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These are some of favourite articles regarding spirituality and how it can affect our lives if we can learn to embrace it.

Taken from-Rebecca Ryan Resources presents A magazine of People and Possibilities, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Everyday Spirituality -Discovering Real Moments With Yourself

by Barbara De Angelis

Barbara De Angelis is one of America's foremost experts on relationships and personal growth. Her New York Times bestselling books include How To Make Love All The Time, Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, Are You The One For Me, Real Moments, and most recently, Real Moments for Lovers.

Her award winning television infomercial Making Love Work airs in hundreds of cities each day and is the most successful relationship program of its kind.

In our search for self-knowledge and spiritual truth, many of us are, I believe, looking in the wrong direction. We have separated the spiritual from everyday living, and thus separated ourselves from experiencing everyday spirituality. The spiritual has become associated with Sunday church services, or the Sabbath, or yoga and meditation, or a trip to India, or a tour of a famous European cathedral.

We think praying is more spiritual than riding a bicycle, reading religious literature more holy than making love. We are living secularized lives and yet wondering why life often feels so meaningless and devoid of purpose. The search for real moments and everyday spirituality must begin with a return to and embracing of the human.

Everyday spirituality is not an escape from your usual life in search of some special, exalted experience, but a surrender into the fullness of every experience.

It is not a path that leads you away from the human to the spiritual, from the Earth to Heaven, but rather one that leads you back into the ordinary and everyday, and invites you to find the spiritual within it. It begins and ends where you already are, right here, right now. There's nothing else to look for, nothing else to acquire. You already have everything you need.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Ram Dass

EMBRACING YOUR HUMANNESS

When I became a seeker, I began what I called a "spiritual path".

In my longing to know God, I turned away from worldly things. I practiced

meditation for hours, sometimes days at a time. I spent whole years in retreat and in silence, living in the mountains, seeing only other meditators. I viewed my physical body as an obstacle to enlightenment, my human desires as impediments to achieving a pure, spiritual state.

And I looked at my life on Earth as some sort of prison sentence I was serving that kept me from going back "home" to my Divine origins.

I had many beautiful and uplifting experiences during those years, but I could only be happy when I was doing my "spiritual practice." After searching and searching for answers to my dilemma, I finally had the important realization that all of human life was a spiritual practice--I was supposed to be practicing being human!! And thus far, I hadn't been doing a very good job. In fact, I'd attempted to avoid being human entirely.

No wonder I was so miserable: I was in the water, but trying not to get wet!

Since that time, I have worked on embracing my humanness, not running from it, and looking within it for the very same spiritual experiences I used to seek elsewhere. I know now that my presence here on Earth is not a sentence - it is a gift; that being human is not a loss of spirit, but an opportunity for spirit to enjoy itself on the physical path.

I am here because I am loved.

LEARNING TO RECOGNIZE EVERYDAY HOLINESS

In order to experience everyday spirituality, we need to remember that we are spiritual beings spending some time in a human body. We are not separate from spirit. This would be impossible. We are simply spirit disguised in human form. In this way, we are connected to all life. The flower is spirit disguised as a flower. The tomato is spirit disguised as a tomato. The rock is spirit disguised as a rock. We all share the same source. We are all made of the same invisible particles of matter.

When we separate the spiritual from the everyday, we limit our opportunities for real moments. We miss ordinary miracles and wonders because we are looking for something flashy, something that screams,

"I am special, I am holy."

We are so distracted by our search for the extraordinary that we don't even recognize the sacred when we encounter it.

Real moments of holiness happen when we experience moments of wholeness with ourself, our environment or another person. As you go through your day, look for holy moments and everyday miracles --the hug your child gives you for no reason at all; a flock of birds flying past a cloud; the beautiful array of fruits and vegetables the earth has produced that are waiting for you at the supermarket; the song playing on the radio that gives you just the message you've been needing to hear; the lone yellow dandelion bursting through the crack in the concrete sidewalk.

