Are you feeling bone tired? So tired that you are wondering how you will make it through the next few days, weeks, and months? It is not only from having to work from home while our kids are on remote learning but also the ever-present pandemic, wild fires, hurricanes, divisive politics, and racial unrest that bombard us every day. We have and will continue to be in this place for the long run and that is so draining! I don’t know about you, but I am finding it harder and harder to find the energy to do what I need to do on the daily basis.
I am not sure that human beings are built to take in so much stress all at once. No wonder more and more of us struggle with keeping ourselves and our families sane. I think what is most exhausting is how our reality keeps shifting all the time. We constantly have to readjust as we swim in the wild waters of constant change.
We all long to find an island of peace and rest in the midst of this raging river, whichever way we can find it.
Just the other day I received a meditation from Father Richard Rohr, a great spiritual teacher and writer, with some guidance on how to get through these times of uproar and connect back with ourselves and with God. Rohr says that if we allow for all this fear, stress, and cynicism to overwhelm us, it can infiltrate our very being and inadvertently cause us to become what we are fighting so hard against. He advises all of us be mindful of what we allow ourselves to consume and digest. It is important that we don’t feed ourselves with the relentless cycle of news, despair and fear. It too shall pass but can leave us broken and damaged in its wake.
Richard Rohr’s challenge to all of us is to listen to the voice of God whispering to our souls in order to find the rest we all need:
"If you will allow, I recommend for your spiritual practice for the next four months that you impose a moratorium on exactly how much news you are subject to—hopefully not more than an hour a day of television, social media, internet news, magazine and newspaper commentary, and/or political discussions. It will only tear you apart and pull you into the dualistic world of opinion and counter-opinion, not Divine Truth, which is always found in a bigger place.
Instead, I suggest that you use this time for some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer—or, preferably, all of the above.
You have much to gain now and nothing to lose. Nothing at all. And the world—with you as a stable center—has nothing to lose. And everything to gain. "
I am currently involved in the spiritual practice of reading and learning about the teachings of the great mystics. Right now, I am taking a class on St. Teresa of Avila. Learning about her life and the eternal wisdom from God she wrote about has helped me to be more grounded in the eternal, rather than in the stress of here and now. I am able to find my island of peace and rest through this practice.
Where do you find your island of peace and respite? In what ways do you need to take on a new spiritual practice of connecting with the Divine Truth and with your own soul? What has been working for you, and what has not?
If you would to read the full meditation by Richard Rohr, you can find it on our Facebook page feed at: facebook.com/intentionalenergy3