The value of living within a spiritual community

Perhaps there is a common clue of how one can be happy. Living in a spiritual community could be one of the clues. Within a spiritual community happiness arises and is inherent in the caring compassionate connections that are made: With such connections formed the frightened “I” who struggles is replaced by a collective “we” who go about facing the frightening and difficult aspects of life together, looking after one other.

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Sound and Stillness In Our Practice

We could say that we are immersed in a world of sounds. If you pay attention, almost every minute of your waking life is filled with some form of sound: most prominently the ambient sounds in our natural environment, including music and radio, conversations and messages, and the cacophony of thoughts in your own head. Considering all of this, we have to ask ourselves: How frequently do you get genuine moments of silence in our everyday life? If we reflect, it seems that we have the inclination for filling moments of silence or stillness with noise and distraction and all other activities in between. What is the reason for this? Why do we have this inclination towards filling up moments of silence with some type of activity? Because it seems that silence makes us feel uneasy, and since silence makes us feel uncomfortable, we will automatically try to fill it up. Why? In moments of silence or stillness, we return to ourselves, which is not always an easy thing to do to ...

Discovering the patterns of your mind

When you meditate, sitting quietly, trying to focus, on your meditation anchor you start to notice what takes you away from your point of focus. Generally, this is a thought of some kind or another. Meditation practice is not intended to stop you from thinking but its purpose is to help you discover what and how you are thinking .

Accepting Feelings Fully

Feelings of worthlessness, humiliation, and self-criticism that you may have had at various times in your life and that may even resurface during meditation sessions are manifestations of deep wounds. Children who are neglected or abused by their parents may unintentionally develop the idea that they are terrible or worthless. This can happen as a direct result of being told that, but it can also happen for less obvious reasons. Children are completely reliant on their parents for existence, so the thought that there is something really wrong with their caretakers and that they are injuring them is too frightening for them. As a result, children place responsibility on themselves—someone must be to blame, and it can't be their parents; therefore, it must be them. When self-blame initially surfaced, it was an understandable and adaptive attempt to cope and keep sane. Understanding this and reminding yourself of it with compassion whenever such sentiments occur might help them gra...

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