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Spirituality Archives - Page 4 of 6 - Self-Help, Spirituality & Self-Esteem

Spirituality

Self-Esteem, Self-Help, Spiritual Growth

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Self-Help And Spiritual Growth To

 Achieve Permanent High Self-Esteem

If you are searching the web for self-esteem, self-help or spiritual growth you are probably coming across advice like…

  • focus on your achievements
  • say affirmations
  • be nice to yourself
  • fake it until you make it

These people mean well, but I doubt the great spiritual teachers of the past or influential psychologists of our time would answer a student’s question about self-esteem by instructing them to focus on aspects that reinforce your current experience of yourself.

I want to show you how to do work on yourself that is hugely rewarding, meaningful, simple and transformational. First I want to talk a bit more about how you got in this predicament in the first place… Read More

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Do you sit there and search for answers to help yourself? Do you think you are into self-help but deep down wish or wait for someone to save you, help you or make you better

Do you fantasise about becoming rich, fit, funny or popular and think you will feel better then? Helping yourself is about going inwards to discover what is true.

There is the truth of the way ‘It’ is which is more in the domain of spiritual growth, and then there is your truth that is more in the domain of self-help.

There is the truth of you as a seemingly separate object we call a person – your experience of life; your emotional truth, your perceptions and interpretations and ideas of the way you and the world are.

The Open Secret

And the secret of self-help is to start with being brutally honest about what is true for you in each moment… Read
More

How To Find Your Passion

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How To Find Your Passion Finally

Is It Important To Find My Passion?

If you are wondering how to find your passion and whether it is important, you will get along just fine without it, well maybe not fine, you will dread every day of your boring existence.  There are no rules about what you should do with your life, apart from the rules society and peer pressure apply.

You have free will and that means you have free will do follow what your heart tells you in each moment, or you can follow the thoughts inside your head that stem from society’s programming or your parent’s wishes or your best friends idea of what is right.

How Do I Know What My Passion Is?

It is easy, have a look at your life right now and answer to yourself

  • where do I spend my free time?
  • or if you don’t get much free time, take some moments
    to feel what you would do.
  • where do you get a little buzz of excitement just
    before you do something?
  • what do you surround yourself with (what type of
    books, music etc)

People think that their passion has to be something massive and obvious and like some big revelation.  It is not like that.  It will be in your environment already.

If it doesn’t seem a big deal to you, remember not everyone has a passion that takes them out into the world.  You must fill the space you are in now before anything else will show up.  That means don’t deny what is obvious right now in favour of waiting and hoping for something else.

What Is Passion Anyway?

You can think of passion as simply enthusiasm.  What are you enthusiastic about?  If your mind immediately says ‘nothing’ then take a moment, slow down, centre yourself and make a decision to watch yourself and your thinking over the next 48 hours.  What gives you a little kick of energy and emotion?  Where do you get a little buzz?

  • It might be when you think about putting together a
    menu and going shopping for food for a dinner party for friends.
  • It might be separating yourself from others and
    spending a couple of hours on your own making crafts.
  • It might be just before you are going to look after
    children you get a little excited.
  • It might be when you first sit at your computer and
    click on the internet button you feel freedom and power.
  • It might be being alone with something mechanical
    like cars.

Keep looking no matter how small or insignificant it used to seem, this is how to find your passion.  You passion is in your life now.

Remember that what you find exciting now might not be the same in two years time.  Maybe at a certain age you will be ready to discover your talent and excitement for snooker or dancing or a musical instrument.

That is why I say you must fill the space you are in now.  Follow what is true for you now.  You cannot manufacture passion for something so don’t go looking for what your passion might be.  How to find your passion? Look for what happens already within.

How To Be Humble

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How To Be Humble

Asking how to be humble is a good question.  However the answer is in the question.  In order to be humble, just be humble.

What Is Humble?

Perhaps a more relevant question is what is humbleness or what is the definition of humble.  Humble is acknowledging that anything you have or are is not really down to ‘you’.

Take away all that has come before to lay the path for you, and take away all those who helped you, and take away the fact that you did not create yourself but rather you just find yourself as you are and you can see you have very little, in fact nothing to boast about.

How To Be Humble?

So by recognising that you as the conscious individual really have little to boast about you can be humble to that which has you here and that which has provided you with what you have, including skills and talents.

If you are a fast runner, did you make yourself a fast runner?  No.  Sure you can train and improve but you did not design and create all that you are which makes you run fast.  Similarly with intelligence and business skills and whatever you may observe about yourself, you don’t have anything that you are completely responsible for achieving or creating.

