Gratitude

Today my recovery meeting was about being grateful, not surprising since it is the day before Thanksgiving.  I was reminded of the many gifts in my life and I am extremely grateful.  Many of the gifts in my life came in the form of challenges or difficulties and their resolution led to the gifts.  My disability is a good example since it has taught me many things, like patience, tolerance and the need for self-care.  I deal with my disability with love and my connection to God.  Using love, visualization and healing prayer has yielded results that doctors say are impossible.

Holistic Health

Today I am struggling with an internal conflict because part of me wants to change and the other part considers any change to be difficult and potentially hazardous — a crossroad that I am quite familiar with.  I have been working on self-healing around my disability, which I have found to be a complex issue.  As I write about in my website and earlier in this blog, I have had good success with self-healing with several problems in the past.  The situation with my disability is more complex.  I have encountered karma, God’s will, and multiple layers of self, all of which must be dealt with prior to any degree of healing.  Right now it is self!

Choice

The other night I had a dream which made it clear that if I wanted to move forward and develop more spiritual muscle I needed to give up more of my earthly (and enjoyable!!) distractions and attachments.  I have already surrendered quite a bit with good results.  The main distraction in this case is that I spend much of each Wednesday watching movies that I take out of the library.  I enjoy them and found myself making up all sorts of excuses and reasons to continue!  I think I will spend tomorrow (Wednesday) doing some quiet meditative activity.  "Great deeds can only be achieved when we are more than our little selves.  When we are lent wings we should not reject them." (deCastillejo)

Aggressive Nature

The other day right after one of my meetings the person I was talking to commented that it was discouraging to realize that humans are basically aggressive to which I responded “they’re not!!”.  As I explained to him, I have observed many times that the thoughts and actions of a person depend on which “seed” or tendency you feed or encourage.  If I am helping someone and I support what I call the “love seed” their behavior can switch from aggressive to loving.  “From everywhere, it seems, we are bombarded with the idea that our nature is innately violent, that our chief preoccupation is with our sexuality, and that our main purpose in life is the acquirement of ever more nifty possessions.......Indeed, it is only through the practice of inner silence that we can begin to disentangle ourselves from our culture and its illusions. (Daniel A. Seeger)

Nightly Meditation

During my nightly meditation, in addition to feeling the “Love, tolerance and compassion” I wrote of two days ago, I broadcast that feeling to the space around me.  When I broadcast that feeling I sense its power more strongly and immerse myself in the sensation, a healing experience.  When I broadcast the feeling I also direct it at myself.  I ask God to join with me and guide me in the whole process.

Meditation

When I meditate each night I very quickly arrive at the “I am” or “Super Conscious” part of myself which is closest to the presence I know as God.  When I am there I can feel God and  communicate with Him/Her/It, a gift I treasure and would not like to live without.  I frequently reflect on the craziness and chaos of myself and other humans around me and the facts that we are killing each other and destroying this planet.  The feeling which comes from God is a mixture of Love, tolerance and compassion similar to but stronger than a parent might feel toward a growing adolescent child.  I then realize that within a loving eternal view — we are doing fine and the earth will survive

My Anger

In one of my recovery meetings I experience flashes of anger at an individual who, like me, has evident brain damage and also, like me, speaks very slowly and has speech problems. It is quite obvious to me that he represents me so I meditated in order to discover the source of anger. I encountered a well of sadness within myself because I spend a great deal of time, thought and energy each day in order to remain functional and alive. The flashes of anger stem from the fact that he does not and does not have to. Having realized that I now feel a great deal of compassion for him since no one would wish to be that way and being that way is difficult.

Anger

Generally if I am angry even a little bit or for good reason and I try to intervene in some way, I am likely to do or say something "stupid or ugly". I’m better off being quiet and letting my anger pass until I feel understanding and loving. In my recovery meeting today several people said that their anger was a useful motivator causing them to speak up or take action, when needed, an approach which makes sense for some people. Not for me. If I am angry I am better off using meditation or contemplation to discover what nerve inside me is being inflamed and letting it pass.

Holistic Healing

Today I am fed up with being disabled, meaning I am angry and somewhat depressed about it. Normally I simply consider my disability to be an unwelcome partner in my life. I accept it but do not like it and on those days it is just kind of a nuisance. I can maintain that more positive attitude when I focus on gratitude for the many gifts in my life and the lessons that my disability has taught or helped me with, like patience. It is also important for me to admit and feel openly those days that I am fed up, otherwise I hold those feelings inside and they build.

Suffering

The topic for today’s book study was the role of suffering for spiritual awakening, a pithy, controversial and complex subject. I have certainly had periods of extreme pain and suffering which always resulted in greater or more complete surrender to the power I now call God. In my case, I was stubborn so the pain and nowhere else to turn was necessary. I do not believe that pain and suffering is always necessary and I watch others who seem to be offered the option of surrender without suffering. The choice is theirs to make