Enter Peacefully Into the Flow and Evolution of Your Life

Our world and our individual lives are in the process of evolving. It is not a question of rejecting the past but of letting the past flow into the present and letting this process guide us as to how to live in the future. – Jean Vanier, “Becoming Human”

Written by Charles W. Sidoti, BCC

Pope John Paul ll, speaking to church leaders about the mission of the church, once said, “We are not here to guard a museum, but rather to tend and nurture a flourishing garden.” These words, spoken by one of the most popular and influential popes in modern history, eloquently describe the importance of having a healthy, positive attitude toward the constant change that is part of our lives. Referring to the church, his words challenge those who want their church, temple, synagogue, or mosque to remain as they have always known it to be, believing that it should not change in any way.

Life moves. It is not the nature of life to be static. Think about it, has your life ever stopped changing? New things, people, and happenings are constantly coming in and out of our lives. We are personally affected by the continual movement and evolution taking place in the world. Sometimes these changes take place slowly, sometimes in the twinkling of an eye. Have you ever had the experience of looking at an old photo of yourself and trying to remember what you were thinking at that time? It is impossible, because you simply are not there anymore. You have changed and moved on from that place and time. And you will continue to change and to move on from where you are now. It is a good idea to come to terms with this most basic, inescapable fact about life: It moves. Whether you realize it or not, this is a very positive truth. Understanding it is crucial because so much of our struggle comes from our resistance to life’s continuous movement into the future.

Sometimes our response to this constant change is to cling inordinately to people or things, those we already know, those who are already a part of our life, the status quo. Fearing the unknown, which is inherent in all change, we try to hold on to what is familiar as we stand before and uncertain future. Doing this, however, comes with a price. In the words of Jean Vanier:

If we try to prevent, or ignore, the movement of life, we run the risk of falling into the inevitable depression that must accompany an impossible goal. Life evolves; change is constant. When we try to prevent the forward movement of life, we may succeed for a while but inevitably, there is an explosion; the groundswell of life’s constant movement, constant change is too great to resist.

In order to live peacefully in an ever-changing world, three things are essential: a healthy detachment, gratitude, and hope. Detachment can be seen as a decrease in our need to hold on to anyone or anything. It is a way of thinking and being that gives us the freedom to flow with life. Detachment gives us the freedom to be open to new possibilities and newness of life after something in our life changes or dies, even when we don’t understand how that newness will come to be.

Without gratitude, detachment is nothing more than indifference. To live with detachment does not mean that we simply forget and move on from the past as though everything old is bad. As stated in the opening quotation, it is a matter of allowing the past, with its enduring life values and principles – openness, love, wholeness, unity, peace, the human potential for healing and redemption, and most important, the necessity of forgiveness- to flow into the present and become integrated into what is happening today.

Likewise, we do not forget the loving people in our lives when they are separated from us by death, changes in circumstances, or when they can no longer serve our needs. Detachment does not mean that we cast aside material things without a thought when we no longer have use for them. Healthy detachment means that we look upon the people and material things of this life with gratitude. We realize that they are gifts received from a loving God, gifts that will ultimately return to God.

It is only possible to practice authentic detachment when we are in a real relationship with the Living God; and such a relationship is always grounded in hope. It is then that we are able to see and appreciate the people and the good things of this life for what they are. When we really believe that it is God who is leading us, it becomes possible to let go of people and things when the time comes to move on in our life’s journey. In this way, hope helps us to truly love and appreciate these people and things, without being possessed by them. As the words of Ecclesiastes teach us, “For everything there is a time.” The nineteenth-century Christian thinker Soren Kierkegaard, in discussing how hope forms the basis for Judaism and Christianity, described hope as “divinely sanctioned optimism, sheer promise for this life.”

Life will continue to move forward, taking us along with it, whether we like it or not. The point is that we need not be carried along kicking and screaming, fretting over and trying to control every change that comes our way. Through a healthy sense of detachment, with gratitude and hope in our hearts, we can choose to enter peacefully into the flow and evolution of life. Strive to accept life’s constant change, trusting in God’s promise and presence to guide you through all of the changes that you experience.

This article is an excerpt from: Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time, by Charles W. Sidoti with Rabbi Akiva Feinstein.

