Spiritual Questions- How to get my baby to stay asleep?Can’t it be unbearable if your eight month old baby repeatedly wakes up at night? You get tired and stressed and the relationship with your partner suffers. Unfortunately for the child, sleep problems that began in infancy can persist for many years. So it is important to teach the baby how to get to and stay asleep. Continue reading → […]
- Your brain is spamming you‘My feet look stupid’. You just had a thought. You had a message in your head. No big deal we get messages all the time. How do we survive all these message? Easy – by filtering. Another watch-able video from OffThe LeftEye. … Continue reading → […]
- How to get my baby to stay asleep?
Category Archives: Spiritual healing
How do I tackle unhappy childhood memories?
Even living as independent adults in their forties, people can still be haunted by their experience of being mistreated as a child. Such individuals also tend to have recurring negative moods and worry, and long-lasting problems like poor self-esteem, or low self-confidence. From my … Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged authority figures, bitterness, blaming parent, childhood mistreatment, childhood wounds, disrespect, dominating parent, low self-confidence, over-critical parent, parents positive qualities, poor self-esteem, recurring negative moods, recurring worry, tackle unhappy childhood memories, unhappy childhood
Leave a comment
Do men and women have different needs?
When the women’s movement spoke up for the value of women it rebelled against the traditional gender stereotypes and proclaimed equality between the sexes. It quite rightly opposed any idea of male superiority and female subservience. However this idea of equality has also led to a minimising and even denial of any basic differences between the sexes.
Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged brain differences, feminine, feminism, fight or fight, gender differences, gender stereotypes, John Grey, masculine, men and women have different needs, nature-nurture, sex differences, sex discrimination, sex equality, sex hormones, sexism, social conditioning, Swedenborg, tend and befriend
Leave a comment
Is honesty really the best policy?
A lot of us have grown careless in what we say. “It wasn’t my fault we lost the game, I didn’t hear the whistle.” or “I was pushed over and my foot hurt.” Who has never made up an excuse … Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged authenticity, blame, connecting with others, conscience, dishonest reputation, dishonesty, distorted thinking, embarrassment, excuses, forgiveness, gossip, honesty is the best policy, is honesty really the best policy, living a lie, prayer, relationships, self-deception, self-examination, self-justification, self-pity
1 Comment
Why am I discontented?
Brian Moore the former English rugby international player sees something of the dissatisfied person in himself. What he wanted was success. And he pushed himself really hard over and over again to do well. He now recognises that whether it … Continue reading
How to be a healing presence?
One of the conditions of effective counselling according to Carl Rogers is unconditional acceptance. Not judging others. Some people believe that unconditional acceptance can be a healing factor also in ordinary interactions of everyday life. For them this would involve practising forgiveness when someone hurts you, and giving encouragement to those who fail to show good behavior, and even not criticising those who do wrong.
But just how realistic is this approach?
Continue reading
What spiritual practice helps with childrearing?
Children and grandchildren can provide you with wonderful moments. Their spontaneity and sense of fun can brighten your day. But almost out of the blue all hell can break loose and they can be a real pain testing your limits … Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged baby crying, boundaries, bring up children, child, child-rearing, children, consistency, empathy, grandchild, grandchildren, individual uniqueness, jumping to conclusions, meditation retreat, mindfulness, mindless, parenting, patience, reflection, rushing to judgment, self-restraint, spiritual discipline, spiritual practice, spiritual principles, temper tantrum, unconditional love, understanding and acceptance
Leave a comment
How do you live spiritually?
If we were to cultivate the habit of positive thinking, I feel it could transform our world. To me, finding a reconciliation for all our past suffering and pain, anger and rage means that we would not be risking the … Continue reading
How can one be happy in old age?
Many people are afraid of getting old. They fear the loneliness of isolation, the unattractiveness of wrinkles and sagging skin, or the impairment of infirmity. But according to psychologist Marie de Hennezel, old age is an attitude of mind. She suggests … Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged attachments, bodily pleasure, Chinese spiritual path, Corinthians, Hennezel, higher consciousness, impairment, infirmity, inner spirit, isolation, lonely, making love, old age, orgasm, sagging skin, seduction, sexual charm, social life, solitude, Sou-Nu, Tao of love, the Spirit inside, wrinkles, younger generation
Leave a comment
How to love the enemy?
I know who my enemy is: the individual who maliciously damages my property: tramps all over the flower-bed in the garden: scratches the car with a key: trashes the home during a burglary. I feel angered by anyone who threatens to harm my sense of well-being. These are the people I want to complain about and get my own back on. So how on earth does one stop hating such people. How do you love your enemy? Continue reading
How to find confidence?
Do you lack confidence when it comes to certain situations? It could be anything: dancing, playing sport, chatting with strangers, doing your job, making love. Yet, even confident people can get unstuck somewhere along the line. Calamities oblige us to reconsider the bigger picture. So when it comes down to it, in what can we place our confidence? In our own abilities? In the ideas of others? Or in something beyond all of us? One example of the last of these three possibilities is to do with what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called `the whole of Being’. Continue reading
How to escape unwanted thoughts?
