Category: spirituality

The Freedom of Discipline

Once this day is gone, once the sun has set, the day will be a memory. Let it be a good one.  By Madeline Johnson

Study and seek as I may, the only thing I know for certain is that I will never get this day back again. Once this day is gone, once the sun has set, the day will be a memory. Let it be a good one.

Am I doing my best in this moment right now. Am I paying attention to my life? Am I listening and learning? Are my actions reflecting my pure and bright mind?

You often hear people say you have to get out of your own way to improve. They’ll remind you to remove yourself from the problem. Or perhaps they will recommend you simply let it go. Surrender.

2.png

The battle continues when you struggle  to hold on to that which is no longer here – what is gone – what no longer serves you. Let it go. And victory is had when you give up the fight and move forward with faith into the future. This tug of war is the essence of our challenge and the secret to our lives.

Don’t kid yourself and don’t listen to others that tell you to simply meditate. It really is a struggle to release yourself from the ever-controlling, powerful ego. The part of you that wants to control everything.  It is frustrating to remove the old speak from your mind.  It’s hard to do, but it is possible. With enough discipline and self-encouragement, you can steady yourself on the right path with the right thinking.

This spiritual journey is not all incense, crystals and dream catchers.

The path is not for the faint of heart.

Strong discipline is required.  It begins freeing and disciplining your mind.

3.png

 

Featured Art

@psychedgallery on Instagram

Inner Thoughts & Outer Expressions

Our lives are just the result of the kind of thoughts we have. Thank you Emmet Fox. By Madeline Johnson

I am very, very inspired by the teachings of Emmet Fox.

“All day long the thoughts that occupy your mind, your Secret Place, as Jesus calls it, are moulding your destiny for good or evil; in fact, the truth is that the whole of our life’s experience is but the outer expression of inner thought. Now we can choose the sort of thoughts that we entertain. It will be a little difficult to break a bad habit of thought, but it can be done. We can choose how we shall think—in point of fact, we always do choose—and therefore our lives are just the result of the kind of thoughts we have”
― Emmet Fox, The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life

you-must-not-under-any-pretense-allow-your-mind-to-dwell-on-any-thought-that-is-not-positive-quote-1

“Emmet Fox was one of the world’s greatest metaphysical teachers. His works have contributed profoundly to the spiritual understanding of millions of people, including myself.” (Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love)

j.png

Featured Artist

Japanese graphic designer @t.f.gallery

God Thinking Through Me

Know for certain that everything is okay. It always is.  By Madeline Johnson

It’s never too late to honor your life, to treat your life like a great adventure. Send yourself off on a truth-seeking journey.

I asked God this morning to get specific about his plans for me. I told him, look, if I just understood what you wanted me to do, I’d be on it already, without hesitation.

Just give me a sign. Something I can understand.

And then I sat still for a while.  A few words came to me and I think it might have been God thinking through me.

Relax. Stay excited and enthused.

Don’t give up on life, no matter what.

Come out of hiding and do what you love.

Do not take anything for granted.

Teach, mentor, learn, share.

Relax some more.

Know for certain that everything is okay. It always is.

Stay assured, confident, faithful.

Be bright. Be light.

Be a torch in the dark.

Project your energy for kinder, gentler, lovelier purposes.

2.png

Featured Artwork on Instagram

 

 

The Willingness to See Things Differently

I believe in the type of prayer that becomes the beat of your heart, the thoughts in your mind and the essence of your soul. By Madeline Johnson

I am not a follower of the formal type of prayer found in churches, mosques and temples, unless the prayer be felt with the intention of pure trust, belief and faith. Not one word be left unfelt.

I prefer to believe in a living, breathing type of prayer that becomes a part of your essence – an embodying prayer – prayer that is weaved into your existence of being throughout every minute of the day.  Prayer that helps you see the miracle of each breath.

The type of prayer that becomes the beat of your heart, the thoughts in your mind and the essence of your soul and takes over your life with trust. Prayer that keep your spirit aloft.