When you stop and pay attention to holy moments and everyday miracles you will start living with awe and wonder, and participating in a Divine love affair with God.

Yesterday, approximately 200,000 people throughout the world died.

Their time on earth is over.

They did not wake up this morning.

They did not feel the sun on their face, or feel the wind on their skin.

They did not hear laughter, or singing, or birds calling to each other.

They could not eat an apple or drink a glass of water.

They were not held or kissed or smiled at.

They cannot see the stars twinkling in the sky tonight.

They cannot gaze at the moon.

You are alive. You are here now. You have another day. That is a blessing. Enjoy the ordinary everyday miracles that make up your life....

They will be your most sacred real moments.

"If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?"

Journey From Self-Criticism

A Discussion With Thom Rutledge, Author of "The Self-Forgiveness Handbook"

Throughout much of his life, Thom Rutledge fought the battle of being excessively hard on himself.

Although he was helping people in his psychotherapy practice, he was also in therapy himself. A recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Thom had to do a lot of work before he found relief and recovery from self-criticism.

His book, "The Self-Forgiveness Handbook," is a compilation of what worked for him and many of his clients. Thom recently shared his personal strategy for developing the ability to forgive oneself.

What are the basic components of self-forgiveness?

There are seven basic components in the strategy towards self-forgiveness.

1. The first step is to "acknowledge the committee."

There is more than one of you "upstairs." Each of us has a "committee" inside our head, but most of us feel we don't have permission to talk about our multiple thoughts and opinions. One of the first things I want people to do is give themselves permission to acknowledge that they are multiple in nature, not singular.

There is a myth of singularity in our culture that dictates that we're supposed to feel and think only one way. But the more important something is, the more likely it is that you'll have some discussion within yourself.

We all talk to ourselves; we just need to get better at it.

2. That leads directly into the second component for self-forgiveness -- identifying the "Should Monster." The Should Monster can take on different styles but invariably is the one in charge of your committee if you have a problem with self-criticism or perfectionism.

It's the character inside your head who tells you that no matter what you do, it's never enough; there's no way you're going to win.

That second component of self-forgiveness relates to identifying who's in charge.

3. The third component is to understand the "should source," which is generally an exploration of how you grew up. How were you criticized as a child? It's more than that, however, because sometimes it has to do not only with how your parents treated you but how they treated themselves.

Your parents may not have overtly criticized you, but they may have been excessively self-critical. You absorb their way of being in the world.

You learn how to treat yourself by how your parents treated themselves. Everybody's "should source" is different, but the most important thing is to recognize it's not about blame.

It's about understanding how you got to be the way you are.

I call it "of course!" mentality. "Of course!" mentality means you realize what you're dealing with right now (such as self-criticism), and you get to the point where you tell yourself, "Of course I'm that way!

That makes sense based on my experience growing up."

4. With the fourth component of self-forgiveness, "discovering the decision maker," you need to find an aspect of your personality that is going to take the power from the Should Monster. I think of it as the hero being in charge. If your consciousness were a movie, whom would you root for?

If you're feeling really bad about yourself, you don't have anyone to root for, but if you can identify even an underdog-type of decision maker, you have someone who wants to be in charge. And you're going to work on building that part of yourself, just as you would work on building a muscle.

The good decision-maker makes the distinction between being in control and being in charge. You cannot be in control of much in your life, but you can be in charge. You can take responsibility for making the decisions that come your way on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day basis. It's not about what cards you are dealt; it's how you play those cards. If you talk to people who are very successful you'll find they all have an element of being centered in the present and feeling in charge of their lives, even when things are out of control.

5. The fifth component is "building the power," and this is about finding your motivation; learning some techniques to build the power and building the credibility of your decision maker. It's like going to the gym and doing strength training. Take responsibility to build up that power.

6. The sixth component is "learn to succeed." If you have a history of self-condemnation and self-criticism, you don't necessarily acknowledge your success when you have it because you feel you don't deserve it -- and sometimes you don't even recognize it. You need to be able to recognize when you are succeeding, and that it comes in small steps. I always refer to the movie with Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray called "What About Bob?"

