Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Focusing on the Good

Tags

Focus, Goals, Gratitude, habits, Meditation, spirituality, Thoughts

“Thoughts are things, and it is important to keep our thoughts of a spiritual nature, to put attention on living a life that is a clear step toward growth.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

One of the many benefits of meditation is the ability to focus. We concentrate on our breath or do a body scan. Whenever our attention drifts away from the breath, we gently return to the it. Each day is different, but the process is the same. The daily practice is one that trains the mind to stay where it is, to truly focus the mind on one thing. If you can keep the mind focused on your breath, an object, or a chant, the rest of your reality will fade away.

The calming effects of meditation work well because of this focus. The mind fights it initially by going this way and that, bringing up a torrent of thoughts that appear out of nowhere. Over time, one can rise above the thought stream and just observe. This new state is quite tranquil. Spending as little as 10 minutes in this state brings one to place of peace and calm that will last for the rest of your day.

The practice of meditating trains the mind and allows the real you to begin observing the thoughts that are most beneficial to you. As the quote above says, “Thoughts are things…” They can bring good things to your life and they can bring bad things. As you observe your thoughts, you can discriminate between the good and bad thoughts in your thought stream and only give life to those thoughts that are helpful and serving. The practice of sifting through your thoughts as they float by is a good habit to get into. It takes time to develop the skill, but it will become habit if you focus your efforts on this.

One of the best ways to begin is to formulate your goals. Each goal will require effort on your part and will require your attention each day. If you set a few goals, you’ll have quite a few daily actions that have to be accomplished in order to move yourself toward the goals you have set. These actions can be set to your calendar, a to-do app, or even a hand-written daily planner. Then, as long as you stick to the daily actions you have set up, you will begin to have more good things to focus your mind on throughout the day. This focus on your daily actions and the productive mindset that ensues are the exact combination that will keep your mind focused on productive, good thoughts, and help you avoid bad thoughts—thoughts that will get you into trouble.

If your life is just not going the way you’d like, try some of my suggestions mentioned here. They work. Your mind likes to create things. A mind that is focused on good things will produce more good things. A mind that is focused on good and bad things will produce good and bad things. A mind that is focused on bad things will produce bad things. You are more powerful than you realize.

Stay focused on the good things in life. Express gratitude for even the smallest thing in your life that delivers joy. If you can keep your mind focused on the good, your life will turn around to the good. You are the only one that can do this. I wish you well on your journey.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Buddha, Contemplation, Meditation, Prayer, Religion, spirituality

Image Credit: www.brainyquote.com

Regardless of your religious or even non-religious stance, it is one of the critical pieces of our lives. Today is a day to contemplate your relationship with God, the Universe, or whatever you consider beyond yourself. Perhaps philosophical concepts are divine to you.

I am an Eckist (see www.eckankar.org). This has been my religious path since childhood. Like most believers, it is a joy each day to go into contemplation (meditation or prayer are equivalents) and give my love to God. It is a joy to give thanks for the things I have in my life.

The path back to God is a long and hard journey but it is a journey worth taking. Those of us in Eckankar believe that we reincarnate over and over and over again to perfect Soul. Soul is the true “us”. The body we use currently is only for Soul’s use, not the other way around. As Soul learns it becomes more Godlike. It never becomes God. It becomes more refined and grows in awareness. This awareness provides Soul with better insights. These insights allow Soul to avoid past mistakes and this, in turn, allows us to live a better life.

Ultimately, we discover that Soul’s purpose is to continue to learn better ways of giving and receiving love—to be a channel for God’s love, wherever we are. The more we give, the more we get.

Whatever path you follow, give it reverence. Learn the religious books, practice the tenets of these scriptures. Dedicate yourself to improve in conjunction with the teaching your path provides. There is no greater pursuit than God.

I hope each of you is having a terrific weekend so far.

