I’m amazed at how some of my relatives seem to believe that
the mind and body are totally separate. Do they think the brain is just
floating around in there, disconnected from the body? I am a strong believer that our thoughts affect our health. For me this is an obvious conclusion,
given that I have developed a stress-related condition. After all, stress is
just a collection of thoughts that result in physiological symptoms.
One of the things I’m ensuring is that I weed out negative
thoughts and negative people in my life. I need to make sure that I have a
fertile environment for reducing my stress. From what I've read there seem to
be an awful lot of people who don’t like themselves and their thoughts are
flooded with self-criticism and negativity. That really doesn't serve anyone. I
certainly don’t hate myself at all and I believe life is full of opportunities and
joy if you’re willing to do the work to notice and capture it.
Some of that work may be forgiving yourself, or forgiving
someone else. The letting go is often a very powerful exercise in releasing the
burdens carried by most of us. This is
starting to sound quite esoteric but I don’t believe there’s anything strange
about doing some housekeeping in our emotions and thoughts. Clean up and get
rid of the clutter. Nip those negative thoughts in the bud before they get
rooted.
I love this post from Tiny Buddha about changing your life
trajectory: http://tinybuddha.com/blog/changing-trajectory-live-life-purpose/
. For some of my relatives, the fact that I read something with ‘Buddha’ in it,
and even referenced it, is tantamount to heresy. “Oh no, she’s abandoning her
faith!” Doing yoga is surely to send some of them into cardiac arrest. Yet
these are the things that help us connect body and mind.
I’m pretty sure that God wants us to be happy and to live
full lives, following our passion. But we do actually have to take some action,
other than prayer, to make our lives fulfilling. I’m sure many of you have heard
that joke about God sending various forms of rescue to the idiot who is not
listening. How many of us are making assumptions about how our prayers will be
answered, so much so that we don’t notice that we actually received what we
needed, not what we asked for? As far as I’m concerned, prayer and meditation
are not mutually exclusive. Let’s be open to trying new things, from which we
can learn and perhaps receive something we weren't expecting.
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