The type of prayer that is baked in trust. Trust in God, the Universe and a higher intelligence.

Pray is a psychological opening to something new. It opens up our minds to something different. When you are praying, you are saying, “I am willing to see this differently”. Prayer opens up our inner wisdom. 

– Jordan Bach.

Anytime I feel the need to control someone or something in my life, anytime I feel like everything will be better after – I finish this project, only when I lose the last five pounds, during that much needed vacation, forgiving this person, etc. . .  I suffer. I suffer because I am trying to play God with my life. I suffer because I think that I am alone and not enough.  I think that my plans are better than God’s plans for me.

Go in God’s good time, with Good Orderly Direction.

Every day is another day to surrender to the greater good that God has in store for us.

let go.png

Our aim might be to spend all of our days in a form of grateful prayer that confirms that we will receive exactly what we need, not what we think we want.

2.png

Set your sights high, choose an adventurous path but take your hands off the map, God is a better navigator of your life.

3.png

Featured Artist

Hüseyin Şahin (born 1990) is a visual artist and art director from Turkey based in Istanbul.

Loving Without Limits

And if we could unclench our grip from the conditional agenda, we’d be able to appreciate true moments of love more fully. By Madeline Johnson

It takes effort to love without limits.
Love is an energy exchange between you and another, but it is not a transactional one.  It’s giving and receiving, but it is not built on conditions. When we are concerned about what we are getting out of a relationship and when we are attempting to control it with our own agenda, we are creating a transactional agreement.
Love is more like a gift.
The Gift by Mary Oliver

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

When the love you are seeking is based on conditions about how someone you love behaves than you are limiting the possibility of your love.
Become aware of the energy of your loving intentions. What are your true intentions for loving another? Where is your heart in all of this? Why are you so focused on an outcome?
Marc_Chagall_-_the_blue_circus_43978c41-6397-49d4-bfbf-de35f7f8b9ed
Let what you do be done with no agenda.  Do not manipulate love. Let go of the rules. They do not apply in the game of love.
When we look at people as a means to an end, as a way get something that we think we need, we are loving them for what they bring to our lives.
Give up your expectations and love everyone in your life for who they are and no more. You will be a lot less disappointed.
care.jpg
Love fails when we want our loved ones to say a certain thing, behave a certain way, demonstrate their affection in a very particular manner. It is easier and more rewarding to step back and simply appreciate the ways in which they’re already doing so.
And if we could unclench our grip from the conditional agenda, we’d be able to appreciate true moments of love more fully. To allow our relationships to unveil more organically.
Love without limits is to truly appreciate people for all their behavior to cherish the good and forgive the bad –  before rushing to assign them a particular role in our lives.
love-one-another-quotes-unique-jewish-love-quotes-that-will-make-you-smile-jewish-food-hero-photos-of-love-one-another-quotes.jpg
Featured Art

Chasing What You Already Are

What happens around you is out of your control. What happens within you is yours to own. By Madeline Johnson

Words from the masters of mystical experiences. From those that have sought after and achieved a true shift in consciousness. Thoughts from Eckhart Tolle, Sadhguru, Adyashanti, Mooji. . . .

“What you are chasing is what you are.”

“If you wish to find truth you must vanish.”

“The one who is searching is in his own way.“

I often wonder, what keeps us from moments of true awakening? Are we not all capable of daily moments of grace?

The idea of achieving a heart-felt revelation becomes even more distant, seems even more impossible, when one feels angry, threatened, let down, provoked.  When one holds a heart of embittered, annoyed and withdrawn emotion.

How then can we get closer to peace? Perhaps by loosening the tightness and remembering. . . .

What happens around you is out of your control.

What happens within you is yours to own.

1.png

So often, when we become angry, frustrated and disappointed with the things that happen in our lives, we begin to interpret those events and identify with the destructive self-talk inside of our heads.
We listen to the automatic, compulsive narration that acts as a running commentary over everything happening in our lives.  The script that we create to give these events more meaning. The stories we tell ourselves to help manipulate our way through them.
Significance

Many of our ideas and beliefs about ourselves and the world are so deeply ingrained that we are unaware that they are beliefs and take them, without question, for the absolute truth. 