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Buddha Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 6, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/buddha_121766

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesdays

Tags

Contemplation, HU App, HU Chant, Lao Tzu, Meditation, Relaxation, Stress Relief

Life can be stressful. We deal with traffic jams, stress at work, and the stress of being exposed to constant and uninterrupted noise. How can one escape it?

Some folks meditate. I contemplate. The key difference is that meditation waits, and contemplation is active. Regardless of the technique you use, take as little as 10 minutes a day and just be quiet. Close your eyes, relax, concentrate on your breath, scan your body, visualize a serene vista in your mind, or chant a word out loud or silently repeatedly.

One of the words I use to chant is HU. HU is an ancient name for God. Simply sit in a chair or lay down on a bed or couch. Place your attention on your third eye. This eye is about 2 inches in from the point between your eyebrows. Chant HU 3 or 4 times and then sit or lay quietly and listen and watch. It is also nice to think of something that creates a feeling of love within. Think of a pet, a parent, a sibling, friend, or significant other. Start your practice for as little as 5 minutes a day and work yourself up to 20-30 minutes.

There is a HU app in the iTunes library and Google Play. You can find the app for free in both. Simply use the keyword “HU” in either library and you’ll find it.

Meditation and Contemplation are excellent ways to relax, develop your ability to focus, and relieve stress. This is part of my day, every day. I cannot recommend this enough.

I hope your week is going well!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Lao Tzu Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/lao_tzu_386562

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Four Strategies to Improve your Mood

Tags

Exercise, Gratitude Journal, Meditation, Mood Improvement Strategies, Prayer

“Once the Holy Spirit grants us Its blessings, how often do we remember to acknowledge them? Acknowledgment is done through gratitude, which keeps our hearts open to love.” —Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Gratitude Journaling

Do you keep a Gratitude Journal? I do. I have found over time that it is beneficial to my well-being. It keeps me focused on the good things in life—the simple things—the things we tend to take for granted.

Keeping a Gratitude Journal is easy. Simply get yourself an inexpensive diary or notebook (about $.50 at Staples) and take a few minutes each morning to list out three-five things you are grateful for. That’s it.

A few years ago, I began looking for habits that would benefit me. Habits like meditation, reading, writing, learning, and journaling. Gratitude journaling was everywhere. I figured what did I have to lose? It wouldn’t take long to write down three-to-five things and if I scheduled it on my calendar or in my to-do list as a repeating item it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.

So, I started. Initially, my heart really wasn’t in it. I was going through the motions, so to speak. After a while, however, I began to look forward to my gratitude moment in the morning and really started to “feel” how grateful I was for a roof over my head, good friends, my personal talents that I was born with, my dog, my parents, you name it. This feeling began to carry itself throughout my day. Sometimes, even today, I go through the motions. It’s hard to be in a consistent state of happiness or gratitude all the time. We all have our days and we are changing continuously. We do tend to have more good days than bad, at least that is what I have discovered.

In the success and self-help literature is a common reference to being what we think about most of the time. Focus on the good stuff. The more you place your mind on the things that are going well, the more you will recognize how good life really is. This is the benefit of a gratitude journal. It will help you find a few things that are going right in your life. Once you get in the habit of doing this, you’ll discover, like I did, that life is a treasure, ripe with experiences.

You’re probably saying to yourself, “Wow, this is great. I’m so happy for you, but this is not my life.” I get it. I too have some tough days from time-to-time. When I run across a problem or just feeling a little down, I have a few more strategies for you.

Four Strategies to Improve your Mood

Strategy #1 – Write a letter

Don’t mail this to anyone. Write your letter to Jesus, God, or some other person of importance you revere. Write your heart out, explaining your problem. Ask this entity for help. Write down the problem as you see it and ask, “What is the lesson here? What am I supposed to learn from this?” You’ll find that most of our troubles relate to a spiritual lesson or principle that God is trying to teach us.