I must wash my hands repeatedly. Such an idea or mental picture may pop into your head unasked. Such ideas are unwanted if they are repetitive, unpleasant or difficult to resist. In addition to compulsive acts, they can exacerbate jealousy, temptation, or unreasonable guilt. Swedenborg’s account of unconscious inflow from a spirit realm can give the sufferer some confidence that unwanted thoughts can be ignored and got rid of. Continue reading
Are you going with the flow?
Do you feel things could run more smoothly with less frustration to tire you out? Like mislaying the garden tools or the favourite recipe book for that special meal, not to mention difficulty finding a satisfying job, loving partner, comfortable home? When you seem to be swimming against the current of life, then don’t you feel dispirited and drained?
Animals in their natural habitats don’t have these difficulties. They seem to be in harmony with the flow of nature. Call it instinct but they have less trouble finding food to eat, building their shelter, finding their mate, caring for their young and all this without having any instruction or money.
So how does one go with the flow?
Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged adrenaline junkies, animal instinct, divine inflow, eternal now, going with the flow, here and now, illusion of the senses, life's flow, mindfulness, mystic, power of now, self-intelligence, spiritual heat, spiritual light, stream of providence, Swedenborg, western psychology, Zen Buddhist masters
2 Comments
Overcoming suspicion
Do you give the man in your life a warm embrace in order to sniff for any strange perfume? Or scroll through your partner’s phonebook, when she’s not around, checking for any new male contacts? Signs of sexual jealousy in … Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged altruism, Assagioli, Buddha, distress, distrust, God, Hindu, jealousy, Jesus, love and light, psychosynthesis, spiritual growth, spiritual healing, spiritual questions, suspicion, trust, trusting attitude
Leave a comment
Asking for help
Is life giving us too many headaches? Or have our circumstances dramatically changed for the worse? We say that we are “fine” and that we are in control. But deep down we know we are not. The first step is to admit to ourselves when we actually do need help. So why not simply ask for it? If we do not ask, how can we expect to Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged comfort eating, embarrassment, God, help, love, prayer, religion, retail therapy, spiritual healing, spiritual questions, William James
3 Comments
Feeling better about oneself
Psychologists have found that a strong sense of worth goes along with being confident and assertive, having good physical health, and pleasing relationships. Yet some people have low self-esteem. They feel bad about themselves. What do you think of yourself? Are you pleased with who you are or ashamed? When someone makes critical remarks about you, is it water off a duck’s back or Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged appeasement, Christ, Christian, cognitive-behavioural counselling, cross, divine love and wisdom, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, God, justice, meaning of life, original sin, overcriticl parents, physical abuse, psychodynamic counselling, psychologists, self-esteem, self-worth, sex abuse, spiritual healing, spiritual questions, spiritual sensitive, verbal abuse, worthlessness
1 Comment
Seeing our flaws
We know it is all too easy to try to deny any personal criticisms that come our way. No one finds it comfortable to acknowledge shortcomings in their makeup. However, when we do notice feelings of resentment, guilt, or hurt in our dealings with others, we might start to wonder if we are at fault. Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged bad me, Berne, conscience, Ed Husain, failings, fanticism, faults, Freud, games, id, Islamic, Jung, Muslim, power, rational mind, shadow, shortcomings, Sullivan, Swedenborg
Leave a comment
Calming anger
Have you been hopping mad recently? Some people temperamentally seem to be more easily roused to anger than are others. Yet, to some extent we all get irritated at times. Our anger needs spiritual healing. We feel cross when others attack what we love like our child or pet animal. It could be something we love in ourselves, that when attacked, causes us a sense of wounded pride. Offensive put-downs thrown at us in a condescending tone of voice also can get to us. Continue reading
Erotic can mean erratic
Is marriage an impossible dream? Is it unrealistic to expect two people to live together happily for the rest of their life and find spiritual healing together? These days in England for example, couples, more often than not, live together … Continue reading
Is sex a spiritual matter?
Many of us are inclined to rebel when someone tells us what to do. We do not always take kindly to being told what is right and wrong behaviour. However, ethical living is part of spiritual healing according to the … Continue reading
Six ways to achieve healing of the spirit
Some people wonder whether human beings can change. Another way of putting it is to ask whether they can find spiritual healing. I would suggest that the answer depends on our view of human nature. We all know that there are differences in the … Continue reading
To act or not to act on guilt – that’s the problem
Tragically within weeks of the wedding, the wife was given a diagnosis of cancer and soon found herself needing a mastectomy, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She and her husband needed spiritual as well as physical healing. In his case the grinding role of a full-time carer takes a devastating toll unless sufficient respite care is available.
Drifting – how to stop?
There are things in all of us that we need to face up to for which we need spiritual healing. The problem is worse if we are the kind of person who isn’t used to taking the initiative. The good news is it is possible to become more assertive and proactive. This is because of our inner freedom to change. In my experience if I asked my therapy clients about the aspects of therapy that they found particularly useful, they often cite the discovery and assumption of personal responsibility. Courage to change arose when they started to act on this insight. Continue reading
Self-control – how?