 See it on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Living-Gods-Speed-Healing-ime/dp/158595831X

Check out my blog!https://sidoticharles.wordpress.com/

A tremendous insight on grief: Share it with someone you care about…

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. Don’t scratch for answers that cannot be given now. The point is to try to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.  – Rainer Maria Rilke

By Rabbi Akiva Feinstein and Charles W. Sidoti

When life turns difficult, a common way of trying to get around the pain is to try to think our way out of the situation. The problem with this is that it assumes the process of effectively dealing with emotional upset and spiritual challenges is linear, sort of like a Betty Crocker recipe, in that one step necessarily follows another in order to get the desired outcome.

The truth is that the process of inner healing is inherently non-linear and is often contradictory. When things do get better and our inner struggle eases for awhile, we often don’t know how or why we feel better; we just do. Have you ever gone to sleep with a problem on your mind and awakened not troubled by it anymore? As the saying goes, “What a difference a day makes!” Nothing about your problem changed; you just went to sleep.

Our mood and therefore our perspective change constantly, and that has much to do with the way we process the problems that come our way. Sometimes we wake up feeling great and ready to face the day’s challenges. On these days, problems that come up don’t bother us too much. We process them easily because we approach them from a positive perspective and keep moving along. The very next day (or even hour), we may feel totally different. The world seems to be spinning in the wrong direction and it seems that everyone is working against us. In addition to affecting the way we handle the daily problems that arise, our moods and our perspective affect the way we handle the big problems in our lives. This is especially true regarding the way we process grief, the pain involved in losing someone or something very important to us.

The Jewish tradition, which is full of wisdom gained by facing pain and suffering head-on, says a great deal about mourning, and how to understand the life path and grief process of the mourner. Mourners often suffer deep anguish and trauma. Helping them to recover, according to Jewish tradition, requires the implementation of customs and practices that can seem contradictory.

Yet these work well in helping mourners deal with their own contradictory feelings. For example, individual mourners can feel the need both to be alone and to be surrounded by people and love; the need for silence, and the need to be able to tell their story; the need to give and the need to receive. They can experience waves of denial and waves of acceptance.

It’s contradictory, yes, but it all can be a very real and necessary part of the healing process and the nature of mourning. It is very wise counsel to advise a mourner thus: “Let these contradictory feelings be, feel what you feel. Live with the contradiction and don’t fight it, for it will eventually evolve into something else.”

It is very difficult to put this advice into practice, for in our rational, modern society, we find these contradictory truths difficult to accept. The fact is that the suggestion to learn to live with contradiction is not just some remnant of a confused, out-dated psychological model. Rather, it’s a keen insight into the human condition itself and is a testimony to the power and efficiency of contradiction.

For example, human relationships are uniquely able to stay intact despite competing feelings of pure love and absolute frustration. There are rules to human emotion and pain, but the hope and the salvation lie in the fact that for much of it, there are no rules. It is what it is. You can be sad and happy at the same time. You can harbor a lot of pain, but still move on. You can cherish a memory of a lost dream and still pursue a brand new one.

Quantum physics, which helps us to at least begin to understand the universe, is based upon one of the most poorly understood contradictions known, yet it works and does its job just fine. Quantum physics teaches that it can be scientifically proved that light travels in waves (up and down) but it can also be proved that light moves as physical particles. A person with knowledge of quantum physics understands these principles to be mutually exclusive, yet the whole science of quantum physics is based on both of them being true.

If we cannot answer life’s questions, we should not go into despair. Many a Jewish grandfather would tell his children, “From an unanswered question, you don’t die.” Living with the questions makes life more exciting. A life lived looking for something that has not been found yet is a whole lot more interesting. Consciously deciding to live the questions is a way of responding with trust to life and its inherent challenges.

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This article is an excerpt from “Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time” written by Charles W. Sidoti with Rabbi Akiva Feinstein

Visit my Blog: Finding God in Daily Life https://sidoticharles.wordpress.com/

Take a Religious Self-Assessment

By Charles W. Sidoti, BCC

Consider:  How do my religious practices or beliefs affect the way I treat other people? How do  other people feel when they are around me?  Do my religious practices help me to become a more hospitable – loving, kind and accepting person?  Does my religion help me to have a generative attitude toward others, one that affirms and nurtures other people’s growth as a human being?   Or does my religion provide me with a reason to feel better than others?

The goal any healthy religion is to help us to re-discover our connectedness to all of creation and recognize the spark of the divine in each person.  It is to help us to realize that there are invisible ties that bind us together.  In fact, the more enlightened we are, the more humble we will become.  We will consider ourselves better than no one.  We will notice a growing sense of gratitude and appreciation for the gracious free gift of life.

