I’ve just been talking about spirituality and prayer on another page.
I can no longer sit for long enough to meditate. Over the years, I’ve tried to adapt some of my long dog walks into a certain degree of meditation.
I found the book 'The power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle invaluable in attempts to achieve detachment from anything other than living in the blissful moment of the Here and Now…
Unfortunately, it's not always that easy to put into practice, sometimes impossible... but isn't it odd that often meditation and prayer – something known to help us - is one of the last things we reach out to when we’re on a bad patch.
We run around like headless chickens… battling with our troubled lives. It can often feel like we are literally fighting for survival. With a mental state in tatters, our negativity automatically searches for further ‘put-me-downs’ by concentrating on the things we are unable to do, rather than the stuff we have achieved.
But perhaps if we try to meditate on a ‘higher spiritual self’… believing in a more meaningful purpose… focusing on the things we contribute to life… maybe eventually our positive thinking - or the power of intent - might free us from a very fearful future.
In my humble experience, people suffering depression have a common thread of feeling distraught over ‘worries for the future’. It’s as though we’ve become mistrusting of our precarious mental state and ourselves. So, it’s understandable that we fear a future where we appear to have little control.
If we practice living in the here and now, focusing only on our healing today… in this moment… this very second, then perhaps the future concerns will unravel themselves, in their own time. We all spend too much time fretting over things that will never happen.
If we are in a better place today, in the here and now… physically, emotionally, spiritually… call it whatever you like, then we are more equipped and definitely stronger to deal with the issues as they evolve today.
All this is easy to say but much harder to put into practice. But, maybe it’s good to remind ourselves of the tools we forget to use. I know I certainly do.
The sister book of ‘The power of now’ is ‘Practising the Power of Now’. My success usually falls short of the self discipline necessary to incorporate those practises into my “unmanageable existenceâ€. It feels like too much hard work, despite knowing it will help
If I refuse to think about the negativity of tomorrow and concentrate only on the positiveness of today, in the here and now… I’ve already began a reconnection with my spiritual self through a bit of ‘walking-meditation’ and prayer. It was refreshing, if only for a few fleeting moments. I also spent time visiting a couple of very elderly neighbours, which brought a temporary distraction from my own selfish problems. I take encouragement from their resilience to exist through a pre and post war life. Their 85-95yr old seniority seems to live in the moment and their company usually brings me back to the here and now.
