Pastor Discusses Spirituality, Addictions and How Meditation May Help
"Often the hidden reason why people drink, take drugs, and become addicted is because they are running from conscience. They became angry at their parents, partner, or someone else and began to feel uncomfortable about it. They resent other people and this resentment (being a form of unforgiveness) makes them uneasy. So they start taking a little drink, a little smoke or a little pill to ease their discomfort--to either numb their emotions, distract themselves, stimulate or depress their emotions.
But because they are really running from God (but don't realize it), when they try to escape the scrutiny of conscience, each new snort, pill, or puff just adds another guilt. And with each new guilt there is a greater need for relief.
Most of us would like to be forgiving, calm, and reasonable instead of angry--but once we lose control, we don't know how to get back on an even keel.
Therefore, a meditation that helps you get recentered and one that restores you to a right relationship with conscience might be just what you need."
Hi, this is Roland
To regain a natural self control and to move forward to better emotional health and improved relationships with others, may I recommend you do 2 things?
Listen to one or two of my 30 minute radio programs. Just go to the archives and pick a title that you find interesting.
Then check out the meditation and look over the resources there.
It's all free. If you don't like it or it's not for you, then you haven't lost anything. But if there are some clues that help you recover - you will have found a valuable resource.
I teach a unique meditation that helps a person become centered and less reactive to pressures. Responding to inner reason instead of outer provocation, the person becomes calmer and begins to exert a positive effect instead of absorbing outer suggestions and tease. It is my belief that we can all be better moms, dads, mates, and citizens when we learn the secret of not getting upset.
Look at it another way. If you could learn to be calm in the moment of stress (without expressing or repressing impatience, anger or upset), you would not add any fuel to the fire. Calmness and reason could be brought to bear, and you might even have a good laugh.
In order to solve your problem, you must learn to have an attitude of alert preparedness. When the moment of stress arrives, you will be ready for it already graced with calmness and understanding. Now, you will have a twinkle in your eye, meeting the moment with understanding. You will now influence the moment instead of the moment influencing you.
The way to be prepared to meet life with understanding is through a proper meditation. This meditation is learning how to go in a room and become still. Basically observing thought instead of being lost in thought.
You had this calm neutral state of mind long ago when you were a little child. Remember how you jumped from bed in the morning ready for a day of discovery, and not bogged down with baggage from the past? But now, we wake up and immediately start worrying, planning, and sometimes dreading things that upset us and we would rather not face awaiting us.
Now can you see why not reacting and getting upset in the first place is so important? When you don't react, you don't form a memory that comes back to haunt you and color and ruin spontaneity in the next similar moment.
So, to recover from our upsets, we need to do two things. One, learn to have an attitude of alert preparedness so that we don't react and form new traumatic memories. Second, we must learn how to deal with the baggage from the past, memories that keep coming back and tapes that keep playing in our mind.
The meditation we offer helps you with both. First by becoming less reactive, you do not form new bad memories. Secondly, you learn how to stand back and observe negative thoughts and emotions without becoming absorbed into those thoughts and reacting (as if the real thing were happening again). In other words, you learn how to not react with upset to external events and how not to react to thoughts (which can also upset).
Through this practice, you will download (so to speak) enough calmness and understanding to meet the day's vicissitudes.
Incidentally, our meditation is available to listen to or download for free, no strings attached. Try my free 5 minute meditation and if you like it you may wish to graduate to the more advanced version.