Bill Murray's character always said, "Baby steps! Baby steps!" and that's what it really comes down to -- acknowledging the small successes, which is what gets you to the bigger success.

7. The seventh component is "practice! practice! practice!" -- and this is the big "letting go" of perfection. It means you will not continue to beat yourself up to accomplish something that is not humanly possible -- perfection.

A phase I often use to close my workshops is "Practice makes practice!"

It's not about becoming a self-forgiven person; it's about establishing a practice of self-compassion. We're way too outcome-oriented.

Success is being in the practice of self-forgiveness.

How is accountability an important component in self-forgiveness?

Self-forgiveness doesn't mean you let yourself off the hook. It means you aren't stuck in criticizing yourself or stuck in your past mistakes.

It's about letting yourself move on. Accountability gives credibility to self-forgiveness and self-compassion. For example, if you are honest with me about my work and I know that, then I'll trust your opinion when you tell me I did a good job. You should be the kind of person with yourself with that kind of credibility -- trust yourself to be responsible and accountable.

It helps you say it's OK for you to forgive yourself and move on.

How can compulsive behaviors and obsessive thinking block the path to self-forgiveness?

Compulsive behaviors can either distract you from getting on with your life

and what you need to fulfill yourself, or they can medicate you.

When you "medicate," you end up avoiding your feelings -- and sometimes they are difficult feelings of dissatisfaction and hurt in your life.

Without being able to feel your pain you don't have the proper motivation to move forward. Many of us have to deal with those behaviors before we can get to self-forgiveness.

For instance, I am a recovering alcoholic and there was a significant amount of this work for me that wasn't going to get done until I addressed the fact that I was an alcoholic. Once I acknowledged that and got away from alcohol and stayed away, then I could get in touch with what I really needed to face.

I learned how to go toward those feelings in order to heal.

How can dissatisfaction be used to ignite the process?

You may think of dissatisfaction as a bad thing because too often in our culture we think if we're feeling dissatisfied with something, we're not being grateful. Gratitude is an important thing but the truth is, dissatisfaction and gratitude absolutely co-exist. I can be grateful for a lot of things and still be dissatisfied.

The key is using dissatisfaction to create motivation.

Dissatisfaction is like gasoline. If you just inhale it, it will destroy your brain cells. But if you put it in your tank it will become fuel and take you where you want to go. To use dissatisfaction you need to ask yourself, "What am I going to do about it?"

There's no such thing as living a life of self-forgiveness without being a very responsible person. I'm not trying to create delusions that people are wonderful, perfect people. We're all human and flawed, but it's just a matter of how we're going to play the cards we're dealt. This path is not going to let you off the hook. You have to be responsible in order to do this work.

We have much to be grateful for in our lives.

Never give up- there is too much more for us to accomplish if we just take the time for looking inside at our inner journey messages through self-improvement, by using Reiki, meditation, hypnosis or any of the oher alternative techniques that are available to help us. I have informationunder the Reiki link if you are interested in learning more about Universal Life Energy that is available to everyone.

My meaning of Namaste is from my Reiki Masters beliefs and is as follows-

I honour the place in you in which the entire universe dwells.

I honour the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light, and of peace.

When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me,

This is one of my inspirational poems that always give me hope, enjoy

After a while you learn the subtle difference,

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning,

And company doesn't mean security,

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts,

And presents aren't promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats,

With your head up and your eyes open,

With the grace of a woman not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all yours roads on today,

Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight,

After a while you learn,

That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers,

And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really do have worth.

And you learn and learn...

With every goodbye you learn.


