CELEBRATE PERSONAL QUIET TIME—SPIRITUAL CONNECTION
PICTURES show my altar and a restorative place in nature that I visit—with Christian nativity scene, Buddha—really all other religions, hugging arms (Don't we all need a HUG?), objects from nature, and inner-child toys and reminders.
Your Spiritual Sanctuary
Take time daily for developing your “personal sanctuary”—a shelter from life’s storms.
Take time to go within.
Ask yourself: What do you need to be a healthy, happy camper?
Each of our spiritual journeys is unique and our ways of finding a deep connection with ourselves and others and the earth itself reflect this diversity.
Other areas of the Web site have shared practical tools and tips to make changes in food and exercise choices. This section provides the same practical, step-by-step suggestions to transform our mental and emotional lives—while providing a spiritual framework to embrace life-long healthy weight management.
For me, transforming my food, alcohol and drug addictions has provided me many opportunities to grow spiritually and emotionally.
Why take time for reflection and self-evaluation?
How is this spiritual component helpful to weight management?
Explore Meditation—Why and How—Cleanse and Train The Mind and How to work with food cravings, and lastly Make Your Mind an Ocean: Become Your Own Therapist! Check out these sections to discover your personal answers.
The Various Meditation section suggests a thorough personal self-evaluation in which you are encouraged to look at all of the relationships in your life, and see if you have created unwholesome patterns and acknowledge the results upon yourself and other people. This is like a thorough personal house cleaning. This process is similar to the 12-step program suggestions.
You become willing to look at and transform your character defects. You contemplate how you are creating your life and consider changes that you might want to make—to understand, unravel and transform character defects and unskillful patterns.
You acknowledge old coping mechanisms that no longer work and sculpt new patterns. In working through this process, deep patterns of emotional and mental distress are healed and you find that your food compulsion gradually diminishes and is transformed into a healthy relationship with food and all of life. Choosing to invest in yourself in this way—over time—brings to you the bountiful rewards of increasing peace, contentment and freedom! You will then naturally find that you want to share this to support the well-being of the world.
Through our attitudes and choices we create our reality.
Start and prepare yourself—by opening up your heart—calming and clearing your mind:
Begin with loving aspirations for yourself and all other people:
“Peace be to my mind, let all my thoughts be still.”
· I am safe. I am cared for. I am loved and all is well in my world...ah....
· May I (and all people) have mental happiness and be in touch with my own loveliness!
· May I relate skillfully to the torments of my mind that arise...
· May I be peaceful...
· May I be liberated...
· May I have physical happiness—the enjoyment of health, freedom from physical pain—and have harmony with my body, mind and spirit.
· May I receive any pain with friendliness and patience, thereby not transforming physical pain into mental torment.
· May I be healthy and be healed of any dis-ease.
· May I make a “friend of my body.”
· May I readily experience friendship with myself (all of me)...a great embrace...ah....
(These thoughts are typical Buddhist phrases to encourage kindness towards ourselves and others.)
Perhaps visit Imagine Your Ideal Day!, Out of Hell Into Freedom Thoughts and Loving-Kindness: Learn to Befriend Ourselves and Others
As you begin your journey of self-exploration, I encourage you to practice kindness—to be kind to the being that lives inside of your skin!