This is good food for thought! I want to comment and say yes! I get this! But I struggle to articulate.
I have felt for years that the anxiety I struggle with is connected to the spiritual realm. It sets off for no justifiable reason and paralyses my ability to move forwards. It takes A LOT of work to move through it and draws me back to aligning myself with Jesus and rest. I’m (frustratingly) beginning to get used to it. I’m beginning to wonder if this is actually part of a spiritual gift as I mature in my faith.
Just by writing that on a public platform I feel Christian’s giving me the side eye and my counsellor watching for a new appointment booking!
I enjoyed this, thanks Frank. I have had several of these experiences. I usually link them to things that have happened in a place in the past. I expect that would be the case with your Kaimai experience (plenty of Māori history there). When we were first engaged my husband took me to a place he loved. While it looked nice (peaceful forest), I felt so uneasy and threatened that I insisted we had to leave. Later I found that this was the site of where Māori were massacred. There is a place near the Kaimai Range that my grandfather (of Irish Catholic stock) forbid me to visit because he saw it as spiritually dangerous. He's long since passed, but I'll never be able to go there against his advice. On the positive side, there are the "thin places" in Celtic spirituality. I've sensed those places too.
Lots of thoughts… I think a parallel between Narnia of the stories and that of my own experience is that sometimes these things happen when we’re not looking for them.
What’s become very real to me, is that He came looking for me… and the then experience and ongoing stuff that’s happened since was not at all what I expected.
However in the 6 months since then it’s been more and more clear that it gave me something to build upon, a signpost… a lamppost in the snowy forest almost :) to help me navigate a tentative way forward. And I’m very very grateful for that.
Realisations and truth have been steadily dawning… there is some sense that winter is receding… I woke up a month ago and realised for the first time that I belonged to Him. I’ve never felt like that before in my life. So I’m exceedingly thankful for it… and open to future possibilities whether it happens again or not.
My experience of teaching mindfulness (from the secularised prescribed format of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in a physical health setting) is that individuals who persevere with the practice, which is absolutely about paying attention to the senses, frequently have an experience of the spiritual. It generally seems to need regular practice of 30-45 minutes meditation. If they already have a Christian faith, it builds on that. If not, it feels spiritual but not 'religious'. Most dramatic was a very disabled man, able to move little of his body, who reported a convincing and life-changing experience of God's presence during mindfulness of breathing. (One of Kabat-Zinn's books is titled "Coming to our Senses"!)
And on a somewhat different track, angels etc.......a very thought-provoking article in the last NZ Geo magazine, describing the experience of being accompanied reported by individuals lost in the wild - alone! Here's the link:https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/lost/
Thanks Frank, so sorry you are leaving Commoners....
As someone who fell in love with the daily practice of intentional silence as an act of prayer, this greatly interests me, Jeannette. It's now pretty much absent from my life due to the experience of the last 5 years and its stress. I have the aim to work on it this year. I've stopped and started with it during the last 5 years and hoped I would get there last year but didn't. I'll look into Kabat Zinn's work :)
While I'm off from Commoners for a couple of months before coming back for the few months of Lent and the Pascha/Easter season, I have been attending mass at the Catholic cathedral at 7:30am on Sundays. I have found it nice sitting quietly in the back and nobody knowing who I am :) It has allowed me to quietly breath and just enjoy the space and the liturgy. It has been good for my soul.
Once I get to the end of my time at Commoners I'll be letting everyone know about this site. Until then I haven't promoted it in Commoners because I see it as a conflict of interest to use that to promote my own subscription service, but a few people have voiced that they will miss hearing my thoughts regularly.
This is good food for thought! I want to comment and say yes! I get this! But I struggle to articulate.
I have felt for years that the anxiety I struggle with is connected to the spiritual realm. It sets off for no justifiable reason and paralyses my ability to move forwards. It takes A LOT of work to move through it and draws me back to aligning myself with Jesus and rest. I’m (frustratingly) beginning to get used to it. I’m beginning to wonder if this is actually part of a spiritual gift as I mature in my faith.
Just by writing that on a public platform I feel Christian’s giving me the side eye and my counsellor watching for a new appointment booking!
I enjoyed this, thanks Frank. I have had several of these experiences. I usually link them to things that have happened in a place in the past. I expect that would be the case with your Kaimai experience (plenty of Māori history there). When we were first engaged my husband took me to a place he loved. While it looked nice (peaceful forest), I felt so uneasy and threatened that I insisted we had to leave. Later I found that this was the site of where Māori were massacred. There is a place near the Kaimai Range that my grandfather (of Irish Catholic stock) forbid me to visit because he saw it as spiritually dangerous. He's long since passed, but I'll never be able to go there against his advice. On the positive side, there are the "thin places" in Celtic spirituality. I've sensed those places too.
Lots of thoughts… I think a parallel between Narnia of the stories and that of my own experience is that sometimes these things happen when we’re not looking for them.
What’s become very real to me, is that He came looking for me… and the then experience and ongoing stuff that’s happened since was not at all what I expected.
However in the 6 months since then it’s been more and more clear that it gave me something to build upon, a signpost… a lamppost in the snowy forest almost :) to help me navigate a tentative way forward. And I’m very very grateful for that.
Realisations and truth have been steadily dawning… there is some sense that winter is receding… I woke up a month ago and realised for the first time that I belonged to Him. I’ve never felt like that before in my life. So I’m exceedingly thankful for it… and open to future possibilities whether it happens again or not.
My experience of teaching mindfulness (from the secularised prescribed format of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in a physical health setting) is that individuals who persevere with the practice, which is absolutely about paying attention to the senses, frequently have an experience of the spiritual. It generally seems to need regular practice of 30-45 minutes meditation. If they already have a Christian faith, it builds on that. If not, it feels spiritual but not 'religious'. Most dramatic was a very disabled man, able to move little of his body, who reported a convincing and life-changing experience of God's presence during mindfulness of breathing. (One of Kabat-Zinn's books is titled "Coming to our Senses"!)
And on a somewhat different track, angels etc.......a very thought-provoking article in the last NZ Geo magazine, describing the experience of being accompanied reported by individuals lost in the wild - alone! Here's the link:https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/lost/
Thanks Frank, so sorry you are leaving Commoners....
As someone who fell in love with the daily practice of intentional silence as an act of prayer, this greatly interests me, Jeannette. It's now pretty much absent from my life due to the experience of the last 5 years and its stress. I have the aim to work on it this year. I've stopped and started with it during the last 5 years and hoped I would get there last year but didn't. I'll look into Kabat Zinn's work :)
While I'm off from Commoners for a couple of months before coming back for the few months of Lent and the Pascha/Easter season, I have been attending mass at the Catholic cathedral at 7:30am on Sundays. I have found it nice sitting quietly in the back and nobody knowing who I am :) It has allowed me to quietly breath and just enjoy the space and the liturgy. It has been good for my soul.
Once I get to the end of my time at Commoners I'll be letting everyone know about this site. Until then I haven't promoted it in Commoners because I see it as a conflict of interest to use that to promote my own subscription service, but a few people have voiced that they will miss hearing my thoughts regularly.