Why Be Humble?

It is my opinion and experience that when you are not humble, when you believe that your success and achievements are down to ‘you’, your ego, your self-image, then that attitude is polarising.  By that I mean that the equal and opposite experience will be waiting for you also.

You will get to experience the equal and opposite experience which is the negative.  Pride comes before a fall, the well known saying goes.  The universe will arrange to take away from you the boasting or the inflated pride in yourself, so that it restores balance.

If however you achieve greatness and have the attitude of appreciating all that helped you then you will stay balanced and will not be polarising.  Recognise you actually did not achieve this thing but have been blessed to achieve it, you have been allowed to achieve it.

What Can I Do To Be Humble?

Say thank you, a lot, and mean it.  Even say it after you make a nice meal or achieve some task, like after I finish writing this page for example.  You don’t even have to be cognizant of who you are thanking, just a general thank you to everything that allowed you that experience.  Thank you is not just about gratitude but a recognition and humbleness also.

Gratitude Prayer, Attitude of Gratitude, Thankfulness and Appreciation

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Improve Your Life With Gratitude
Prayer

A gratitude prayer doesn’t have to be recited lines of verbal sounds
coming out your mouth once a day. A more powerful and authentic way to ‘ask’ is by feeling gratitude now.

You see feelings reproduce themselves and this often misunderstood. The self-help gurus and the not so guru’d all write about visualizing and saying affirmations, but what very few of them tell you – because I don’t think they have the consciousness to express it – is that the feeling you feel is the gratitude prayer, not just the thought.

This is why simply saying thank-you from your headspace is not as effective.

Feel It First Then Say It

You HAVE to feel it. You have to be sincere in your body before saying it. The words are just an expression of a state of being, or an experience that you want to communicate to another. Just like any speaking or thinking it arises from a state of being that you verbalize to get that across to another person or to the divine.

So when you are next in a shop and purchase something, watch yourself when you say ‘thank you’.

  • Did you feel it and therefore mean it?
  • Or did you just say it because saying it is associated
    with the situation and it has become robotic?

When someone does something for you or gives you something, take half a second to go into your heart and decide to FEEL grateful then express your feeling or state of gratitude by saying ‘thanks’.

In order to feel it you will need to look for something to be grateful for no matter what the situation. When in bed you can feel grateful that you have a warm, dry bed in a dark, dry, quiet room – then say thanks. The alternative to your warm, dry bed in a dark, dry room is sleeping
out in the street under a bush. That is enough for me to be thankful. Feel it then say it.

Waiters and people working in shops get paid to serve you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take half a second to feel grateful that they brought you the food and drink to your table.

As you go about your day finding little things to be grateful for, the feelings reproduce themselves and multiply. An important part of this is being content with what you have now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a vision and plan for the future. The secret is to be grateful now and that is your gratitude prayer.

Fate vs Free Will

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Your Fate vs Free Will?

Since the first human beings became self-aware they probably questioned fate vs free will.

Who knows?  It could be argued either way with relative success.  One thing I am certain of however is which ever one you believe will be real for you.

How can they both be possible?  Maybe that is the point.  It is quite possible that we have a choice in the way we live our life.

1. Some people live as if they are in complete control of their lives and that will be their reality.  Their mind, or more accurately their idea of life and what is real will…

  • delete
  • ignore
  • deny and distort

anything which doesn’t fit into their internal idea of what is real.

2. Other people live as if they are being guided by a higher power through their life.  The things they are passionate about are considered to be preordained (meaning decided outside your conscious, rational mind as if they are given to you).

It is fascinating the wide variety of talents, skills and passion people have.  One can be passionate about designing and sewing clothes while another can be passionate about remote controlled trucks.  Why?  Obviously these two people have different aptitudes and values, but they didn’t choose these aptitudes and values consciously so from where do they arise?

The people that come into their lives are considered to be not just random but organized or attracted.  A meeting that benefits one or both of them, for just 5 minutes or maybe a whole lifetime.

Einstein said something similar to this fate vs free will conundrum when he said…

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

In my experience living the second way is more fulfilling, empowering and worthwhile.

The conscious mind and the ego are not designed to know what is best for you.  The ideas you have that come from your head are based on fear and lack.  You can pursue the perfect body and the perfect home or the status of a certain job but is that what your heart wants or your head?

If you follow your head and once you achieve what you thought you wanted the ego will then set your sights on the next thing.  This is not a bad thing so long as you don’t hold it that getting this thing will be fulfilling and provide happiness.