-Rupert Spira
2
Adyashanti
Featured Artwork
Aykut Aydogdu was born in 1986, Ankara – Turkey. He started studying Fine Arts at high school and graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts – Graphic Design. He has various works on commercial illustrations, magazine covers, movie posters. His surreal figurative works are mainly concentrated on the dilemmas of the daily life.

Loving, Forgiving & Living

To forgive, to love and to hold sacred everything in our lives – this is the living prayer that keeps us connected. By Madeline Johnson

Every experience we have in life is a blessing. The love, the hate, the betrayal, the gain and the loss.  All of life is an opportunity to grow. Yes, even the most painful experiences of deep suffering – – are all opportunities for us to evolve.  For if we are not humanly evolving, we are spiritually dying.

rupi

When we process all of our experiences with love, forgiveness and blessings in our heart, we are in constant healing mode. When we are healing we become stronger and more spiritually connected and elevated in mind and being.

tumblr_p1ok2pL2lG1speho6o1_400

One of God’s most astonishing gifts is His ability to use time to heal and redeem; to make something beautiful later of what appears ugly now.

As Mary C. Neal explains in her book 7 Lessons from Heaven

It is that moment. . . .

When you come to understand that each event in your life, spread through time and space, initiated a cascading effect of other events from which something of beauty and worth, always emerged.  

So often we forget that it is not our time, but God’s time. When we give up control, let go of the need to heal right now and begin to bless our pain, we are at peace. To forgive, to love and to hold sacred everything in our lives – this is the living prayer that keeps us connected and the path of the Bodhisattva, a spiritual warrior.

2.png

To pray with forgiveness and gratitude all day long, as a full-bodied, breathing and feeling spiritual being. To embody our prayer. To pray by involving all of the senses. To stay in this state of being throughout our lives. This is healing. This is living.

mary-c-neal-quote-lbm3w6i

In the words of Gregg Braden. . . Each moment is a prayer. Life is a prayer.  We’re always sending a message to the mirror of creation, signaling healing or disease, peace or war, honoring or dishonoring our relationships with those we love. “Life” is the Mind of God sending back to us what we feel—what we’ve prayed.

1.png

Read more How Do You Pray? by Gregg Braden

Watch Everything is Spiritual by Rob Bell.

Author of The Diving Matrix bridging time, space, miracles and belief and The Spontaneous Healing of Belief.

7 Lessons from Heaven Mary C. Neal

Featured Artwork

Kim Simonsson of Fiskars, Finland

With life-size ceramic “Moss People” sculptures depicting innocent yet beguiling child figures, Kim Simonsson leads the viewer into an imaginative, fairytale-like world inspired by the forests of Finland. His gestures are indeed sublime. Simonsson is a superb sculptor who uses clay with great sensitivity for his subjects.

“The name Moss People refers to children’s innate camouflage,” explains Simonsson. “The moss green figures blend perfectly into their natural surroundings, just as a soft carpet of moss covers the ground, rocks and tree trunks and acts as a sort of protection. In the Moss People world, lost and disconnected children, evoking different characters, gather in a Shaman Party, choose leaders and end up creating false idols.”

 

 

Flowing Not Forcing

Slow down and let your breath anchor you into this moment, where you remain at peace and with the pace of this universe.  By Madeline Johnson

Today is the day I let go.  I let go and for damn good reason. I let go of attaching myself to what I think I need and want. This is true freedom.

I have no control over when my last breath will be, so if I cannot control something as essential as my breath, which keeps me alive, who is to say I can control anything else.

