It's 1976, and my mom and dad are sitting
quietly with their eyes closed, hands resting upward — thumb and index finger
touching — while my younger siblings crawl on their backs and shoulders. My
older two brothers and I sit nearby, holding our own meditation poses, bored,
rolling our eyes and counting the minutes until this ritual will end.
At least once a week or whenever things got
stressful, my parents would pull all five of their children — ranging in age
from ten to one — into our library for a family meditation. As much as I
complained, a part of me yearned for this spiritual practice.
Spiritual
renewal is essential to our emotional well-being. It helps us nurture our
essence, feel centered, build inner strength, live in integrity, and trust life.
It allows us to experience a connection to a higher power, feel a sense of
purpose, and experience meaning in our lives.
There are
many different ways we explore and nurture our spiritual lives. For some this
includes spending time in nature, yoga, prayer and meditation, or musical or
artistic expression. Some of the daily practices that provide me spiritual
nourishment include:
Creating
Ritual
We all crave
sacredness and ritual in our everyday lives — not just around birthdays and
weddings. Rituals can be both carefully planned events and casual but regular
remembrances such as voicing gratitude before a meal or creating dedicated space
in your day for contemplation.
When we mark
important transitions or milestones in our lives — whether it’s your daughter’s
first period or your son starting kindergarten — we connect to the sacredness of everyday life. We
remember that life is mysterious and we’re more than our to-do lists!
Cultivating
Stillness
Stillness,
whether experienced through prayer, meditation, or reflection, is our time to
be alone and connect to our inner wisdom or our higher power — what I call our
internal GPS system. It’s essential for all of us to carve out time for quiet reflection
each and every day.
One of the
biggest gifts I’ve received from a daily meditation practice is the ability to
live more comfortably with what is--whether that’s my husband’s recent layoff
or a car accident. Life is like the weather in Texas — constantly changing.
Meditation has helped anchor me, so that despite this impermanence and turmoil,
I’ve learned how to be still and find my center in the face of it all.
Practising
Service to Others
Mother Teresa
says, “The fruit of love is service.”
We are all
interconnected. The more we reach out and are present to one another’s pain and
suffering, the stronger we become and the easier it is to embrace the esoteric
idea that we’re all one. I believe huge shifts in consciousness can occur when we
reach out and help one another navigate this sometimes scary, often isolating
and perplexing, but beautiful world.
Sometime that might look like serving soup at your local homeless
shelter and other times, it’s helping out your neighbor who just lost her
husband.
Living
in the Present
Many great
spiritual teachers believe the answer to everything is to just “be here now,” and
that our suffering and emotional distress would end if we simply stopped
resisting the present moment.
One weekend
as I sat on the couch with a full-body cold: a splitting headache, body chills
and a nonstop runny nose, I thought about this principle. And, as I watched the
things I was missing fly out the window — my friend’s birthday party, my son’s
piano recital — I connected to my breath and felt myself arrive in the present
moment. I sensed my resistance begin to dissipate and a feeling of peace slowly
settled over me. I temporarily suspended my desire for things to be different
and I embraced that on the couch, with a cold, was exactly where I was supposed
to be.
Choosing
Happiness
Three of my
immediate family members died unexpectedly between my twenty-sixth and
thirty-fourth birthdays. For years I let those
losses dictate how much and how often, I could experience joy. Anytime I
started to feel light, free, or happy, the old feeling of “waiting for the
other shoe to drop” would creep in.
Can you only
be happy if things are going your way and all the stars are aligned in your
favor?
I believe
we’re born with the innate capacity to experience emotional well-being and joy;
it’s our birthright to feel good. Happiness comes from within; we’re wired for
it. We just have to remember to choose this moment to moment.
It’s easy to
forget who we really are. To lose sight of what really matters. To fall asleep
and not remember how interconnected we all are and that we’re fully human and,
at the same time, divine.
A regular
spiritual practice — whether that’s daily prayer or meditation, being in a
spiritual community, or singing— serves to anchor us. It grounds us and helps
us navigate the challenges we face from just being human. It helps us stay
awake.
So
ultimately, we can begin to let go, trust the rhythm and flow of life and relax
into the beauty of our true nature.
Life balance coach/speaker Renée Peterson Trudeau is the
author of the new book Nurturing
the Soul of Your Family: 20 Ways to Reconnect and Find Peace in Everyday Life
Thousands of women in ten countries are
participating in Personal Renewal Groups based on her first book, the
award-winning The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal. Visit her
online at www.ReneeTrudeau.com
Thousands of women in ten countries are
participating in Personal Renewal Groups based on her first book, the
award-winning The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal. Visit her
online at www.ReneeTrudeau.com
Based on
the new book Nurturing the Soul of Your Family ©2013 Renée
Peterson Trudeau. Published with permission of New
World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com
Cash spent today: Nothing.
Cash spent today: Nothing.
Random
Awesome thing (from 1000 Awesome Things):
#815 When you nudge the person snoring next to
you and it makes them stop
Today I
am grateful for: my
WEA history course