Strategy #2 – Help Someone

Some of our challenges arise because we become too focused on ourselves. When we are focused too much on ourselves it causes an introversion to occur. We stop feeling empathy for others because we are too wrapped up in ourselves and “OUR” problem. Take a moment to do something nice for someone else, whether it be a family member, a close friend, or even a stranger. You can volunteer to do some charity work, you can do something nice for your family member like a chore around the house you normally do not do or send your friend a nice letter or give them a call to tell them how much they mean to you. When you focus on someone other than yourself, you’ll find that your troubles tend to be less burdensome and important and your mood will improve.

Strategy #3 – Pray or Meditate

When we pray or meditate we become quiet. Meditation and prayer require it. When you focus all your attention on a chant, your breath, or your creator, the mood you’re in will subside a bit. Ask a question and let it sit for a while. You’ll find that these little sessions of 10 minutes bring great benefits of calm and the answers to your problems will come if you remain open to the answers.

Strategy #4 – Exercise

Working out in the gym is therapeutic for me. It relieves a stress, improves your blood pressure, lowers cholesterol, helps you maintain flexibility, and keeps those muscles working. Exercise will get your mind off things that are bothering you and releases endorphins that create a feeling of pleasure in your brain. When you finish a workout, you’ll also feel some accomplishment and improvements to your self-esteem.

If you’re having a tough time of it, I hope this post helps you in some way. Try out some of these strategies if you are feeling down. You’ll find like I did, that they do help.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

journaling, Meditation, minimalism, Positivity, Reading, rituals, Writing

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles R. Swindoll
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/charles_r_swindoll_388332?src=t_motivational

As I prepare to attack the week ahead, I wanted to discuss how our attitude or reaction to our personal reality can affect our lives in good or bad ways. We can all recall good times and bad times in our lives, right? Who decides what is good or bad? We do.

If I were to take a survey of the people you work with, what would they say about their job? Odds are there will be some that love the job they do and the service they provide. Others will dread going to the job and if offered, leave at the earliest opportunity. The employee’s attitude colors their day. People that expect the bad will get exactly what they want. People that expect the goodwill also get exactly what they want. The trite expression about the glass-half-full or half-empty applies.

Each of us has a lens we use to observe our world. This lens is colored by our experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. This lens can also be our paradigm. This is the internal map or neural pattern we use to identify common objects. It is also the map we use to assess our current situation.

Some, like the late Dr. Stephen Covey, believe we each have the power to alter or change our internal map. We can rewrite the script. Others believe that we can change our state of consciousness. The theory is if you can alter or rewrite your internal scripting you will naturally change your outlook.

I did this several years ago. My life was wrought with troubles. I was in a lot of debt, my marriage was failing, and I wasn’t performing that well at work. I started to think about why I always lost when others would win. I started to give credence to the statement that I could, in fact, rewrite my script.

I began journaling. I began dedicating time to meditation, exercise and eating right. I began to control what I let into my mind and what I protected my mind from. I began getting serious about my spirituality, reading my Bible (The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad), doing my daily spiritual exercises, and studying all I could.

I came across books like “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity”, by David Allen, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, by Dr. Stephen Covey, and learning more about nutrition, mindfulness, and minimalism. I began reading lots of articles about habits that bring about happiness and well-being.

Slowly my mindset changed. I realized that the bulk of the things I was doing was for someone else. My goals were about what I was supposed to do rather than what I wanted to do. In other words, I found the “why” behind my goals. At that moment, I began to alter my thinking. I began to realize that I could win if I changed how I approached life.

I began to look at my habits. I began to look at what I did each day. I began to look at what I was bringing into my world. I used to like watching horror movies. I used to like listening to death metal. I used to like eating a lot of garbage. I also had a lot of negative thoughts going through my mind, filled with worry, anger, and paranoia. One of the key things that caused me to change some of my habits was Masaru Emoto (see http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/water-crystal.html) who has done some wonderful experiments learning the effect different things have on the formation of water crystals. Visit this website to see what I saw. The learning: What you think, what you hear, what you read, what you see affects your internal structure (70% water). Change the inputs of ugly, vulgar, lust, etc. to good, peace, love, happiness, etc., and you can alter yourself dramatically.