Maybe the real reason you are pursuing that high status job is to make your father proud of you or you think people will talk about you with respect and admiration.  So, you have free will to pursue the job but…

  • it won’t change the way you think of your father and
    your relationship
  • once the job goes so will the attention and your
    crutch to feeling semi-OK.

Eckhart Tolle Quotes, Spiritual Quotations, Encouragement Quotations

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Wise Eckhart
Tolle Quotes

Below are the selected Eckhart Tolle quotes to provide words of spiritual encouragement.

The selected spiritual quotations are picked specifically for relevance to support the intention of this website to raise consciousness and therefore experience higher self esteem. These quotes have been taken from The Power of Now book, The Flowering of Human Consciousness DVD filmed in La Jolla, California 2001 and Practicing Presence DVD.

Whenever you watch the mind, you withdraw consciousness from mind forms, and then it becomes what we call the watcher or witness.

Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

Do not fight against the body, for in doing so you are fighting against your own reality. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the doorway into Being.

If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, may still be there to some extent, but they won’t take you over.

Ultimately what we perceive as evil arises out of the ignorance of who you are, which is ultimately the ignorance of not knowing God, and that is one and the same.

You are connected to something more deeper and more vibrant – with yourself ultimately. You are yourself. Instead of running to the future to find yourself, continuously dwell in that sense of being.

Accept this moment completely and very quickly the stillness and the peace emerge – no matter what this moment contains.

Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert

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Wise Reading Eat Pray Love

Something that Elizabeth Gilbert said in an interview after Eat Pray Love became such a hit sticks in my mind.  She said …

“I was useless to anyone until I got myself together. It’s a community service to get yourself together.
It’s the least selfish thing you can do.”

I mention quite a few times on this website about how people in general but more specifically women think that it is right and proper to neglect yourself and focus on others.

I know there is strong social conditioning which invisibly directs women to feel guilty if they spend energy and time on themselves, especially when they have a young family.

Eat Pray Love is a true story about Gilbert’s realization soon after turning 30 that she didn’t want the supposedly idealistic life she had conspired to create with her husband.  It follows her realization, subsequent divorce and decision to finally follow her heart.

Destiny and Fate

People talk about destiny and fate.  I believe certain aspects of our lives are destined but we have to have the courage to follow what our heart and intuition is telling us, no matter what the social pressures might be.

People will not understand why you leave a safe job to go traveling.   People will question why you want to go and travel to Peru or Tibet or live in a Ashram.  They will expect you to have logical, thought out answers but the reasons are not logical, they are coming from a different part of your being than rational mind.

It is enough for you to say, ‘it is just something I know I need to do’.  Feel the social pressure, which comes from people who are not in the same place as you and not on the same mission in life as you, but do it anyway.

I recommend reading this book if you have at least an inkling that there is something you want to do, something you are called to do, somewhere you feel guided to go by a gentle, loving, safe hand on the small of your back.

Either you know what it is but you haven’t faced up to it yet, or it is not quite your time and you need to be patient because you know it is coming, whatever it is.

Also, the movie has been released starring Julia Roberts, I haven’t seen it yet but I will do once I can see it in English.

Dr John Demartini, Demartini Method, Improving Your Self-Esteem

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Wisdom Learned From Dr
John Demartini

Dr John Demartini created and teaches the Demartini Method. A powerful way to resolve anxiety, trauma, sadness, grief, shame, guilt and any possible emotion that is holding you back from living an inspired, beautiful life.

In 2008 I first heard about Dr Demartini.  It was a year after my second reading of The
Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford, a book which made a huge change to my understanding of why people feel bad about themselves and have low self-esteem.

A friend gave me a DVD of Dr John Demartini talking about his tough early life.  He was from a loving family however he had learning and physical difficulties and drifted aimlessly once leaving school until he met an old man in a yoga class.  This old man, Paul Bragg, guided him and the rest of the class through a meditation and from that night Dr Demartini’s passion for learning and understanding began.

When I looked into his work further I was quite astounded to read and hear that he too had realized the importance of doing shadow-work and had done a similar exercise to me, but a lot more intense.

I know I felt a persistent unease within all my life until I started this internal work on myself.  I wanted to discover who I really was, what I am gifted at and what I can let go of worrying about.  Would you like to live like that also?

Listen to a great explanation below from Dr John DeMartini of why this kind of work is powerful at improving your your self-esteem.

Whereas I had gone through books, learning materials and reference material to catalogue around 1,000 personality traits, and test myself for any reaction or resistance to owning them, he had apparently gone through the entire dictionary!!!  I never thought of doing that!

