The Post-Postpartum Depression Blog

What spiritual practices help you? Any ways of connecting that assist you to connect to higher consciousness.. Pass it forward.

The following are your responses; provide one that helps you to connect to the spiritual world or borrow an idea or tool, if you need one.

 *      I speak to God. I also speak to my Dad, who died 10 years ago. I do this throughout the day, everyday. I can hear my father’s response.. I know what he would tell me and I go get comfort from him. I do not belong to any organized religion because I do not get comfort from that. I have tried both Jewish and Catholic.

*      Prayer, 12 step meetings, breathing and walking.

*      Running and dancing.

*      None. I do not believe that God intervenes directly in our lives. I believe he has given us the tools for free thought and inner strength and it’s up to us. God helps those who help themselves.

*      I’m Catholic and I dearly love saying my rosary. I can say it anywhere and always carry several with me…I believe it was a tradition carried down from my Mom. She was always saying her rosary and I wanted to be just like her.

I also enjoy lighting candles at church for those in need of some extra help, guidance, or health issues. I have recently lost my family business of 66 years and found saying novenas to different Saint’s help as well. There are a few different novenas, they are a specific prayer that has to be said every day for so many days. If you miss a day you have to start all over again. The novenas can either be 9 day or 54 days long.

*      I find prayer helps me let go and connect to a more positive power.

*      Top 10 spiritual practices for me are:

1. Meditation (even if only for 3 minutes a day!)
2. Waking up with an attitude of gratitude—thanking God/universe every day for the blessings in my life
3. Believing that all is one
4. Greeting each person every day with a smile
5. Remaining open to the energy and advice of loved ones who now reside in the spiritual plane (they usually have great messages!), and talking to them openly when I need guidance
6. Living without fear
7. Knowing that wherever I am, whatever I am doing, whatever is happening in my life is EXACTLY what is supposed to be happening in order for me to grow
8. Knowing that there are no coincidences
9. Exercising my sense of humor—find something funny every day and have a good laugh
10. Doing my best to instill all of the above in my children

*      My spiritual practice that has connected me to higher consciousness is: I started meditating many times a day and I say in my daily affirmations “I am always connected, I walk in a meditated state”.  I now hear my soul, God and other spirits on a daily basis therefore doing readings as a medium and counseling many.

When I choose something, I absorb the feeling when I am stating my choice and I am an amazing creator.

Each word I say, each thought I think is creative, and I know that I am always creating, therefore it is.  My way of life is Faith, knowing it already is.

I truly live in joy every day and I hope others try it.

*      Prayer and attending my church on a regular basis is of huge help in my daily life and in my life overall.  It is really part of my DNA and I am thankful for the security that it gives to me.

*      I start each day trying to be a better than I was yesterday.  I study something spiritual everyday and I try to connect with my spiritual friends every week. When I watch TV or read a book it is usually something about bettering myself. I am determined to make my personal growth by choice, and hope that I never have to do it because something bad has happened to me.

*      Saying the Tehillim for the people I love helps me a lot. Praying directly and asking G-d for help where I’m limited to help myself helps me to feel I’m not as alone with my problems.

*      The spiritual practices that help me the most: Reiki.  When I do a Reiki session I utilize crystals in the process.  I think the best way for me to describe how this helps me.. is to suggest you experience Reiki for yourself first hand.  I also try to meditate twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

*      For many years I studied Zen Buddhism and found meditation to be helpful. It brought me a space to chill, to allow myself to do nothing at all and to find my center. Through meditation I learned to listen to my mantra and pay attention to my mind unwinding.

The beauty of learning to meditate is that it’s a practice that follows you everywhere. You can find peaceful moments at home, peaceful hours in nature or even peaceful days away from home. Meditating is a gift to one’s “self” as is learning to appreciate the silence of sound.

*      In all my searching, throughout my life, I turn most often to an idea inspired by an essay entitled “The drama of it all” by Alan Watts printed in his book The Essential Alan Watts (1974, Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA). In it, he describes our lives (and our selves) as being the creation of God and being created in the same way that all of the people and objects that populate our own dreams are created by us. The people in our dreams are actually not individuals separate from us, not outside of us, though they may look like people in our waking world. The people in our dreams are us, or some aspect of us that interacts with other aspects of us in the drama of our dream. The people in our dreams – friends, family, strangers, lovers – are all us, created by us, to communicate a message or even just a feeling to ourselves. The drama in God’s dream includes me with all of my joy and all of my tragedy, wandering around seeking his face, but never finding it (because it is me, underneath this cloak of mortality. Instead, God gets to know what it is like to be me, and in the process I am known, my deepest core is known. It comforts me in my own time of sorrow to think that God comes to understand this particular kind of sorrow by experiencing it through me. Somehow that makes my suffering okay and it makes my joy okay (neither greater or less than sorrow). Whether we are rich, poor, happy, or sorrowful our lives, lived as inhabiters of God’s dream, allows him to know all human experience. This brings me peace.

*      To gain spiritual wisdom, I tend to do some of the following:

1. Sometimes I call my O.A. sponsor.

2. Sometimes I pray for help.

3. Sometimes I talk to my sister or my friends.

4. Sometimes I listen to Pema Chodron’s CD, “unconditional  confidence: instructions for meeting any experience with trust and courage.”

5. Sometimes I go to an O.A. meeting (12-step program for compulsive overeaters).

6. Sometimes I remember the Kabbalah formula/12-step “turn it over” third step.

7. Sometimes I write & in that creative space I develop “flow,” which I consider to be a spiritual place of refreshment and renewal.

8. Sometimes I sulk until something snaps me out of it!

(The last is the least effective spiritual practice.)

*      I honestly don’t know what to answer to this question because I cannot rely only to one spiritual practice, I rarely sit down in meditation or prayer, but I do pray often during the day and I “make” myself be present in moments, but the higher power I mostly feel through empathy…connecting with people, all kind of people. It gives me a chance to look at myself in everybody…every person that I meet. Involuntarily I connect with everybody and everything that I see.. good or bad in that person, I acknowledge in myself as well. This stops the judgments and auto-judgments, and allows me to look deeper, at the divine in everything…and this requires from my part just a small shift in consciousness. See and accept or see and repel…(this is not always happening in that instant and sometimes my mind fights what I see later if I feel a little tormented by any kind of emotions linked to that person.

I make the shift and everything kind of makes sense).

~ by ppdsus on February 17, 2012.

Posted in postpartum depression
Tags: Inspirational stories & positive changes, postpartum depression, Spirituality, women's mental health