	Chronic Disease Information \| home Index of My Site \| The Gideon Network \| About Jeanie \| Ziby Com \| Find Out The Facts \| Mind, Body, Spirit \| Higher Awareness \| Empowerism \| Spirituality \| Meditation \| Hypnosis \| Journalling \| Self-Improvement \| Inspirational \| Relaxation \| Current Ads \| ads by jeanie site \| Real Estate --For Sale by Owner \| Reiki Information \| Reference Information \| Promote-O-Matic \| FAQ \| Rexall International \| Contact Us \| Chronic Diseases and Conditions Chronic Disease Information These are some of favourite articles regarding spirituality and how it can affect our lives if we can learn to embrace it. Taken from-Rebecca Ryan Resources presents A magazine of People and Possibilities, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Everyday Spirituality -Discovering Real Moments With Yourself by Barbara De Angelis Barbara De Angelis is one of America's foremost experts on relationships and personal growth. Her New York Times bestselling books include How To Make Love All The Time, Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, Are You The One For Me, Real Moments, and most recently, Real Moments for Lovers. Her award winning television infomercial Making Love Work airs in hundreds of cities each day and is the most successful relationship program of its kind. In our search for self-knowledge and spiritual truth, many of us are, I believe, looking in the wrong direction. We have separated the spiritual from everyday living, and thus separated ourselves from experiencing everyday spirituality. The spiritual has become associated with Sunday church services, or the Sabbath, or yoga and meditation, or a trip to India, or a tour of a famous European cathedral. We think praying is more spiritual than riding a bicycle, reading religious literature more holy than making love. We are living secularized lives and yet wondering why life often feels so meaningless and devoid of purpose. The search for real moments and everyday spirituality must begin with a return to and embracing of the human. Everyday spirituality is not an escape from your usual life in search of some special, exalted experience, but a surrender into the fullness of every experience. It is not a path that leads you away from the human to the spiritual, from the Earth to Heaven, but rather one that leads you back into the ordinary and everyday, and invites you to find the spiritual within it. It begins and ends where you already are, right here, right now. There's nothing else to look for, nothing else to acquire. You already have everything you need. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Ram Dass EMBRACING YOUR HUMANNESS When I became a seeker, I began what I called a "spiritual path". In my longing to know God, I turned away from worldly things. I practiced meditation for hours, sometimes days at a time. I spent whole years in retreat and in silence, living in the mountains, seeing only other meditators. I viewed my physical body as an obstacle to enlightenment, my human desires as impediments to achieving a pure, spiritual state. And I looked at my life on Earth as some sort of prison sentence I was serving that kept me from going back "home" to my Divine origins. I had many beautiful and uplifting experiences during those years, but I could only be happy when I was doing my "spiritual practice." After searching and searching for answers to my dilemma, I finally had the important realization that all of human life was a spiritual practice--I was supposed to be practicing being human!! And thus far, I hadn't been doing a very good job. In fact, I'd attempted to avoid being human entirely. No wonder I was so miserable: I was in the water, but trying not to get wet! Since that time, I have worked on embracing my humanness, not running from it, and looking within it for the very same spiritual experiences I used to seek elsewhere. I know now that my presence here on Earth is not a sentence - it is a gift; that being human is not a loss of spirit, but an opportunity for spirit to enjoy itself on the physical path. I am here because I am loved. LEARNING TO RECOGNIZE EVERYDAY HOLINESS In order to experience everyday spirituality, we need to remember that we are spiritual beings spending some time in a human body. We are not separate from spirit. This would be impossible. We are simply spirit disguised in human form. In this way, we are connected to all life. The flower is spirit disguised as a flower. The tomato is spirit disguised as a tomato. The rock is spirit disguised as a rock. We all share the same source. We are all made of the same invisible particles of matter. We are all One. When we separate the spiritual from the everyday, we limit our opportunities for real moments. We miss ordinary miracles and wonders because we are looking for something flashy, something that screams, "I am special, I am holy." We are so distracted by our search for the extraordinary that we don't even recognize the sacred when we encounter it. Real moments of holiness happen when we experience moments of wholeness with ourself, our environment or another person. As you go through your day, look for holy moments and everyday miracles --the hug your child gives you for no reason at all; a flock of birds flying past a cloud; the beautiful array of fruits and vegetables the earth has produced