He says there are about 4,600 traits he got from the dictionary and I assume he worked on each one.

His work was not only from the point of view of feeling better about himself but he also got copies of biographies of successful people and highlighted the traits that they displayed in achieving their greatness.

Dr John Demartini is passionate about all areas of human behaviour and achievement.  Part of his study was into quantum physics and the realization that there really is nothing missing from our lives.  It is our conscious mind that is unable to see everything and how it all relates and so knowing this he devised The DeMartini Method.

I lent a friend my copy of his book The Heart of Love and she said it made such a change to her life reading it and doing the exercises.  I hope it does for you too.

Elsewhere I have talked about personality traits that we do not accept and love about ourselves show up for us as an illusion in other people.  We really think they are that way, but in reality that person’s behaviour or personality provide us with a hook that shows us what we need to work on to love and accept about ourselves.

The more personality traits that you accept and love about yourself the more you will leave low self-esteem behind and you can get on with living a meaningful, inspired life.  This is one aspect of the many great teachings Dr John Demartini provides.

Developing Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness Exercises, Self-Development, Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence

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The Secret To All Growth Is Developing Self-Awareness

Developing self-awareness is the key to changing your life experience and overcoming poor self-esteem.

Developing-Self-Awareness Rocks Stacked Beach

Any spiritual or personal growth book worth reading will probably only make only two points important…

  • developing self-awareness
  • radical acceptance

The secret to having a life of inner peace and contentment and building your self-esteem is to accept and simply experience what is there for you right now.  Once you have developed greater awareness you have more choices about how you will think about what you experience.

Why It Takes Some Courage

It takes some courage to surrender to what is really going on.  Once you stop denying your experience and finally realize that your experience has richness, self-love and meaning, then you do not need anything outside of you to be OK such as material possessions, a partner or recognition.

Until you can see what is happening you cannot choose to change it. To be able to see it you need to be constantly developing self-awareness.

If your foot was numb you would need to be aware your foot was numb and be aware of why before you could consciously do something to change that experience. You would see that you are sitting on it and so now you can change that condition. So too it is with emotions, although more complex.

Similarly you need to see and acknowledge the way you are thinking about yourself and the world before you can see that the end result of your thinking might be an experience of anxiety.

You need to be able to see you are attached to something not happening before you can see that your attachment makes you fearful.

Increasing Understanding

Awareness is not a skill and it is not something you develop as such, it just is as it is but it gets covered up a lot of the time.

This is the difference between having your attention on what might happen (imagination) or what has happened (memory) and instead having your attention on ‘you’.  Which part of ‘you’ is real and which
part is always changing or up for changing, and therefore not real?

There is always a part of you still and silent and observing. In times you are daydreaming or rehearsing a conversation in your head or replaying an incident the awareness of you disappears doesn’t it? Try it, play with different uses of your mind and see when ‘you’ disappear. Of course it doesn’t go anywhere but it just sort of gets forgotten.

Engage your peripheral vision for a few seconds while you stay aware that you are conscious. Now concentrate on an object or read a few words. Is one mode of vision easier for you than the other to remain conscious of you?

I was watching my nephew recently at eight months old waving his arms around when he had the sudden
realization that he was doing the waving through intention. He stopped and looked at his hand and moved the fingers and he was more intrigued than with any toy.

This is what I am talking about. Developing self-awareness that you are aware and conscious that you do things.

Meditation, Contemplation and Mindfulness

Developing Self Awareness Woman Yoga Meditation Ocean
And this leads us to meditation, contemplation and mindfulness.

As you go about your day in mindfulness; watching without judgment, anything you do which is destructive, painful or unnecessary for your well-being will have a greater chance of simply dropping away. Meditation helps bring this impartial awareness and watcher to the foreground and this is transformative all by itself. It really is all that there is to do fundamentally.  Become self
aware, then accept what you find.

Developing self-awareness and accepting everything you are aware of now is powerful and is a permanent way to increase poor self-esteem.

Deepak Chopra Quotes

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Wise Deepak

Chopra Quotes

Below are selected spiritual quotations and other inspirational Deepak Chopra quotes.

The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self.

Finding the hidden dimensions in yourself is the only way to fulfill your deepest hunger.

You are a creature who acts, thinks and feels. Spirituality fuses these three into a single reality.

The one reality is spirit, and the surface of life is only a disguise with a thousand masks that keep us from discovering what is real.

If it weren’t for the enormous effort we put into denial, repression, and doubt, each life would be a constant revelation.

Ultimately you have to believe that your life is worth investigating with total passion and commitment.