by admin | Mar 6, 2020 | Recognizing Growth
It may seem minor, but I had what I consider a breakthrough this week. Monday afternoon, I had a report returned to me with edits from my boss. Three places she wrote “grammar” as a comment pointing to a sentence that had no grammatical error. I had not given her a report that had any grammatical mistakes in it. I am a much more accomplished grammarian than my boss. I took offense that she was calling my work substandard and wondered how to go about sending the drafts back with a “no grammatical error here” comment. I left work for the day.
The next morning, I looked at the report again and decided that I would not make waves. I did not try to correct her errors, but simply rewrote the sentences that she pointed to and sent it back for re-review. The decision brought me immediate relief.
When I don’t struggle, I don’t have conflict. My goal is to remain employed in an adversarial work environment. It doesn’t matter what my boss thinks of me if I can stay confident in my skills and bide my time. I’m getting a lot of practice letting go, and I think I see some progress.
by admin | Jan 20, 2020 | Recognizing Growth
Some days I feel like I am running in place in my spiritual growth. I don’t seem to get anywhere. The same obstacles, grievances and self-centered thoughts seem to keep me bogged down working on the same problem again and again and again. I do have deeply entrenched patterns of thinking that I’ve developed over a lot of years, but I feel like I’m working hard to change them every day.
I begin my day praying that I may maintain conscious contact with God in the present moment. There I have none of the negativity and resentment massaging. They don’t exist in the present. They exist in the past and in plans for retaliation for the future. Several times during the day I have an alarm vibrating on my wrist intended to get me to pause, take stock of what I am doing and thinking and pray to choose the fork that requires surrender of the ego thoughts that require I get even. I pray for help in cultivating love for the individuals who have wronged me, remembering that they are innocent in God’s eyes and loved as God’s children same as me.
After two diligent weeks or more of this practice, I notice that the prayers are feeling more natural and my willingness to forgive stronger. Perhaps I’ve made steps in healing and spiritual growth after all.
by admin | Dec 26, 2019 | Recognizing Growth
Changing my habitual feelings is a big job. First, I have to acknowledge thoughts that I wish I didn’t have and look at the genesis in an attempt to stave off a repeat. Then I have to actively think of the situation or individuals as included in God’s perfect creation with me. I give this focused attention nearly every day, but I still need lots of practice. Although it doesn’t seem to get much better, I know it is improving, however slowly, because I’m honestly engaged in working on it. Energy and time spent on my spiritual growth is never wasted.
One day, instead of experiencing the usual disappointment and frustration of noticing my perpetual, negative thoughts have once again surfaced, I’ll realize that they are less frequent than they once were and not as aggressively dominant. I imagine they already are incrementally improved. They can’t help but be as I am diligent in my practice. It isn’t a pipe dream. It always happens as it is best for my growth.
by admin | Jun 19, 2019 | Recognizing Growth
While I am working on accepting that it is a normal human reaction to have apprehension and resentment towards a boss who routinely degrades me, I am also working towards accepting that I need to feel kindheartedness towards her to genuinely reflect a positive attitude. My entrenched response is to push aside unpleasant feelings of hurt, grief, and shame, so it is a tall order to welcome into my body the sensations that these emotions carry and invite their pain into my mind. At the same time, I’m challenged to develop empathy for the boss who dislikes me and has persecuted me.
I can do it with the help of St. Francis’ prayer, which reminds me that my ego permeates my mind with selfish grasping and aversion, neither of which makes for peace, joy, and love. In an anxious state or when I feel the absence of peace, joy, or love, I often use the following portion of his prayer as a mantra. Repeating it to myself restores calm and brings truth to my perspective.
“Let me not so much seek to be consoled, as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”
by supportadmin_418 | Mar 11, 2019 | Recognizing Growth
If I think back about the things I worried about last year, last month or whenever in the past, I realize that things always work out. Then I can have faith and trust that everything will work out even if I just do not see how. Why is it so difficult to trust that all will be well when I know from experience that what I am so upset about today, I won’t even remember after a time?
Did I mention fear and faith? Man, fear is such a huge thing in my life right now. All I can do is have faith and not be fearful…have faith and do not fear the future…I have faith and I am not afraid. That’s what I keep telling myself. Some days I believe it, some days not so much. I have to say, I stay longer in the comfort of faith that all is well and all will be well than I used to. I need to celebrate progress, not beat on myself for slipping back into old patterns.
by supportadmin_418 | Mar 6, 2019 | Recognizing Growth
I work to notice when I am talking negatively to myself. It is more insidious than I think. I practice recognizing it from tension and anxiety and then turning softer and gentler in self-criticism. I think that it is improving and then I have my subconscious mind show up in a dream in that time between initially waking up in the early, early morning and waking up to start my day an hour or so later. Those dreams are usually ones I can remember because of the time of sleep cycle and also because of the time of sleep cycle, they are very vivid. They show me the heaviness and thinking that lurks beyond the joy I try to cultivate in my waking hours. When I have an opportunity to consciously practice noticing and controlling the nature of the thoughts I’m entertaining, I tend to admonish myself for the ugliness of dissatisfied thoughts running around in my head. That’s how insidious it is. I realize, in my lucid moments, that I cannot fix it without surrendering control and letting Divine Me work within the Universe to replace fear with love and truth. I am making progress, slow but sure.