Letting-go-gives-us-freedom-and-freedom-is-the-only-condition-for-happiness.-If-in-our-heart-we-still-cling-to-anything-anger-anxiety-or-possessions-we-cannot-be-free.-–-Thich-Nhat-Hanh

The only thing between me and death is my breath. I don’t want to catch my breath, I want to slow it down and let it anchor me into this moment, where I remain at peace and with the pace of this universe.

2

 

Recommended Reading

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life – Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne Dyer

The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

The Tao Te Ching is a series of meditations on the mysterious nature of the Tao–the Way, the guiding light, the very source of all existence. According to Lao Tzu (a name meaning “the old master”), the Tao is found where we would least expect it–not in the strong but in the weak; not in speech but in silence; not in doing but in “not-doing.”

Poems by Cristen Rodgers 

“Once I made it through the darkest and most difficult parts of my personal adventure, I came to realize that this magic key wasn’t meant just for me – it could be a gift to others as well.  I could use my pen to throw the doors wide open and allow the truths that had so profoundly improved my life to find their way to others who are stepping upon the path that I walked myself.”

Featured Artist

@miles_art on Instagram

Miles Johnston  was born in the UK in 1993. He spent the first few years of his early childhood living in Brunei, Borneo, something that he is sure had a major effect on him. The totally different environment gave him the intuition early on that there is no true ‘normal’.

On Love, Respect and Our Dark Side

There is a wonderful part to each of us – as well as at least 200 pounds of psychic toxic waste burying that wonderful part. It is necessary for us to learn to draw nourishment into the core of all that – into what is wonderful – and slowly cultivate it and allow it to emerge.

dark-side

This will happen as we operate in an environment of love and respect. It requires an attitude of service, which in no way depreciates us.

5-3

Rather, it uplifts everybody because we are clear-headed, practical and coming from and understanding of the unity of life.

Excerpt from

Will I Be The Hero of My Own Life?

Swami Chetanandanda

 

flat,800x800,070,f

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

-Muhammad Ali

service

 

Featured art work

William Blake (1757-1827)
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
c. 1803-1805
Watercolor, graphite and incised lines
43.7 x 34.8 cm

. . .
A Truth thats told with bad intent 
Beats all the Lies you can invent 
It is right it should be so 
Man was made for Joy & Woe 
And when this we rightly know 
Thro the World we safely go 
Joy & Woe are woven fine 
A Clothing for the soul divine . . .
William Blake’s true God was the Human Imagination. He did not need to be saved by Christ. Rather, through the salvation of his own imagination, which allowed him to engage in right-thinking and proper actions, he was his own Christ. While Blake was a scholar of the Bible, he was a highly original thinker who created his own mythology and his own human-centered religion.

Hardwired for Happiness

Changing your thoughts to create your future by Madeline Johnson with Dr. Joe Dispenza

According to Dr. Joe Dispenza in this lecture, 95% of who we are by the time we are 35 is a memorized set of behaviors, a pattern of emotional reactions, continual unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, rigid beliefs and perceptions.
We become very predictable people.
If we decide that perhaps we want something better, perhaps change in our lifes, we must start with our thoughts.

2.png

If you agree and believe that the way you think has some effect on you life, than changing the way you think is the only real solution for transformation.

In order to become better versions of who we are for a better life, we must change our personalities.

Terri Duan

How Our Personalities Are Formed

We have around 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day. That’s an average of 2500 – 3,300 thoughts per hour. Out of those 60-70 thousand thoughts that you think, 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as the day before.

If you believe (like I do) that your thoughts are some how connected to your life, then the same thoughts always lead to the same choices, which eventually lead to the same outcomes.

Thoughts for Change

Since the same choices always lead to the same behaviors, the same behaviors create the same experiences.

The same experiences produce the same emotions.

Those very same emotions drive those very same thoughts.

A vicious circle and a predictable life.

Your thoughts, fueled by emotions effect your entire life, including your biology, your neurocircuitry, your neurochemistry, your neurohormones, and even your genetic expression. It is all equal to how you think, how you act and how you feel.

How you think, how you act and how you feel is called your personality and your personality creates your personal reality.

Art by Robert Jahns