Besides adapting new habits, I also created rituals that house these habits into chunks of activity. I wrote down all the things I learned that I wanted in my life. I wanted to read daily, exercise daily, eat well daily, write daily, and learn new things daily. I also wanted to bring beauty, peace, and tranquility in my life. So, I began simply. I read a page a day, I did one push-up a day, I ate one healthy meal a day, I wrote a few sentences each day, and I try to read an article, watch an educational documentary, or read a blog posting.

I take life one day at a time. I focus on what I’m doing and do not allow myself to be distracted by the “noise” that tries to envelop each of us. I remain focused on my goals and do my best to edge ever closer to the finish line.

My attitude: Life is good, it will continue to get better. I will improve a little bit each day in all areas of my life. I will continue to evolve, learn, and grow.

I extend my well-wishes to each of you on your own personal journeys to greater understanding and happiness.

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesdays – Anger, Fear, Vanity

Tags

Anger, Emotions, Fear, Harold Klemp, Meditation, Prayer, The Language of Soul, Vanity

“When we reach the point in our unfoldment where we are treating others with love instead of fear, anger, or vanity, we’ve made a very important step back home to God.” —Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

How do we treat others with love? It is quite simple. We simply wish others well.

How many times have you reacted to someone else in anger or preached to someone from the pedestal of vanity? If you really think about it, both emotions are quite harmful and worthless in the end.

I tend to have the greatest weakness with vanity. When I am experiencing success with self-discipline, I tend to preach to others about how they are NOT. This is one version of vanity. Other types of vanity could be prejudice against another person, discriminating against someone, even the poor treatment of animals as if they were less important than we powerful humans.

Anger is a tough one because when someone does something to hurt us or violates our space after being asked politely to back off, we naturally get angry. I would never advocate turning a cheek in this respect. We all have a right to defend or stick up for ourselves.

In the end, each of us is simply Soul. If we can have compassion and understanding for other beings, treating them as Soul, our outlook can change a bit. There will always be someone to challenge you when you attempt to interact with them from “higher” ground.

What we are really talking about here is the ability to master the emotions. If we rise above them, they have no hold on us. This is hard, particularly when you are right in the thick of it. What I have found to work the best is to contemplate these emotions and really try to understand them. If you’re like me, you find that they are simply an illusion. When you get to the center of anger, fear, vanity, or jealousy, you find that nothing is there. It is just a way we REACT to the reality we are giving light to.

It is the REACTION to the things that are outside us that get us into trouble. One of the beauties of the human mind is our ability to replay these events in our mind and mock up different scenarios and situations that have invoked an emotion in the past. Once you experience this emotion, alter the environment or alter your way of reacting to it. You’ll find that you will become more centered and less likely to be thrown out of emotional balance. None of this is easy. You must want it. Experiment with this when you are meditating or praying. Play a situation that got the best of you repeatedly until it no longer affects you. Typically, once you master this situation, you will be better equipped to be in control and react less than you did before.

Until next time…

Dave

Weekly Ramblings – Remaining Centered Despite Life’s Little Surprises

Tags

Calmness, Centeredness, Emotional, Meditation, Spiritual Exercises, Unconscious

I just got back from my Sister’s home after being there for a few days. It’s always a nice change of pace from the day-to-day. I visit my sister each month for a long weekend to hang out, get some good food and binge-watching TV shows or whatever she wants to do. This last trip we went to a comedy show, featuring Rocky LaPorte and Ron White. It was hilarious.

During this short stay, we also experienced a vehicle break down, which resulted in the replacement of a tire on my car. I was wondering how to react to these little-unexpected experiences. How do we stay in balance when something out of the ordinary happens we had no warning of?

