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Our values and belief systems—called shraddha— often dictate our destiny. Your shraddha can be aligned with God, or shraddha can serve power, lust, fame, or money. You might find temporary happiness if your shraddha revolves around selfish desires, but inner peace will never be the result. If you seek peace in the world, start with your shraddha.
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Self care isn’t self-indulgence. It’s caring for your wounds by spending time in solitude, taking inventory of how your thoughts, words, and actions affect others. If self care in this sense is ignored, you can easily blame others and play the victim. Because some of those wounds are self-inflicted, and others might be wounds carried from long ago.
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We can easily lose track of our lives if we don’t periodically assess our priorities. We find ourselves stretched too thin, taking on too much while getting nothing really done. Remembering our priorities will call for us to drop the unnecessary so we can live a little more on purpose.
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We’re often led by our secular culture out of a desire to fit in and belong. But a life rooted in God is very countercultural. It rubs against the secular values of sex, power, and money. When we spend time in our inner room, we know that we must practice some self-restraint in our outer lives. We work on shedding those habits and attitudes that drive us further from God’s Light.
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Aches, tightness, or strain in your body tell you that something isn’t right. You might choose to ignore it, saying “no pain, no gain.” But your body will react when your life isn’t in proper alignment. Notice what happens when you encounter conflict. What does your body do when you make choices that might lead to pain? Pay attention to your body as a teacher. It will tell you the truth that your mind refuses to admit.
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Media moguls are rich, and many content creators seek a piece of that pie. They serve you with addictive content that keeps you in a state of craving and competition. This content keeps you stuck and needing more. For you to find inner peace, ask yourself if your media choices point towards the ego and competitiveness or towards service and cooperation.
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The 5 a.m. Club went viral on TikTok as people touted the benefits of waking up earlier to get things done. Triathletes would call this sleeping in! You can make the 5 a.m. about productivity, or you can use that sacred time in the morning to cultivate quietude. What you do the first few moments of the day frames the rest. Can you dedicate the first few moments of your day to cultivate the sacred within?
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If you’re drawn to silence and contemplation, experience a Quaker meeting. The stereotype of a Quaker is far beyond reality. You find simplicity, equality, and empowerment. You abandon the ego and listen to the Divine within you. You only speak when it can improve the silence. We all possess that Inner Teacher. It’s your choice to listen.
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Political polls, news media, social media, and politicians often shape the narrative about what we should consider to be the most important issue. When you step away from all of these, look around you. What is causing harm at this moment that might affect the future? How are you personally making it worse with your habits, behaviors, and thoughts? Rather than adopt a selfish perspective about what the government can do for you, we should adopt a communal perspective. A political poll doesn’t always look at nuances that a spiritual perspective often does.
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We’ve all had “that” relationship—one that broke us open completely. Your charred self might need years for rebirth and renewal. How much time that takes depends how much spiritual renovation is needed. During your spiritual remodeling, you don’t return to your old self but build a stronger, more resilient structure that can hold unconditional love while warding off unwanted visitors.
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People with good (and not-so-good) intentions can offer us advice that only reflect their truth or understanding. That teaching might be limited to their life path and not yours. To protect ourselves, we must return to the True teachings that transcend time and circumstance. These are Eternal Truths, not temporal or personal truths.
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Our need for perfection can often constrict our prayer lives. We tell ourselves that we must have this posture, this sequence without interruption in order for our prayers to “work.” In reality, when we have a perfect intention—aligning our will to God’s—then it’s perfect.
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Our emotions can often delude us into thinking that what we’re experiencing is eternal. Our emotions will fixate on a thought—good or bad—to the extent that we miss the uniqueness of each moment. Every moment something new is born. Every moment something dies or fades. We must learn to welcome what’s new and let go of what is fading.
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When you plug in a lamp into the electric socket, does the lamp shine brighter if the energy is “positive?” It’s just energy. How we channel our energy through our emotions and thoughts can make it seem positive or negative. Even if energy is “positive” or “negative,” are we spreading lovingkindness when a Reiki master tells us to exhale “negative energy”?
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Meditation techniques teach you how to train your mind, direct your thoughts, or simply observe your thoughts. Contemplation is about letting go of techniques and surrendering to God. We use the discipline of meditation to handle the chattering mind or craving senses so that our spirits can rest in contemplation.
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Alabama Senator Katie Britt caught a lot of heat during her State of the Union response, particularly with her story about the woman who suffered from sex trafficking. Yet there are so many people suffering at this moment, including ourselves. We pray, “Have mercy on us and on the whole world” to ask God for mercy not only for us, but also for those who have no one to pray for us.
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We can travel to exotic places to learn how to meditate, but what happens when we return? We sit in meditation and get disrupted by the many stirrings in our lives. We become reactive, demanding that the world caters to our demand for silence. Practicing meditation amidst the interruptions of our everyday lives cultivates non-reactivity. We learn how to be calm with the small disruptions so we can remain calm when our lives erupt in chaos.
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When you experience something new, your senses and attention are engaged. It’s like falling in love. A spiritual awakening or born again experience can feel like that. But then the honeymoon ends, and you yearn for that sensation. You can grow bored and search for other methods to give you that same feeling. Rather than search for something new, that boredom is a call for a deeper relationship with God beyond the senses.
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Everyone experiences things differently. You might have 10 people witness an event, yet each person extracts what they choose to see. We can easily miss new opportunities or paths when we only pay attention to the familiar or the grand. Something new might be waiting for you to notice it.
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Self-care practices are critical to help us heal the wounds the world inflicts upon us. But turning in towards ourselves—incurvatus in se—can leave us closed off, stuck, and isolated from the world. As we begin to heal, we open ourselves up so we can do our part in healing the world.
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