Visit my blog, “Finding God in Daily Lilfe” – https://sidoticharles.wordpress.com/

 

 

Charles W. Sidoti, BCC: Live at 2017 NACC Annual Conference

Listen to my live workshop presentation delivered at the 2017 Annual Conference of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains annual conference in Santa Anna Pueblo New Mexico.

The question and answer period of my workshop is very lively and even gets a little “dicey.” I welcome your feedback and comments after you listen to it!

Finding God in Daily Life

God isn’t removed from us, sitting on some throne up in heaven somewhere. The “universal creative life enerty” is found within the created world, within life’s natural cycles.

This article is an excerpt from, Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time,written by Charles W. Sidoti.

From womb to tomb, our lives are fundamentally affected by the cycles and rhythm of life. The beat of our hearts and our breathing, without which nothing else would matter, are examples of our inseparable connection to life’s rhythm. The cycles at work in the world are easy to see. For instance, every day the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, marking the start and end of each new day, a cycle to be repeated far into the future. Like the sun’s movements, our cycle of rising in the morning and going to sleep each night demonstrates one of many similar cycles present in the working of the human body. The four seasons, the ocean tides, the cycle of life, death and rebirth are taking place everyplace you look.

Reflecting on these cycles is worthwhile for anyone who would like to live more peacefully. Being aware of life’s rhythm makes it possible for you to enter into the dance of life in a more deliberate way. It enables you to have a more patient attitude toward life, with yourself, and with others. When you learn to appreciate the natural rhythm and cycles of life, the sense of urgency that can have such a tyrannical effect on your mind begins to slowly diminish. Awareness of life’s rhythmic cycles and conscious movement with them, promotes peace, harmony, and healing. Our essential oneness connects us with the entire universe, and with God.

An interesting way of understanding how cycles can affect our lives is found in the ancient Chinese theory of how things work called Yin-Yang. Many have found this theory to have invaluable meaning and true wisdom. The symbol that represents this way of understanding is:

The outer circle of the symbol represents “everything,” while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies present in our lives, called “yin” (black) and “yang” (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other. “Yin” represents the movement of energy in our lives that is dark, passive, downward, cold, contracting, and weak. “Yang” represents energy that is bright, active, upward, hot, expanding, and strong.

The shapes of the yin and yang sections of the symbol give you a sense of the continuous movement of these two energies, yin to yang and yang to yin. This representation demonstrates the understanding of cycles in our lives. In the yin-yang theory, the cycle demonstrates the relationship of positive and negative energy flowing within our lives. Our moods, our outlook on life and how life happens, seem to relate to this yin-yang movement from the dark to the light.

Rhythm heals. Why does music make us feel better? It is because rhythm is so basic to the human body and mind. Getting lost in our desires and worries has a way of fragmenting our psyche, causing us to be out of out of balance and out of harmony with the rest of life. We become lost in our minds and imaginations. Music, whether it is classical music, popular music, or the rhythm of an African or Indian drumbeat, can help bring us back in sync. It has a way of de-fragmenting our minds that inwardly heals us.

The purpose of reflecting on, or paying more attention to, the hidden cycles and rhythms in life is that you might gradually learn to struggle less against their movement and begin to move more gracefully with them. It is important to realize that life’s cycles and rhythms are the way God chooses to work in the world as well as in our personal lives. Remember, God isn’t removed from you, sitting up on some throne in heaven somewhere. The “universal creative life energy” is found within the created world and its natural cycles. God comes to you and me through the very essence of our lives. This is true from the farthest reaches of the universe to your own heartbeat and your next breath.

Connecting Point: Becoming familiar with life’s natural rhythmic cycles helps us to relax and move more easily with life, to resisting less and growing more.

Prayer: God of spring, summer, fall, and winter, help me to see your presence in the many seasons and cycles of my life. In the lapping of the waves on the shore, in the wonderful rhythm of my favorite song, and in the beat of my own heart, help me to recognize your creative love in the rhythm of my life. Amen.

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Contents: http://pastoralplanning.com/23rdBookParts/LivingGodsSpeed_TOC.pdf

Read the Introduction: http://pastoralplanning.com/23rdBookParts/LivingGodsSpeed_Intro.