I think the best way to handle the unexpected is to be proactive about those things we know may happen but may not. How do we prepare? We have insurance to protect against an accident, insurance for our health, even insurance for our life. We make sure we have an emergency kit in our car and home in case someone gets hurt. We make sure we have a good spare, jack, and other equipment needed to change the tire. We save some of our money to prepare for any potential emergency.

I contemplated about this over the weekend, after it happened, and realized that the key to dealing with the unexpected is to remain calm and balanced as well. It is so easy to be thrown off balance when the boss hands us a job we aren’t ready for, we get sick unexpectedly, or a car breaks down. Any number of things can happen to us or the things we own with little or no notice. Remain calm. Remain balanced. There is no reason to get out of whack when one of these things come to pass. Use your creative imagination to solve the problem once you’re hit with it. Remain calm. Remain balanced.

I practice meditation daily. My religious path calls this practice a spiritual exercise. Spiritual exercises come in all shapes and sizes as most meditation practices. The key is consistency and to have a purpose or goal when doing them. In Eckankar, we strive to practice these spiritual exercises with an open, loving heart. Sometimes, this is hard, particularly when one of these out-of-the-blue emergencies happen. We are freaked out, scared, nervous, the whole emotional gambit. The practice of meditating or spiritual exercises counter these feelings by slowly building a foundation of calmness and centeredness, both of which allow us to remain in control, despite what is happening around us.

Have you ever heard the statement: “He was so angry, he couldn’t think.” Thinking or mentalizing on something is really difficult if your emotions are out of control. The calmness allows us to think, to critically analyze our situation and get to work on solving the current dilemma. What happens when we have internalized solving the kind of problem we are hit with? This solving goes to a higher level. It is literally unconscious, which is what happens when we know how to solve a particular problem without thinking about it. Do you see?

Emotions, come before intellect, which comes before unconscious execution. If one of these is out of balance and control, they make the others that follow impossible to use. If we are too emotional we won’t be able to think about a solution—the emotions won’t allow that. If we are too caught up in mentalizing or thinking about a problem, our ability to apply what we already know is impossible.

By meditating or doing a spiritual exercise every day, we build up an internal centeredness and calmness that becomes more and more difficult to upset our natural balance. Thus, we have access to the creative imagination that would normally be blocked off by a stressful situation. You can find a great wealth of material available about meditation online or read about spiritual exercises at www.eckankar.org.

Have a great week!!

See you next week…

Daily Ramblings – Workout Diary

Tags

Balance, Day Off, Eating a Nutritious Meal, Meditation, Reading, Rest, Sleeping

Today is a day off, folks. We have friends coming over and then we’re all heading to dinner later. I hope all of you that are exercising in my reading audience take a day off from time to time. The body needs to recover. Your long-term exercise goals should take a balanced approach. Activity and then rest.

When you take a day off, you give the body time to recover and rejuvenate itself. Rest is just as important as the activity you put in. On your rest days, relax. Drink lots of water, settle down with a good book, really take the time to allow yourself body, mind, and spirit to relax.

Nothing relaxes me like a good book, a cup of tea, writing in my journal, and meditating. Sleep in. Enjoy a good movie. Have a nutritious meal. Pamper yourself.

Tomorrow you’ll be back and you’ll be stronger mentally and physically.

See you tomorrow!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Focus, Meditation, Mindfulness, Practice

“Mindfulness – it isn’t a trick or a gimmick. It’s being present in the moment. When I’m with you, I’m with you. Right now. That’s all. No more and no less.” – Will Schwalbe

Being Present

Being present is a byproduct of meditation as long as you maintain your practice. It’s interesting when you begin your meditation practice how quickly your mind wants to wander. When you start paying attention to this during your practice you realize that your mind can slip away from the breath multiple times in a 30-minute session. Imagine how often you slip away when a loved one is trying to share their day with you? Imagine how much you miss when you are reading a story and you slip away to something else?

