I had NOT remembered to pray this morning! Though, the day is still young! I started thinking about prayer and mindfulness and I thought, "I am so happy my window wipers are working properly today!" (Sometimes they leave a streak of un-wiped space right in my field of vision). At this, my mind exploded with delight! I have come to a new conclusion!
To work on my Mindfulness, I need to start first, by thinking prayerfully. My resolution this month is to pray once in the AM and once in the PM but... I didn't specify if it would be as soon as I hop out of bed or not! Most people tell you to wake up and immediately drop to your knees. I think this is very wise! Though, I personally have not had much success with this particular strategy of remembrance.
I feel my prayers have this habit of becoming systematically rehearsed. I am thankful for the same things, often in the same order and I pray for certain things to happen or not happen, again, often in the same order and its like Robot Praying. I need to fix this.
By Thinking Prayerfully, I will be able to come up with more things, individual to the present, to pray for. This should not detract from or replace praying though.
My drive to work in the morning is 30 minutes. I am going to Think Prayerfully for the 30 minutes into and out of town while I drive! And I will be adding this to my Resolutions Chart for this month to help keep track of my success.
And on the topic of Prayer, they say that praying is when you talk to God and reading the scriptures is when he talks to you. So what do I want to talk to him about? My intent is to be mostly thankful. I think this will help me be much more mindful. I need gratitude in my life.
My hope for this month is to get into the habit of creating awareness of God in my life. This will help me, not only to start creating a relationship with him, but also to help me recognize the special things he does for me and to see his hands work in my life.
So along with praying I have resolved to reading my scriptures for 20 minutes. Any longer and I think I will think of it as a chore (I secretly already do) and it will be put on the back burner! Plus, who can't find 20 minutes of spare time in their day? Perhaps I will end up kicking my "twitter scrolling" to the curb to give me the extra time I am looking for.
To help with my mindfulness, I have also resolved to say a small prayer before reading that I can keep my mind open and to be able to understand the underlying messages of each text. I'm going to need to add Openness to this months resolutions chart as well. I like to think I am already open but I need to remember that the other people around me are much smarter than me and some of them will have really good suggestions for me.
Because I want to "Read 'em and Reap", I plan on reading and while
reading, pondering. I'm actually a super slow reader! But I have a firm belief
that all scriptures have small lessons. So, if by the end of my 20 minutes I
only get through 5 really good verses, because I have been spending my time
working out what they mean, I will be completely satisfied with that! And, if I find the verses or lessons super substantial, I will take extra time
to record what I learned. I am a recorder, always have been, always will be!
My resolutions this month are to put me on a track that will help me to feel the spirit, to be meek and to be able to recognize the personal revelation that is always surrounding me but rarely noticed! I will keep blogging the interesting thoughts that I have on the subject and what I find through keeping my resolutions!
M
No comments:
Post a Comment