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MEDITATION AND PRAYER IN THE MORNING
Recently, Marianne Williamson and I were speaking at the same conference. In her talk, she emphasized the importance of spiritual practices, especially as a way to start our day. She said
"Every serious spiritual, philosophical and religious path that I know of stresses the importance of the morning, because that's when our minds are most open to receive new impressions . Most people get up in the morning and pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV or radio. They get a full report of all the disasters happening, and then they add caffeine! They saunter out into the world and are mystified that they're depressed by noon.
So what's the alternative? When you wake up in the morning, don't you take a bath or shower? Of course you do -- because you don't want to go out into the day with yesterday's dirt on your body. But if you don't meditate and pray every morning, you're carrying yesterday's stress into the day."
While meditating and praying feels good, you don't just meditate or pray for the experience you have while you're doing it. Spiritual practice helps you experience a sense of oneness, of connectedness to all other things and beings, which connects you to the state of unconditional love.
Daily meditation has become universally accepted as a powerful way to release stress and anxiety and to improve your mental, emotional, and physical health. When you start the day connected to love, you can handle everything else in the day more effectively.
Try this at the beginning of every day for the next week or two (and notice how you feel through the day):
1. When you wake up, spend 2 minutes feeling gratitude for the day. Think of the upcoming day and what you're grateful for.
2. After you've gotten up and showered, sit for 10 - 20 minutes in a quiet area and meditate or pray. If you have a meditation or prayer practice, great! But you don't have to have a formal practice. You can simply put your attention on your heart area and breathe in love and ease. You don't need to try to get rid of thoughts or effort to achieve anything. Just sitting in silence automatically allows your mind to settle down, which helps your body release stress and helps your heart connect to love.
Marci Shimoff Ezine Tuesday, April 26, 2011
DAILY PRACTICE
It would be very beneficial to take 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening -- more if you can find it -- to be quiet with your Holy Self. Your consciousness can be dramatically expanded over a relatively short period of time with true dedication to such a gentle discipline.
Are you meditating regularly? Is it the first thing you cut out of your day if things start off, or begin to get, hectic? It should, of course, be the last thing.
Neale Donald Walsch
ACTIVELY MEDITATE
"...Actively meditate. This is the most effective way to shape your world as you wish . The laws of the Universe dictate that you create what you focus on. You do not manifest that which merely flies through your mind, but rather what you concentrate on.
Meditation is the practice of disciplined thought. Holding an intense idea over a long period of time brings about its counterpart in the physical world. Quantum physics verifies that your experiences are simply thought in motion. That is why contemplation is so powerful: It literally molds and generates everything that you encounter.
The secret is to meditate actively rather than passively. Let us begin by defining the latter method, which is the most common model in your world, and suggests a rigid and narrow discipline that calls for sitting still and emptying the mind of all thought for an extended period of time. This technique is part of an age of consciousness that is ending. Although it is certainly one option, it is by no means the only approach, and it is not the most productive one in the present era of creation.
There is a more powerful form called active meditation that can assist you even further. In this practice, you hold your unwavering attention on something specific that you wish to experience . Seriously focusing on a single thought will bring it into manifestation every time..."
Sonia Choquette
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