Meditation Mobile Applications

If anything, mindfulness meditation practices can help you salvage a lot of missed enjoyment in your life. By being present, your conversations will be richer, your reading will be more interesting, your meals will be tastier, and your time in nature more restful. If you are interested in establishing your own practice, there are two mobile apps you may want to try. The first is Calm (www.calm.com) and the second is headspace (www.headspace.com).

I want to stress that this is not a religious thing at all. You can be of any faith and practice Mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation is all about learning to focus and remain focused over longer periods of time. Will you control your mind? No; that’s impossible. The key is to simply notice and gently bring the mind back to your breath or whatever else you are focusing on. You don’t need a lot of time for this either—10-15 minutes is it. I try to sit for around 30 minutes, but I’ve been doing this for over 45 years. It’ll take you some time to do this, but it’s well worth it. You’ll find every aspect of your life will improve, particularly your stress levels!

If you are interested, simply click on either link to check these apps out for yourself. Personally, I enjoy the Calm app better than headspace, but this is my opinion only. Many folks prefer headspace to Calm as well. Happy Sitting!!

Please be sure to visit my blog tomorrow. I will be posting a heartfelt message for Memorial Day.

Until tomorrow…

Daily Ramblings – Striving

Tags

Exercise, Improving, Learning, Meditation, Reading, self-improvement, Striving, Studying, Writing

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot

Wow, what a great quote right? How many stories have been told through the ages of a life wasted? Wow, he or she could have been this, if only….?

When you wake up in the morning, do you realize that you are the best you’ve ever been, ever? It only gets better moving forward. I realize this may sound to be a little over the top from a positivity perspective, but why can’t it be like that? It can be.

One of the things I’ve discovered since beginning this blog and following others is that there are a lot of folks who are striving. Striving to improve. Striving to be better. Striving to heal. Striving to be heard. I really enjoy reading the thoughts of others and try to put myself in their position, really feeling where they are in life. But, living a life well-lived is about the striving, right? I think it is.

I am striving for many things. I want to become a writer. I want to tweak my prose so people will be drawn to my books, my blog, or whatever I create for a reader to consume. I want to be in the best shape of my life so my brain and body will serve me as long as humanly possible. I strive toward this goal with daily exercise, eating right, a daily dose of reading, learning, writing, and meditation. I want to be loved, so I strive to interact with people, cultivate new relationships by putting myself out there, and maintaining the relationships I have with my family and my friends by staying in touch and doing those little things that make my loved ones know they are my world and they can depend on me.

I strive for a great many things that pertain to my physical well-being, my financial well-being, my mental and intellectual well-being, my spiritual well-being, and my social well-being. This striving is what keeps me alive. I continuously look for ways to improve and get better, all while taking care of the most important person in my life—me. If I am not striving for that next goal, that next hilltop, that next landmark, then I am moving backward.

Don’t get me wrong. We all get sick. We all get old. We all get blind-sided by those things that we didn’t see coming, which put us into a temporary tailspin. What I’m talking about here is purposeful striving, continuing forward, regardless of what we get hit with or encounter.

This is where the quote above really hit me. I don’t want to be that person that looks back over their life regretting that I didn’t do something I could have done. I don’t want to be that person that cowered in fear and avoided something because it might be too hard or too scary to even try. I want to look back on my life and say, I did the very best I could with what I had and from where I started. Man, what a great ride this life has been.

We all come to this world with our own baggage and circumstances. Some are outright advantageous, while others are the exact opposite. If you are ever discouraged, look around the web for a bit or go to your local library. You’ll find a story about a person who had it rougher than you and excelled. You’ll also find a person who had everything and wasted their opportunity. A well-lived life is not all about the accolades and accomplishments. It is about the striving.

By the way, I chose the Ballerina picture, as a way of demonstrating striving in action (they work really hard to get good at this particular kind of dance).

Until next time…