Many of us have developed at least one way of acting that can hurt ourselves, annoy others or damage relationships. Something is out of control. Something needs some spiritual healing. We weren’t born with these actions and what is learned can be unlearned. Gaining better control over our behaviour can be done but requires a conscious effort and persistence. There is an important distinction between on the one hand the notion of resisting bad impulses by our own efforts alone and on the other hand resisting them in God’s strength ‘as of ourselves’. Continue reading
How can one find job satisfaction?
To many people, work seems to be a humdrum monotonous time that goes on and on involving much the same thing day after day. Spiritual healing is needed in some work places. It is true that being a small cog in a big factory or organisation, it may be hard to see that we are contributing any real service to the community but people can assume that other jobs like house-keeping, gardening or labouring are necessarily uninteresting.
The attitude we bring to a job can have a big effect on whether or not we find it boring. Do we have negative or positive reasons for what we are doing at work?
An occupation can exercise a positive pull on some workers as when it brings its own rewards for them. One example is the opportunity to learn on the job.
Continue reading
Heart, Head and Hands
An Interpretation of Swedenborg’s Writings in Relation to Psychological and Spiritual Well-being
by Stephen Russell-Lacy. Seminar Books, 2008. 978 0 907295 36 5. (paperback) 180pp £10
“A fine little work … that will warm the hearts of the general public and all practicing Swedenborgians who are of a non-technical bent. …We find ourselves understanding a text while feeling that, at the same time, we are liberated by just reading it. This happens in many places in the narrative. Traditionalists will love the book, as it preaches the straight and narrow with regard to doctrine, but in places it almost unconsciously breaks out into a kind of semi-restrained wildness that reminds us of Swedenborg’s own mind – rational but also inward, intuitive, deep, creative, and as our British cousins are wont to say, spot on.”
“It’s a pretty comprehensive attempt to offer aid in meeting life’s many challenges. On Time Magazine’s ‘read, skim or toss’, scale for books, this is definitely a read – and keep handy for future reference.”
Continue reading
Posted in Reviews, Spiritual healing, Swedenborg
Tagged behavioural, book, cognitive, distress, disturbance, guilt, head and hands, heart, heart head and hands, issues, life, meaning of life, philosopher, practice, problems, psychology, psychotherapy, religious, self-help, spiritual, spiritual healing, spiritual questions, spirituality, suffering, Swedenborg, theology, theory, therapy, well-being, wholeless
Leave a comment
Can one cope with difficult people?
Some people are just harder to get on with than others. Obvious examples are those who are highly strung, aggressive or manipulative. They may need spiritual healing, but what do we need? What is the secret to avoiding unpleasant scenes with people who cause us a bit of grief from time to time? To better deal with the awkward mob?
A clue can be found in the study of social perception. Research psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert, University of Texas at Austin has pointed out:
“We may strive to see others as they really are, but all too often the charlatan wins our praise and the altruist our scorn. Juries misjudge defendants, voters misjudge candidates, lovers misjudge each other.”
Social psychologists have researched the way we see others in terms of attribution theory. This is studying how people make inferences about the causes of a person’s actions. One thing they have observed is how our expectations about how other people will behave can distort our interpretations. We may assume that the little old lady who bumps into us at the supermarket is someone with unintended poor balance whereas the tattooed hooded youth might be thought to be trying to pick our pockets. Mistaken perception can thus arise from social stereotypes, such as race, sex and age.
Continue reading
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged bias, character, Christ, discrimination, dispositional bias, individual traits, inner peace, judgmental, personality, prejudice, relationships, role obligations, social perception, social pressure, social stereotypes, spiritual healing, spiritual philosophy, spiritual questions, Swedenborg
Leave a comment
How can I like myself?
It’s never too late to change – or so my mother used to tell me. But I need spiritual healing as sometimes I feel I’ve missed the boat. Others have said the same thing. The more we indulge our weaknesses, the more our flaws seem to take hold; and the more we avoid those difficult challenges, the more dissatisfied with ourselves we become – and wonder whether ingrained personal habits can ever be broken.
Some of us may realise that we’ve stopped moving along our path in life. For the warning signs have appeared – a medical complaint caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, a developing coldness due to the neglect of one’s close friends, a loss of interest and energy for something we should be doing that we know deep down is important.
Not moving along life’s path is literally true for me. In my case it is a canal tow-path near my home which I should be using for much needed daily exercise. They say, ‘A healthy mind needs a healthy body’, but mine is getting to be no longer ‘fit for purpose,’ sadly through a long time of overindulgence. Sometimes I think I’m just naturally lazy and so have been quick to forget about the problem. And when I’m shaken out of my complacency, I only make an effort in stops and starts.
Posted in Spiritual healing
Tagged complacency, conscience, Hamblin, health, laziness, overindulgence, peace
Leave a comment