that are waiting for you at the supermarket; the song playing on the radio that gives you just the message you've been needing to hear; the lone yellow dandelion bursting through the crack in the concrete sidewalk. When you stop and pay attention to holy moments and everyday miracles you will start living with awe and wonder, and participating in a Divine love affair with God. Yesterday, approximately 200,000 people throughout the world died. Their time on earth is over. They did not wake up this morning. They did not feel the sun on their face, or feel the wind on their skin. They did not hear laughter, or singing, or birds calling to each other. They could not eat an apple or drink a glass of water. They were not held or kissed or smiled at. They cannot see the stars twinkling in the sky tonight. They cannot gaze at the moon. You are alive. You are here now. You have another day. That is a blessing. Enjoy the ordinary everyday miracles that make up your life.... They will be your most sacred real moments. Quote "If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?" Journey From Self-Criticism A Discussion With Thom Rutledge, Author of "The Self-Forgiveness Handbook" Throughout much of his life, Thom Rutledge fought the battle of being excessively hard on himself. Although he was helping people in his psychotherapy practice, he was also in therapy himself. A recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Thom had to do a lot of work before he found relief and recovery from self-criticism. His book, "The Self-Forgiveness Handbook," is a compilation of what worked for him and many of his clients. Thom recently shared his personal strategy for developing the ability to forgive oneself. What are the basic components of self-forgiveness? There are seven basic components in the strategy towards self-forgiveness. 1. The first step is to "acknowledge the committee." There is more than one of you "upstairs." Each of us has a "committee" inside our head, but most of us feel we don't have permission to talk about our multiple thoughts and opinions. One of the first things I want people to do is give themselves permission to acknowledge that they are multiple in nature, not singular. There is a myth of singularity in our culture that dictates that we're supposed to feel and think only one way. But the more important something is, the more likely it is that you'll have some discussion within yourself. We all talk to ourselves; we just need to get better at it. 2. That leads directly into the second component for self-forgiveness -- identifying the "Should Monster." The Should Monster can take on different styles but invariably is the one in charge of your committee if you have a problem with self-criticism or perfectionism. It's the character inside your head who tells you that no matter what you do, it's never enough; there's no way you're going to win. That second component of self-forgiveness relates to identifying who's in charge. 3. The third component is to understand the "should source," which is generally an exploration of how you grew up. How were you criticized as a child? It's more than that, however, because sometimes it has to do not only with how your parents treated you but how they treated themselves. Your parents may not have overtly criticized you, but they may have been excessively self-critical. You absorb their way of being in the world. You learn how to treat yourself by how your parents treated themselves. Everybody's "should source" is different, but the most important thing is to recognize it's not about blame. It's about understanding how you got to be the way you are. I call it "of course!" mentality. "Of course!" mentality means you realize what you're dealing with right now (such as self-criticism), and you get to the point where you tell yourself, "Of course I'm that way! That makes sense based on my experience growing up." 4. With the fourth component of self-forgiveness, "discovering the decision maker," you need to find an aspect of your personality that is going to take the power from the Should Monster. I think of it as the hero being in charge. If your consciousness were a movie, whom would you root for? If you're feeling really bad about yourself, you don't have anyone to root for, but if you can identify even an underdog-type of decision maker, you have someone who wants to be in charge. And you're going to work on building that part of yourself, just as you would work on building a muscle. The good decision-maker makes the distinction between being in control and being in charge. You cannot be in control of much in your life, but you can be in charge. You can take responsibility for making the decisions that come your way on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day basis. It's not about what cards you are dealt; it's how you play those cards. If you talk to people who are very successful you'll find they all have an element of being centered in the present and feeling in charge of their lives, even when things are out of control. 5. The fifth component is "building the power," and this is about finding your motivation; learning some techniques to build the power and building the credibility of your decision maker. It's like going to the gym and doing strength training. Take responsibility to build up that power. 