This week: Thoughts & Prayers Edited by: Jeff More Newsletters By This Editor
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"Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief."
-- C.S. Lewis
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of your regular editors for the official Spiritual Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 350 newsletters across the site during that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or the handy feedback field at the bottom of this newsletter!
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Thoughts & Prayers
Do you regularly spend time praying, meditating, or just being alone with your own thoughts? For me, I often find it difficult in the chaos of life to set aside dedicate time for it, although I do often find myself briefly praying, thinking, etc. throughout the course of the day, as things come up. I would love to be more deliberate about making time for it; I greatly admire people who have a rigid discipline like waking up every morning and dedicating the first few moments of the day to prayer/meditation, or who set aside time and make it an intentional focus at some other point throughout the day.
Depending on your particular spiritual orientation, time alone with your thoughts may come in the form of prayer (deliberate communication with an object or being of worship), meditation (mindfulness of mental focus for the purposes of clarity, calmness, etc.), or just plain old thinking things through. Whatever your particular expression of time alone to think deeply may look like, taking that time is a critical component of mental health.
It's easy to distract yourself from deep thinking these days. Many of us are often "on the go" all the time, and we have a tendency to fill the empty spaces in our days with distractions. How many of us check our phones even during minor lulls like using the bathroom, or standing in line to pay for something at a store? How many of us try to combine activities, like commuting or working out while also listening to music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc.? How many of us book up every free moment in our calendar with activities, obligations, etc.?
Deep thinking and its cousin critical thinking have become rarefied activities. We're quick to distract ourselves, quick to look for fast answers, and quick to look for easy solutions.
A few years ago, I started therapy. At the time it was a preventative thing; I had just been laid off from a job and, even though it wasn't a remotely stressful situation (it was a job I wasn't sad to leave, and there was a decent severance package that meant money wouldn't be a worry for several months), I had gone through a really bad bout of depression the last time I had been laid off about eight years prior, and I wanted to make sure I was safeguarding against any potential relapse should the unemployment last a while. It turned out my unemployment lasted less than a month, but I appreciated the experience of being able to talk through my thoughts with someone who was there to help me figure things out. I've continued to see my therapist about once a month for general check-ins and mental health maintenance ever since and it's been a very worthwhile experience.
The thing about therapy that really helps is that it's time spent focusing on myself. On what I'm going through, what I'm thinking, and what I'm feeling. There's real value in that kind of introspection, and in setting aside time to sit with yourself and your thoughts and work through whatever it is that's on your mind. Prayer, meditation, and thinking can accomplish the same thing... and hey, it's a lot cheaper than $100 an hour or whatever a therapist charges in your area.
All kidding aside, I can't recommend highly enough that you take time with your thoughts in whatever form that takes. Whether you pray to a higher power for help and guidance, or focus your mental energies on achieving clarity, or just take the time to think through a problem without other distractions around, it really is remarkably satisfying to have that experience of just spending time with yourself and your thought extrapolator of choice. We all have any number of obligations and distractions to keep us occupied... but time alone with your own thoughts is very rarely wasted time.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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Feedback from "Spiritual Newsletter (April 20, 2022)" about admitting you might not have all the answers:
Zeke writes: Of course the solution lies in prayer to be forgiven. -Zeke
Mia - craving colour writes: Hi Jeff,
With in the context of a particular religious belief, questions and quandaries are ‘normal’. Digger deeper into scriptures, there are passages that point to living beyond the borders of the ‘laws’ that bind one to a particular way of viewing a ‘righteous’ way of life.
In exploring religions, it became apparent to me that at heart they share one fundamental belief. In the Christian context it would translate as “God is Love”.
As a deeply spiritual woman once said to me, “It’s actually quite simple.” At the time, I did not comprehend the simplicity in the complexity, until a reflection on “God is Love” exploded into an awareness that love is life-giving, as per Corinthians 13. If our only focus was allowing the ‘love of God’ to dwell within us and flow freely through us, this would be an entirely different world. Our focus would shift.
Rather than an emphasis on who’s right or wrong, the emphasis would be on living from the heart - deeply connected to our spiritual/divine roots - respecting and caring for one another and ensuring each other’s well being. (We would also return to an awareness that ‘dominion’ over the earth does not mean exploitation, but ensuring it’s sustainability.)
Simplistic in concept, yet ‘loving one another’ in our egotistical humanness has to be one of the greatest challenges we face in our earthly existence.
Mia
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