Spiritual Recovery: Day 3

I went home last night and made myself a sandwich for dinner and turned on "Sleepless in Seattle." About a quarter way through the movie, I fell asleep and woke up again around 9 to get ready for bed and turned off the lights at at 9:30. I thought I would wake up at the crack of dawn since I went to bed so early, but I slept until the alarm went off at 8:20 am.

I have been feeling unusually cranky and irritable these days and I suspect it was due to stress and fatigue.

I feel much better today.

I read Eat, Pray, Love on my way to work. This book is about a woman's journey to Italy, India and Indonesia to experiment with worldly pleasure, spirituality, and to balance the two in respective countries. Elizabeth (the author)is in India right now and she is practicing Yoga-a method of meditation to find God.

She says:

"We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. [A] Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus [once said]: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.'"

Or in today's colloquialism, "Duh! God lives in you, you dimwit."

I went through this phase of finding God last year and learned a very valuable lesson: That God exists in the present moment. It is only through the portal of being fully present (and not immersed in our thoughts about the past or future)that one can have access to the Divine. And Truth or parts of the Truth can be revealed only in that state.

With this reminder and a good night's rest, I am in a better state of mind to read Matthew Chapter 3.

When the Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized of John, he declares: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance."

This phrase makes me think of my baptismal covenant and the necessity of a daily dosage of repentance to be worthy of the promises that were made to me when I was baptized. My nightly prayers have become automatic, ritualistic, and insincere. I should take a few moments every night to reflect, evaluate and identify the aspects of my life that needs an extra shot of the present moment. :)

Here I go.