6. The sixth component is "learn to succeed." If you have a history of self-condemnation and self-criticism, you don't necessarily acknowledge your success when you have it because you feel you don't deserve it -- and sometimes you don't even recognize it. You need to be able to recognize when you are succeeding, and that it comes in small steps. I always refer to the movie with Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray called "What About Bob?" Bill Murray's character always said, "Baby steps! Baby steps!" and that's what it really comes down to -- acknowledging the small successes, which is what gets you to the bigger success. 7. The seventh component is "practice! practice! practice!" -- and this is the big "letting go" of perfection. It means you will not continue to beat yourself up to accomplish something that is not humanly possible -- perfection. A phase I often use to close my workshops is "Practice makes practice!" It's not about becoming a self-forgiven person; it's about establishing a practice of self-compassion. We're way too outcome-oriented. Success is being in the practice of self-forgiveness. How is accountability an important component in self-forgiveness? Self-forgiveness doesn't mean you let yourself off the hook. It means you aren't stuck in criticizing yourself or stuck in your past mistakes. It's about letting yourself move on. Accountability gives credibility to self-forgiveness and self-compassion. For example, if you are honest with me about my work and I know that, then I'll trust your opinion when you tell me I did a good job. You should be the kind of person with yourself with that kind of credibility -- trust yourself to be responsible and accountable. It helps you say it's OK for you to forgive yourself and move on. How can compulsive behaviors and obsessive thinking block the path to self-forgiveness? Compulsive behaviors can either distract you from getting on with your life and what you need to fulfill yourself, or they can medicate you. When you "medicate," you end up avoiding your feelings -- and sometimes they are difficult feelings of dissatisfaction and hurt in your life. Without being able to feel your pain you don't have the proper motivation to move forward. Many of us have to deal with those behaviors before we can get to self-forgiveness. For instance, I am a recovering alcoholic and there was a significant amount of this work for me that wasn't going to get done until I addressed the fact that I was an alcoholic. Once I acknowledged that and got away from alcohol and stayed away, then I could get in touch with what I really needed to face. I learned how to go toward those feelings in order to heal. How can dissatisfaction be used to ignite the process? You may think of dissatisfaction as a bad thing because too often in our culture we think if we're feeling dissatisfied with something, we're not being grateful. Gratitude is an important thing but the truth is, dissatisfaction and gratitude absolutely co-exist. I can be grateful for a lot of things and still be dissatisfied. The key is using dissatisfaction to create motivation. Dissatisfaction is like gasoline. If you just inhale it, it will destroy your brain cells. But if you put it in your tank it will become fuel and take you where you want to go. To use dissatisfaction you need to ask yourself, "What am I going to do about it?" There's no such thing as living a life of self-forgiveness without being a very responsible person. I'm not trying to create delusions that people are wonderful, perfect people. We're all human and flawed, but it's just a matter of how we're going to play the cards we're dealt. This path is not going to let you off the hook. You have to be responsible in order to do this work. We have much to be grateful for in our lives. Never give up- there is too much more for us to accomplish if we just take the time for looking inside at our inner journey messages through self-improvement, by using Reiki, meditation, hypnosis or any of the oher alternative techniques that are available to help us. I have informationunder the Reiki link if you are interested in learning more about Universal Life Energy that is available to everyone. Namaste, Jeanie My meaning of Namaste is from my Reiki Masters beliefs and is as follows- NAMASTE I honour the place in you in which the entire universe dwells. I honour the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light, and of peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, WE ARE ONE. This is one of my inspirational poems that always give me hope, enjoy Comes The Dawn After a while you learn the subtle difference, Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning, And company doesn't mean security, And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts, And presents aren't promises, And you begin to accept your defeats, With your head up and your eyes open, With the grace of a woman not the grief of a child, And you learn to build all yours roads on today, Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans, And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight, After a while you learn, That even sunshine burns if you get too much. So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers, And you learn that you really can endure... That you really do have worth. And you learn and learn... With every goodbye you learn.