Monday, March 10, 2008

Connecting With Conscience - Activating That Still And Quiet Voice Inside

Your compass is your conscience.

Your sense of right and wrong. Your ability to do choices, and your ability to dwell with your picks without making alibis for yourself, or assigning blame.

Nevil Shute, one of the high-grade novelists of the twentieth century, wrote a book called Round the Bend. In the book, his supporter tells a fabrication about Moses and Mohammed. This fabrication have got haunted me since I first read it at the age of twelve.

The fabrication gets with Moses and his journeying up the mountain, where he is asked by Supreme Being to have his people pray 50 modern times a day. This petition is quickly seen as unrealistic, what with the aureate calf and all, so Supreme Being relents and simply inquires that his people maintain the Sabbath holy. A few thousand old age later, Muhammad have got his ain version of that conversation on the mountain, where he is asked by Supreme Being to have his people pray 50 clip a day. As he go backs from his journey, Muhammad rans into Moses, and after discussing God's request, Muhammad is convinced by Moses to go back to Supreme Being and inquire for an easier burden. Again, Supreme Being relents, and this clip necessitates that his people only pray five clip a day. At this point in the fable, the narrator turns to his audience and asks, "But what if we did pray 50 modern times a day? What if every clip we completed a task, we simply prayed, 'Have Iodine done well?' If we did," reasons the storyteller, "We could easily carry through God's petition for 50 supplications each day."

Well, I tried it. I was twelve old age old; I'd just finished reading the story; my female parent asked me to make clean the kitchen; and I decided to seek it. Iodine washed one dish, then I prayed, "Have I done well?" An astonishing thing happened. I felt an answer. I clearly knew that I had done well. After lavation each dish, I prayed again. Each clip I prayed, I knew instantly whether I had done well, or whether I hadn't. And by the clip I finished cleaning that kitchen, it gleamed.

We all have got the gift of conscience; we just bury to listen to it...

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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Finding Spirituality Within

People in recovery who are successfully working the Twelve Steps cognize that Alcoholics Anonymous is a Negro spiritual program. At first some people in hunt of soberness in recovery are turned off when they are told spiritualty is the very foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps. Spiritualty is often equated with religion, but spiritualty is more than than that and travels deeper; it is the foundation for a spiritual tradition. Religion, according to Webster, is "the recognition of a Godhead Being and a systematic manifestation in worship, rite and conduct."

Many people make not have got a systematic worship or rite and yet are still spiritual. When a individual is not affiliated to a specific religion, he or she can mistakenly reason that he or she is not spiritual. Nurturing a Negro spiritual life can take a individual to show his or her connexion with Supreme Being in and through a spiritual tradition. Yet, spiritualty transcends a religion. Every human beingness is Negro spiritual by virtuousness of the fact that he or she have breath or life.

As we progressively fight through life's positive and negative minutes we can either cultivate the fine art of life or we can merely survive.

Spirituality is frequently considered by many people as some thing to be acquired. For many old age I have got got worked at Hanley Center, Occident Palm Beach, Florida, as a Negro Negro spiritual counselor, and often people inquire me, "What must make I make to acquire spiritualty or can you assist me go more than spiritual?" In lawsuits where work force and women have been through respective Twelve Measure treatment programs, when asked what is missing in their life the reply is consistently the same, spirituality. The good news is spiritualty is not something to get like a ownership but rather person we already are. Who we are and how we dwell in human relationship to others is what ultimately shows our spirituality, our lifestyle, and is the foundation for our existence.

Given that spiritualty is about a manner of life, the difference for each individual goes the quality of his or her human relationships with others. To be mindfully religious proposes that a individual is on a journeying of becoming his or her truest ego through recurring forms of awareness, find and breakthrough.

Waking up to life with a sense of intent as grounded in Higher Power is the primary end for the Negro spiritual journey.

Spiritual-becoming leads us into deeper heedfulness of the quality of our life on the lives of others. Progressive find of who we really are do it possible for us to perforate the surface of things and interruption through to the interconnection of all life things with God.

The disease of dependence cannot be healed but like malignant neoplastic disease can be held in remission. Treatment, working the Twelve Steps and Alcoholics Anonymous authorise an nut or alcoholic to work on maximizing their Negro spiritual life while keeping the disease in check. Too often people with the disease as well as others hunt outside themselves for something greater and deeper to fulfill their hunger. Yet what they seek for is inside, intangible and transcendent. Our life-journey is not ultimately outside, but a journeying inward to a find of Supreme Being within us. In fact, what we seek for what we already have, namely the God-given gift of life; our missionary post is to aftermath up, foster, and observe this amazing gift. Life's missionary post is not about getting attending or things from others but being attentive to and in touching with self, others and Higher Power.

For old age I have got urged people longing for Negro spiritual connexion to simply encompass their life and detect the extraordinary in the ordinary. To appreciate life as sacred is to see the "Wow" and awe of being alive. Respective old age ago I challenged a talented musician, a patient, to compose a song that recounted his journeying from maltreatment to Negro spiritual awakening. His epiphany to Mystery-Presence and his life-change are reflected in these words of Waking Up.

"I cognize I've been asleep for years, a incubus that would never end.

Too afraid to confront my fears, it looks that I was my lone friend.

I had to acknowledge I was powerless, knew I didn't desire to die.

My bosom cried out for happiness, a miracle was sent in Love's reply.

I'm waking up - living in a new light, waking up no more than beingness uptight".

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