Under All We Think, Lives All We Believe

“Under all we think, lives all we believe” (Antonio Machado, Spanish poet)

By Charles w. sidoti, Visit Blog: https://sidoticharles.wordpress.com/

Antonio Machado’s words direct our attention to the very center of our being. It is interesting to observe, however, that in turning our eyes inward to examine our own inner landscape (our inscape) we are not able to see much beyond the thoughts that happen to be occupying our mind at that particular moment.  It is like looking into a deep lake. We are able to see a few feet down, but what lies beyond is mysterious and dark. The words of Antonio Machado point to what lies beneath the first few feet that we can see to the dark mysterious part of our inner world below the surface and beyond our vision.  The medical world, particularly the field of psychiatry, has theories about the significance of the deep, unknown realm of our being. Religious writers, including the writers of Sacred Scripture, address it as well. I will touch briefly on both the secular and the religious theories, exploring how they are similar, and more importantly, how we might benefit by becoming more in tune with the deeper, unknown parts of our being.

Antonio Machado’s statement connects what we think, our conscious thought, with what we believe, something that is much deeper. Our beliefs reach up, influencing us from a place within, a place beyond our comprehension. A belief is different than an opinion. Unlike our personal opinions, beliefs have more to do with our unconscious mind than with our conscious thought, and they are, for the most part, inaccessible and unknown to us.

One definition of the unconscious is, “The part of mental life that does not ordinarily enter the individual’s awareness yet may influence behavior and perception.” The theories of world-renowned psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung affirm the influence that our unconscious mind may have upon our conscious thought and behavior. The idea that your own beliefs are mostly unknown to you may sound absurd, yet that is precisely what the very potent words of Machado’s statement imply.

Psychiatry teaches that one way of thinking about the unconscious mind is as a place within us that is mostly inaccessible to our conscious awareness, yet is nonetheless real. It is, at least in part, like an inner storehouse of all our experiences, good, bad, or otherwise. From within, hidden from our awareness, it shapes our core beliefs, influencing how we think and how we interact with the world. The content of our unconscious mind emerges in our dreams and intuitions.  Acknowledging the existence of the unconscious mind helps us to truly appreciate that every human being is a deep and mysterious creation, and further, a creation that is still actively evolving and growing.

Sacred Scripture often refers to the human heart, the inner life, much in the same way that psychiatry refers to the unconscious mind. Both describe something quite real, yet beneath the surface, hidden from the view of others and for the most part hidden from our own awareness. The words of Jeremiah are appropriate: “More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart” (Jeremiah 17: 9-10). Perhaps the clinical term, unconscious mind, and scriptural references to the human heart are like two sides of the same coin in that they both refer to a place within each of us that holds the truth about who we really are, influencing what we believe, how we think, and spurring us on to continual growth.

The words of Machado”s quotation, “…lives all we believe” are significant. To say that something lives within us is a strong statement. It suggests that the source of our lives comes from within our very being and that it is intimately connected to the beliefs which make us who we are.

Believing that the source of life at the center of our being is the living God can help establish a life-changing connection between our conscious awareness and the indwelling presence of God.  The words of a beautiful St. Louis Jesuit song called, Your Eyes, written many years ago suggest that we look deeply into our own eyes and listen for the affirming voice of God that speaks to us from deep within. Trusting in God’s presence within us tunes us in to the divine communication emanating from the very center of our being.

If our unconscious mind or heart is something like a living, evolving storehouse of all our experiences and all the collective moments of our lives, it is comforting to realize that God is the author and master of all those moments. God was present in all the moments of our lives when they occurred. God is present in our unconscious where they now reside. God chooses to work from within us, permeating even the deepest part of our being.

“Under all we think lives all we believe.” Our unconscious mind may always remain mostly unknown and mysterious to us, and that is as God intended it to be.  We can benefit by choosing to trust that God is present at the very center of our being. As we sense God’s subtle way of communicating to us from within, we learn to reach out in love to others, discovering that God is indeed present in and fills all of creation. “Oh, that today you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts…” (Psalm 95: 8).

The Contemplative Connection:  The next time you are in front of a mirror take a moment to look deeply into your own eyes. Consider the awesome mystery of your being, and the indwelling presence of the Living God in light of the verse from Sacred Scripture, “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

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This article is an excerpt of my traditionally published book: “Simple Contemplative spirituality.” Click below to view and / or purchase on the publishers website: http://amordeus.com/giftShopProductDetails.aspx?itemID=520 

The Intro: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introduction-simple-contemplative-spirituality-charles-w-sidoti-bcc?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish

The Table of Contents: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-contemplative-spirituality-charles-w-sidoti-bcc?published=u