and watched. I could see the shapes again, I could see it sparkle. In the quiet of the morning I realized what a gift I was given. It was a reminder of that peace, that silence. It reminded me that some moments always remain with you, and having those moments is a blessing.
I watched the snow for as long as I could before I had to move on to other things, like work. When I was a kid, I broke the moment because I couldn't handle it, or understand it. Now, as an adult, I had adult things to attend to, so the moment was gone. But the feeling remained all day. I felt fortunate to know that sometimes you miss the beauty that is all around you, but it is still there if you want to come back to it.
My memory of that night is clear. Our normally busy street was silenced by the day's snowfall. It was cold, but not uncomfortable. I walked around the yard by the light of the porch. Suddenly I noticed the light from a different angle against the snow, and I looked closer. I could see the individual shapes of the snowflakes. I was amazed. I had always thought that the paper cut-outs we made in school were a human representation of snow, like the trace of my hand could be a turkey and a bunch of triangles stacked were a Christmas tree. I was thrilled to see those flakes and yes, the rumor was also right: no two were the same!
I looked up at the light over our door, and all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. The silence, the cold, the beauty that was around me but small enough to bypass all came forward in a moment of clarity. I remember it making me feel uncomfortable, and I soon went back inside the house. The enormity of it was incomprehensible to me then, but powerful enough to remain in memory, clear as the sky.
Last week it was my birthday, and like many of the birthdays I celebrated in the past, it snowed. The weather was supposed to be ugly and tough to deal with. I have been told by several sources that the only reason I like snow is that I don't have to shovel it. There could be truth to that, but I like to believe it's because I appreciate the beauty of it and don't like to see it as a nuisance.
I left the house early on my birthday and stood for a moment on our front porch, which is eerily like the one wrapped around my parent's house all those years ago. The snow fell, and it sparkled. Just like the sparkle of those fallen flakes that retained their shapes. I stood in the silence of our street, again, another busy street silenced, and watched. I could see the shapes again, I could see it sparkle. In the quiet of the morning I realized what a gift I was given. It was a reminder of that peace, that silence. It reminded me that some moments always remain with you, and having those moments is a blessing.
I watched the snow for as long as I could before I had to move on to other things, like work. When I was a kid, I broke the moment because I couldn't handle it, or understand it. Now, as an adult, I had adult things to attend to, so the moment was gone. But the feeling remained all day. I felt fortunate to know that sometimes you miss the beauty that is all around you, but it is still there if you want to come back to it.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I was going to call this post A Small Slice of Serenity in the Snow, but going crazy with the alliteration is annoying enough to make even the most bored of souls turn away and read something else. And the "serenity" has now been ruined by advertising by forcing the association with incontinence products.
Another thing I want to avoid in this blog is a concept I have to take from George Carlin. A few years back an email was making the forwarding circuit that basically waxed reminiscent of the old days, your long-gone youth, how your hair used to be nice, but now it's not, etc. You got the email. Unfortunately, it cited the author as George Carlin, and this was untrue. On his website, Mr. Carlin corrected the world that he did not write, what he called, that "sappy piece of shit." Now, when I write about important issues that just may have a note or two of longing, nostalgia or anything of the like, I put it through the "sappy piece of shit" meter. Thank you, George Carlin. You are missed for many, many reasons.
Writing about what is important to you and personally revealing is not easy for a number of reasons. Placing your feelings out in the world, even one as seemingly impersonal and anonymous as cyber space, is never easy. What I find most difficult is just the language itself. Trying to avoid the SPOS meter can sometimes be difficult. But I am going to do my best, so here it goes.
In late 2006 I sat one bleak Saturday afternoon alone in the apartment I shared with my husband. I looked out at a gray landscape of buildings before the famous skyline of a big city. I'm so unhappy, I thought. If I don't do something about this now, I'll be like this for the rest of my life.
The rest of my life part bugged me even more than the unhappy part. I was starting to realize that your life is made up of a series of habits and collectively these habits make your expereinces what they are. I suffered from awful anxiety, the kind that manifests itself physically. I would come home from work feeling like someone was placing a big hand against my chest and pushing. I was dealing with this by drinking a lot of alchohol, which in turn made the anxiety even worse. I didn't want to get help because I thought that I could solve all my problems myself. After all, wasn't it weak not to be able to? But I realized that the weakness was in not asking anyone for a hand out of the mess my mind and body were becoming. Anger, anxiety, resentment, hoplessness and profound sadness were all becoming daily emotions that were taking their toll on me. There had to be a way out of it.
That day in 2006 was the real beginning for me of a major shift that brought a sense of purpose and peace to my life. What I hope to accomplish in this blog is a chronicle of that tranformation then and now, as it is still happening.
Another thing I want to avoid in this blog is a concept I have to take from George Carlin. A few years back an email was making the forwarding circuit that basically waxed reminiscent of the old days, your long-gone youth, how your hair used to be nice, but now it's not, etc. You got the email. Unfortunately, it cited the author as George Carlin, and this was untrue. On his website, Mr. Carlin corrected the world that he did not write, what he called, that "sappy piece of shit." Now, when I write about important issues that just may have a note or two of longing, nostalgia or anything of the like, I put it through the "sappy piece of shit" meter. Thank you, George Carlin. You are missed for many, many reasons.
Writing about what is important to you and personally revealing is not easy for a number of reasons. Placing your feelings out in the world, even one as seemingly impersonal and anonymous as cyber space, is never easy. What I find most difficult is just the language itself. Trying to avoid the SPOS meter can sometimes be difficult. But I am going to do my best, so here it goes.
In late 2006 I sat one bleak Saturday afternoon alone in the apartment I shared with my husband. I looked out at a gray landscape of buildings before the famous skyline of a big city. I'm so unhappy, I thought. If I don't do something about this now, I'll be like this for the rest of my life.
The rest of my life part bugged me even more than the unhappy part. I was starting to realize that your life is made up of a series of habits and collectively these habits make your expereinces what they are. I suffered from awful anxiety, the kind that manifests itself physically. I would come home from work feeling like someone was placing a big hand against my chest and pushing. I was dealing with this by drinking a lot of alchohol, which in turn made the anxiety even worse. I didn't want to get help because I thought that I could solve all my problems myself. After all, wasn't it weak not to be able to? But I realized that the weakness was in not asking anyone for a hand out of the mess my mind and body were becoming. Anger, anxiety, resentment, hoplessness and profound sadness were all becoming daily emotions that were taking their toll on me. There had to be a way out of it.
That day in 2006 was the real beginning for me of a major shift that brought a sense of purpose and peace to my life. What I hope to accomplish in this blog is a chronicle of that tranformation then and now, as it is still happening.
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